Project MUSE®: Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2016) through current issueLatest Articles: Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies2381-53292381-5329Latest articles in Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Using Script Analyzer to Measure the Consistency of Early Medieval Latin Handwriting
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974085
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Can digital tools extract visual features of handwriting that correspond to those perceived by the human eye? To address this question, we experimented with a software tool known as Script Analyzer to measure the consistency of handwriting in early medieval Latin charters written in new Italian cursive. We investigated whether the Script Analyzer metrics regarding visual and dynamic features can classify early medieval handwriting in a manner analogous to human observers. We have compiled a sample of handwriting specimens to examine the relationship, firstly, between the metrics produced by Script Analyzer and twenty-six human informants' assessments of the handwriting consistency and, secondly, between the Script
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallUsing Script Analyzer to Measure the Consistency of Early Medieval Latin Handwriting2025-11-13text/htmlen-USUsing Script Analyzer to Measure the Consistency of Early Medieval Latin Handwriting2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®933872026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13New Witnesses to the Chronique anonyme universelle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974086
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In my 2014 monograph, La Chronique anonyme universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France, I presented the first critical edition and translation of a fifteenth-century French universal chronicle with the supplid title Chronique anonyme universelle (CAU) (Fig. 1).1 The CAU is a remarkable text, chronicling biblical and ancient history; the Papacy; the histories of Britain, France, and the Roman and Holy Roman Empires; and the Crusades. Stretching from Creation through the fifteenth century, the narratives are written in parallel columns. The text is generally presented in scroll format, with most copies heavily illustrated. All of them include a complex series of genealogical diagrams tracing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallNew Witnesses to the Chronique anonyme universelle2025-11-13text/htmlen-USNew Witnesses to the Chronique anonyme universelle2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®728352026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Under the Surface: Non-Invasive Explorations of Hidden Notes in Arabic Manuscripts with Laminated Pages
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974087
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In recent years, the study of manuscript notes found on the title-pages and flyleaves and in the colophons and margins of books has invigorated the field of Islamic book history.1 In conjunction with other previously underresearched sources such as historical catalogs2 and estate registers,3 new evidence from these documentary notes has supplemented, contextualized, and sometimes contradicted the stories hitherto relayed from texts like chronicles and biographical collections. Through the handwritten notes and seal i\mpressions left by owners, readers, endowers, and the like, the manuscripts are, in effect, telling their own stories. In our effort to listen to and make sense of such stories, to get the full
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallUnder the Surface: Non-Invasive Explorations of Hidden Notes in Arabic Manuscripts with Laminated Pages2025-11-13text/htmlen-USUnder the Surface: Non-Invasive Explorations of Hidden Notes in Arabic Manuscripts with Laminated Pages2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®624502026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13"Two in One": A Comparative Study and Critical Edition of Two Copies of Le dit des planetes in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 24432
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974088
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Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 24432 (henceforth fr. 24432) is a mid-fourteenth-century codex, likely compiled just to the north of Paris. Comprising 446 leaves, it contains ninety items written by eleven scribes, ranging from both short narrative and long allegorical poetry to vernacular prose translations of ecclesiastical texts.1 Beyond its textual diversity, fr. 24432 is of particular interest owing to its complex material history. It is the work of a single scriptorium yet began life as at least three distinct manuscript units.2 The units were truncated, modified, and finally recompiled into a single codex before the finished product left the workshop.One of the consequences of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmall"Two in One": A Comparative Study and Critical Edition of Two Copies of Le dit des planetes in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 244322025-11-13text/htmlen-US"Two in One": A Comparative Study and Critical Edition of Two Copies of Le dit des planetes in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 244322025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®1215892026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13From Private Libraries in Late Ottoman Palestine to “Abandoned Property”: Reconstructing the Dajānī Family Manuscript Collections in the National Library of Israel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974089
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In October 2023, the National Library of Israel (NLI) moved to its new building next to the Knesset in Jerusalem.1 Along with its own holdings, the library also transferred a collection of printed books and manuscripts that had been appropriated by a committee of librarians of the Jewish National and University Library (JNUL) from Palestinian homes during the 1948 displacement and dispossession of Palestinian Arabs (known as the Nakba).2 These appropriated books and manuscripts are categorized as “abandoned property” based on the Absentees’ Property Law and are under the control of Israel’s custodian of absentee properties.3 The so-called abandoned property collection (AP collection) in today’s online catalog
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallFrom Private Libraries in Late Ottoman Palestine to “Abandoned Property”: Reconstructing the Dajānī Family Manuscript Collections in the National Library of Israel2025-11-13text/htmlen-USFrom Private Libraries in Late Ottoman Palestine to “Abandoned Property”: Reconstructing the Dajānī Family Manuscript Collections in the National Library of Israel2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®2060452026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13What Is the Secret of Secrets? Notes on the Material and Scribal History of UPenn LJS 459
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974090
