Bound Fast with Letters: Medieval Writers, Readers, and Texts by Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse (review)

This book, a collection of articles by Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse, reprints papers written between 1973 and 2010. Thus it forms a valuable companion to Authentic Witnesses (University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), when read together still covering but part of their expansive oeuvre; its contents, rich and varied, and like it comprehending almost every aspect of the manuscript book. Not just books and documents, but through them also – perhaps its most aesthetic quality – the collection opens up scintillating scenes of medieval life as a whole. This is a very useful collection, a major contribution by which future explorers in the wilderness of medieval book culture might wish to be guided in their task.

The title, Bound Fast with Letters, is derived from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae: ‘The use of letters was invented for the sake of remembering things: lest they slip into oblivion, things are bound fast with letters’. The main text is comprised of eighteen papers, divided into four unequal parts, and the various parts embody major themes, ordered chronologically: ‘Writing it Down: Practicalities and Imagery, 500–1220’, ‘Patrons and the Uses of Books, 1250–1400’, ‘Commercial Book Makers, French and Italian, 1290–1410’, and ‘Epilogue’. To this is prefixed a foreword by Robert Somerville, followed by the Rouses’ own Introduction, a discursive survey of contents, round which is skilfully crafted a context for the whole. The apparatus includes two indexes: of manuscripts and documents cited, and of names and topics generally. The plates, all in black-and-white, are of uneven quality: for example, the image of Paris, Archives de l’assistance publique de Paris, fonds St-Jacques liasse 162 (fig. 16.1), whose rubric, though given in the notes, is hardly visible in the printed photograph. The in-text diagrams, genealogies, stemmata, and the like do not appear to be listed anywhere in the volume.

Of the eighteen papers collected here, all have been published elsewhere, but not always of joint authorship, nor always in the identical form. Some, like Chapter 2, ‘Donatist Aids to Bible Study: North African Literary Production in the Fifth Century’ are reprinted with a change of name; it was originally published as ‘North African Literary Activity: A Cyprian Fragment, the Stichometric Lists and a Donatist Compendium’. Chapter 6, ‘Manuscripts Belonging to Richard de Fournival’, the earliest in date (1973), now includes a two-part ‘Appendix: Addenda since 1973’ made up of ‘Additional Bibliography’ and ‘Additional Manuscripts’. The remainder appear to have been republished in their original forms.

The Rouses’ collected works would provide further additional matter, articles, and reviews, to fill more than one fat volume. Would that such a thing be realized: a complete collection, in three volumes, akin to the Classical Papers of A. E. Housman. For the Middle Ages, this pair has done no less.