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Giulio Menna

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

A new e-codices experience!

Yesterday we showed you how the Utrecht Library is brilliantly promoting a manuscript of great importance in the Netherlands. Today we are bringing your attention to how Switzerland is skillfully managing the digitization of all its collections on e-codices. You are probably aware of e-codices already:

e-codices offers free online access to medieval and early modern manuscripts from public and church-owned collections as well as from numerous private collections.

The Utrecht Psalter or, "How to promote digitized manuscripts"

What do you do with a super-awesome manuscript like the Utrecht Psalter? You make a super-awesome website to go with it. Not only: you make super-awesome YouTube videos to promote it, and catchy animations so that also casual visitors will be intrigued by what is being shown; plus you make sure that you spread the word on the right social media channels to gain visibility. This is exactly what the University of Utrecht (Universiteit Utrecht) has been doing. A message appeared recently on our Facebook page:

The Utrecht Psalter, currently owned by the Utrecht University Library, has just been nominated for UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. In 2015, UNESCO will decide whether the medieval manuscript will be given a place in this documentary heritage register. Dating back to the ninth century, the Utrecht Psalter is one of the most valuable manuscripts held in a Dutch collection. Check the new website (with complete digitized version of the psalter): www.utrechtpsalter.nl

On "Quill" - Extended edition

As you surely know, "Quill" was recently launched. Quill is a website a new website for medieval manuscript lovers put together by Dr. Erik Kwakkel, who had the idea, took care of the texts and made sure it'd be a success, and I, who had the pleasure of taking care of the photos. Erik put together a fantastic blog post about it, to which I contributed too. I ended up writing a bit too much for it, so it had to be reduced a bit in length in the end. Quill Books before print

Quill: a new website for medieval manuscript lovers!

A super-cool website about medieval manuscripts has gone online today!

"This is to alert you to a new product of the "Turning Over a New Leaf” project: a website (in English) devoted to the medieval manuscript, aimed at a non-expert audience: https://quill.leiden.edu/. Some sixty web pages take you through the different production stages of the manuscript, and highlight important facets of the book before print. Short explanatory texts are paired with beautiful photographs, produced by Giulio Menna, professional photographer and co-producer of the website.

Quill went live today and was two years in the making. It was produced with funding of De Jonge Akademie, logistical support of Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), and with generous help of Leiden University Library, Special Collections."

Bodley 264: Two Worlds and Two Views

This morning a woke up to an email from my father. It was an article from the digital edition of his favorite Italian newspaper. The title of the article is: 'Il sovrano che Unì Est ed Ovest', or: The Sovereign that United East and West. Unfortunately the newspaper's app shares the article, but excludes the author's name from it, but it's dated 20/07/14. The article carefully explains how the three books contained in Oxford Bodley 264 (and a facsimile created byIstituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana) are connected. Bodley 264 Opening page, folio 1r

31 New Digitized Manuscripts from e-Codices!

e-Codices, the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland, has added 31 new digitized medieval manuscripts to their website. Obviously, we had to go and investigate. The new digitized manuscripts range from the 9th to the 18th century. Difficult to choose which ones to highlight since they are all wonderful to our eyes. Let's start from the one they have highlighted themselves.