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The Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār—known in Latin as Secretum secretorum—is a pseudo-Aristotelian compendium purporting to be advice from Aristotle to Alexander the Great on a wide range of topics. Across centuries, it has straddled multiple disciplines: politics (as a mirror for princes on kingship and statecraft), the occult sciences (as a manual of astrology and talismanic lore), divination (with detailed astral tables and prognostication techniques), and pharmacology or herbology (describing the properties of plants, animals, and stones). Modern scholarship recognizes that the Sirr al-Asrār is a composite work compiled in Arabic in the ninth to tenth centuries, drawing on Greek and especially pre-Islamic Persian
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallWhat Is the Secret of Secrets? Notes on the Material and Scribal History of UPenn LJS 4592025-11-13text/htmlen-USWhat Is the Secret of Secrets? Notes on the Material and Scribal History of UPenn LJS 4592025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®610452026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean by Andrew Griebeler (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974091
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This study is dedicated to the representation of plants in books from antiquity to the premodern era in the Mediterranean world. Taking the view that images convey knowledge, Andrew Griebeler adopts the expression "visual knowledge" used by the art historian John Lowden in relation to Byzantine religious images, generally referred to as "icons," hence the title of this book.Based on the assumptions on the one hand that Dioscorides, the first-century CE author of the Greek pharmacological encyclopedia and major medieval illustrated herbal known as De materia medica, had the opportunity to spend his life traveling to observe all plants at all times of the year in all countries, and on the other that the majority of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallBotanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean by Andrew Griebeler (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USBotanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean by Andrew Griebeler (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®124432026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century by Jacqueline M. Burek (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974092
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A spate of recent books has brought overdue attention to the heterogeneity of the medieval historiography of Britain and its integration of other forms of discourse, including Michael Staunton's Historians of Angevin England (Oxford University Press, 2017), Henry Bainton's History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), and this author's Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past (Cornell University Press, 2024). Jacqueline M. Burek's Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century is a substantial and important contribution to this growing field of inquiry. Burek animates the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallLiterary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century by Jacqueline M. Burek (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USLiterary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century by Jacqueline M. Burek (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®137602026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Bible Missals and the Medieval Dominican Liturgy by Innocent Smith (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974093
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The single-volume portable bible is a well-known category of medieval manuscript. Much less known is the bible missal, likewise introduced in the thirteenth century and associated especially, although by no means exclusively, with the mendicant friars. Some forty are currently known to survive, all but one (a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript from Prague) datable to the second quarter or middle of the thirteenth century. Just over half were made in France (and especially Paris), around a third in England, and the remainder in Italy, or perhaps, in one case, Spain. Innocent Smith's monograph takes as its particular focus the thirteen bible missals that are witnesses to the Dominican liturgical tradition, but he
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallBible Missals and the Medieval Dominican Liturgy by Innocent Smith (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USBible Missals and the Medieval Dominican Liturgy by Innocent Smith (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®116802026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Image and the Office of the Dead in Late Medieval Europe: Regular, Repellant, and Redemptive Death by Sarah Schell (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974094
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Thanks to the large numbers in which they survive and the often spectacular artistry displayed within them, the images within books of hours are undoubtedly among the most widely known medieval works of art. Books of hours are also ubiquitous in scholarship on the late Middle Ages, as topics of investigation both in their own right but also in an enormous range of studies on late medieval religious practices and social relations. While some studies focus on single manuscripts, scholars have often mined groups of them to construct accounts of late medieval devotion (Eamon Duffy's 2006 Marking the Hours, Virginia Reinburg's 2012 French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, and Sherry Lindquist's 2024 The Book
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallImage and the Office of the Dead in Late Medieval Europe: Regular, Repellant, and Redemptive Death by Sarah Schell (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USImage and the Office of the Dead in Late Medieval Europe: Regular, Repellant, and Redemptive Death by Sarah Schell (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®125332026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13The Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe by Larisa Grollemond et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974095
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The group of fifteenth-century manuscripts referred to by the title Livre des merveilles du monde, or The Book of the Marvels of the World, sit at a curious intersection between medieval travel writing and medieval encyclopedia. The text is a compilation of excerpts from a French translation of Pierre Bersuire's vast Latin encyclopedia, Reductorium morale, itself a version of Bartholomeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum. Bersuire's text was intended as an aid for sermon composition, an ambitious moralization of encyclopedic knowledge for an ecclesiastical audience; The Book of Marvels strips out most of the moralizing for a catalog of nonstop marvels, ethnographic tidbits, and animal phenomena, accompanied by a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallThe Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe by Larisa Grollemond et al. (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USThe Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe by Larisa Grollemond et al. (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®81542026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13English Birth Girdles: Devotions for Women in "Travell of Childe." by Mary Morse (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974096
