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2015

The digital collection of the Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge (Public Library of Bruges)

As someone who loves manuscripts and medieval culture, you might one day end up in Belgium, exploring Flanders, and you might go to Bruges, which was flourishing in the Middle Ages. The area has produced countless beautiful manuscripts with a very typical and recognizable style of  illuminations now preserved at the Public Library of Bruges. Bruges’ golden days were in the Middle Ages when it was a very prosperous harbor city that attracted many merchants. The historical city centre today is still much like it was in the Middle Ages which makes it an amazing place to visit for every medievalist (or everyone. Period). While you are there, there is also a library you should visit: the Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge (OBB) - Public Library of Bruges and its extensive collection, which you can visit here or here.

We are extremely proud to communicate that the DMMapp has now reached (and surpassed... we are adding a few in the next days!) the 400 links milestone! This means that, thanks to everyone's submissions, we can link to more than 400 libraries, archives, repositories, etc. that are home to digitized medieval manuscripts! You can find the latest additions on our tidy list. Also, here's a short list of the latest additions:

A week in Paradise: the Cassino Summer School

How does one describe an amazing experience that involves history, Italy, pizza and a ton of amazing medieval manuscripts coming from the most famous monastery in Southern Italy? Let's try starting from the beginning: From June the 29th until July the 3rd we had the privilege of attending the first Cassino Summer School, or better, the first International Summer School in Cassino (Italy): Trends in Manuscript Studies - Sources, Issues and Technologies, organized by Liber, Libro e Ricerca, and it was great; we would like to share the experience with you readers.

Ad Astra - The Leiden Aratea and the constellations in the early Middle Ages

One of my biggest passions has always been astronomy: studying the names of the stars, the constellations' myths, the planets' movements. This passion has often met my other big love, medieval manuscripts, in the form of awesome astronomical manuscripts. The combination has always been fascinating to me: "Wow, someone hundreds (or thousands) of years ago was looking at the same stars I am looking at today, and was in love as much as me with the spectacle!" If you have ever had a chance to browse through an astronomical manuscript, you will have certainly noticed one thing: the constellations represented on parchment only seldom resemble the ones we see in the night sky. Sometimes, they look just like random dots. Let's go and give a look at one of such books; an extraordinary one, to be precise, created more than a thousand years ago: the Leiden Aratea.

The Bamberg State Library's Digital Collection

De natura rerum - Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Msc.Nat.1 Today we are going to give a look at the Digital collection of Bamberg State Library. A fantastic collection of manuscripts, fully digitized, in high quality, and available for everyone to browse, explore, and study. Actually, we should be speaking of collections, plural, since two collections are present: The collection "Manuscripts of Henry II" is traced back to the emperor Henry II, who founded the bishopric of Bamberg in 1007; and the new digital collection. Let's see! Bamberger Apokalypse - 14r - The first horseman, Conquest on the White Horse - The text reads: Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. - Revelation 6:1-2˄

New digitized manuscripts from the Vatican Library!

Well, this is the third time here at Sexy Codicology that we are delighted to communicate that the Vatican Library has, once again, digitized and made available a few hundreds new manuscripts! Since we started the DMMmaps project, the Vatican Library has more than doubled the number of digitally available books. Plus, they have reorganized the home page: Where once you could see the endless list of manuscripts available (now 1'500+!), there is now a tidier page showing the collections and then number of digitized books you may find inside. An old problem is still present: it is impossible to know which were the most recently uploaded books; unfortunately there is no RSS, nor is there any specific announcement which tells us what is new. Too bad. I guess it is up to us users to explore!

The Unique Petau - Rothschild Hours

Last year we received a message on our Facebook page; it was a request for help finding the name and information concerning a manuscript. On a late evening we went on a quest to do just that. What we discovered during the adventure was the Petau - Rothschild Hours. An incredible manuscript we had never seen before!Dated between 1500 and 1510, the “Peteau Hours” or “Petau - Rothschild Hours” consists of 44 sheets of vellum of 230 x 140 mm, containing 33 lines per the page on two columns. It is written in humanistic script in brown ink. The headings are written in green, while capital letters are red or blue; there are also some initials which are painted on a golden background. Petau - Rothschild Hours