Ruling the Script in the Middle Ages: Formal Aspects of Written Communication (Books, Charters, and Inscriptions) ed. by Sébastien Barret, Dominique Stutzmann, and Georg Vogeler (review)

At the International Medieval Congresses held in Leeds between 2010 and 2014 a total of eighteen sessions involving over fifty scholars explored, according to the present book's back cover blurb, the 'textuality and materiality' of a variety of medieval texts, focusing particularly on the different kinds of 'rules' which were evolved to facilitate written communications within specialized categories. Among their primary stated goals were the integration of current developments in palaeography, diplomatics, and codicology, and the bridging of the gap between the 'auxiliary sciences of history' (back cover) and the field of communication studies. From the material presented at those sessions twenty papers were chosen to comprise this volume. The chronological range of subjects is wide: they cover a thousand years, from the fifth to the fifteenth century. Linguistically there is a concentration on the West, most of the manuscripts under discussion being in Latin, but with some French, Italian and German material, as well as one paper on letter shapes in Syriac and another on micrography in Ashkenazi Hebrew documents. Three of the papers are written in French, the remainder in English. The overall intent is to provide 'new insights into how different kinds of rules were designed, established and followed in the shaping of medieval documents, as a means of enabling complex and subtle communicational phenomena' (back cover).

How far is this achieved? An introduction of some twenty pages by the three editors provides a reasonably succinct summary and contextualization of each of the papers. In it they express the hope that their collection might help to fill the 'blind spot' left by the fields of 'literacy', 'auxiliary sciences', and the 'civilization of writing', and become part of a 'new inflection in cultural studies' (p. 14). They declare themselves 'proud to open the borders between disciplines' (p. 24). Their aim seems a reasonable one, though the diversity of the material calls into question the extent of their success in achieving it.

It is beyond the scope of a short review, or indeed the competence of one single reviewer, to critique thoroughly each and every one of the constituent parts of such a far-ranging collection. It must suffice to say that the various essays together constitute a garden of delights for the amateur of manuscripts: there is a great deal of very interesting and entertaining material here, from, for example, a statistical study of writing angles (inclination of ascenders and descenders, angles d'attaque, etc.) as they evolved (or perhaps devolved!) over time, to the cutting of goose quills in Holland, or the educational and social backgrounds of scribes in France. The papers are all of high quality in terms of both originality and referencing, many of them written with charm and grace. But the editors' valiant attempt to bind them together seems, to this reviewer, somewhat forced, and the language is frequently overinflated, as is so often the case in modern scholarly writing.

In summary, the editors make much of wrapping all the constituent papers together and filling interdisciplinary gaps in the area of written rules and formulas. Perhaps this collection succeeds up to a point, but it is not clear that such a disparate anthology of essays can be said to share a common purpose or purposes. They are good pieces seen individually, and each fills its own gaps in the sense that it makes a worthwhile and interesting contribution to its own specialized field. I recommend the book for its diversity of interest rather than its putative purpose.