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Parchment manuscript birth girdles were widely used by aristocratic and merchant-class women, as well as by some women in less affluent sectors of society, in late medieval England for protection in pregnancy and childbirth. However, only a handful of these Christian devotional artifacts survive today, held in collections in the United Kingdom and United States, spanning the period 1390 to 1500. The low survival rate of girdles arguably testifies to their heavy use, as well as the impact of the Reformation. By examining the eight extant manuscript girdles alongside one another for the first time, Mary Morse traces common features and differences between them, enabling us to appreciate the richness of this genre in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallEnglish Birth Girdles: Devotions for Women in "Travell of Childe." by Mary Morse (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USEnglish Birth Girdles: Devotions for Women in "Travell of Childe." by Mary Morse (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®98782026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books ed. by Matthew T. Kapstein (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974097
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Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books edited by Matthew T. Kapstein provides an excellent overview of the field of Tibetan manuscript studies with a focus on how Tibetan books can be approached through object-oriented methods. It is a tremendous contribution to manuscript and book studies generally and, more specifically, an amazing achievement in the study of Tibetan books. Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books distills much of the work that has been done in the study of Tibetan manuscripts as physical objects over the past several decades, and in many cases adds to that body of work, to provide a map of the field and its main methods and findings to date. The two volumes bring together a vast array of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallTibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books ed. by Matthew T. Kapstein (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USTibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books ed. by Matthew T. Kapstein (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®230902026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13The Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo: A History by Paul M. Love Jr. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974098
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This ingenious study of the Ibāḍī community of Cairo from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries uses manuscripts, manuscript catalogs, and published court documents, supplemented by oral history, to reconstruct a small Muslim community in early modern Cairo. It is a sequel to the author's previous book, Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which used network theory to study Ibāḍī prosopographical literature in order to reconstruct the formation of medieval communities. The Ibāḍīs are a Khārijite Muslim religious community long established in North Africa, Oman, and Zanzibar.The Ibāḍīs gathered in two major geographical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallThe Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo: A History by Paul M. Love Jr. (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USThe Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo: A History by Paul M. Love Jr. (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®87082026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13The Economics of the Manuscript and Rare Book Trade, ca. 1890–1939 ed. by Federico Botana and Laura Cleaver (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974099
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Over the past few decades, the online environment has offered buyers and sellers unprecedented convenient, quick, and widespread access to the rare book and manuscript marketplace. Virtual retail storefronts and auction salesrooms, estate sales outlets, social media-hosted "classified ads" and sales lists, and large virtual aggregators collecting in one place a seemingly limitless supply of product together have democratized the commercial pursuit of historical books and manuscripts, making them easily available to buyers of all types. Executing a simple online search of a few judiciously chosen keywords, a formal title, or an author's name not only can instantaneously reveal what might be immediately available for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallThe Economics of the Manuscript and Rare Book Trade, ca. 1890–1939 ed. by Federico Botana and Laura Cleaver (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USThe Economics of the Manuscript and Rare Book Trade, ca. 1890–1939 ed. by Federico Botana and Laura Cleaver (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®147092026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts by Roberta Mazza (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974100
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In Stolen Fragments, Roberta Mazza delivers a deeply personal account of the murky, often unethical world of papyrology and the manuscript trade. Balancing memoir, academic critique, and investigative narrative, Mazza explores the complex interplay between scholarship, commerce, and crime. Her story begins with a clear declaration: this is not an academic monograph but a candid exploration of a field rife with ethical dilemmas.The prologue introduces the colonial roots of the manuscript trade, highlighting the "dangerous dance" (7) among collectors, dealers, and academics. Mazza critiques the long-standing colonial mindset, where scholars viewed themselves as rescuers of artifacts from the "uncivilized," a practice
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallStolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts by Roberta Mazza (review)2025-11-13text/htmlen-USStolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts by Roberta Mazza (review)2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®126232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13List of Manuscripts Cited
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974101
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Arras, Bibliothèque municipaleMS 146: 329Beirut, American University of Beirut, University LibrariesMS 511: 416 n. 98Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, KupferstichkabinettMS 78 F 2:329Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer KulturbesitzMS Landberg 54: 406 n. 58Boston, Boston Public LibraryMS Pb Med. 32: 309 fig. 1, 329Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de BelgiqueMS IV 1003: 329Cambridge, Cambridge University, Fitzwilliam MuseumMS 176: 329Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Houghton LibraryMS Fr 495: 330MS Typ 41: 329Columbia, MO, University of South Carolina, Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections LibraryEarly MS 148: 321, 330Damascus, al-Majmaʿal-ʿIlmīMS 247: 416 n. 98MS 270: 416 n.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/698/image/coversmallList of Manuscripts Cited2025-11-13text/htmlen-USList of Manuscripts Cited2025-11-132025TWOProject MUSE®210132026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002025-11-13