One of my most beautiful experiences as an MA student in the Netherlands was field trip I did with my colleagues to the deep south of the Netherlands. In an abbey we went through three different libraries searching for fragments in early modern books. What I ended up finding was a full-page pastedown of a manuscript written in Italy in the 13th century. What a beauty it was, still today I think about it...
Schafe für die Ewigkeit - Handschriften und ihre Herstellung, or: Sheep for Eternity - Manuscripts and their Production, is the name given to the 2013 / 2014 St. Gallen Abbey Library exhibition, running from 1 December, 2013 to November 9, 2014. A couple of weeks ago I became the lucky winner of the exhibition's catalog.
As you might have read on our Facebook Page, Twitter, Tumblr, or basically anywhere our social media empire stretches, the Sexy Codicology team was at the Digital Humanities Benelux Conference (or DH Benelux) 2014: "A conference that showcases the state of the art in digital humanities, the most recent development in humanities research.", organized by the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands and the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek). Useless to say, we are deeply honored and incredibly proud to have had the possibility to present the DMMmaps project to various experts and like-minded people from around the world. If you couldn't be there, but you are interested to know what I have said during my part of the speech at the conference, I have posted it all on Medium. In this I explain how the DMMmaps project works, what services we use, how we make them interact. I also explained the issues and the limits that the project faces (economical and technical ones). Please feel free to comment here or directly on Medium. Any suggestion on how to improve the project is very welcome!
A quick update from the DMMmaps project: we have added 3 digital libraries in Estonia.
Today we posted on the Sexy Codicology Tumblr a post concerning a manuscript coming from the Tallinn city archives, Estonia. After a little investigation, I noticed that these archives were not in the DMMmaps database. I followed the link in the original post by booksnbuildings and found that there were two other institutions that had digitized manuscripts available online.
You can now find the Eesti Ajaloomuuseum - Estonian History Museum, the Estonian Historical Archives, and the Tallinn City Archives directly on our map, Together with other 324 digital libraries.
These three institutions deliver together 1217 digital objects. Most are deeds, testaments, and concessions. Some books can be found for sure, but I haven't had the time to explore the whole collection.
Nonetheless, these are extremely interesting documents that are very well digitized. No doubt that they will be useful to many researchers! I'll leave you with some of the examples of what you can find. Have fun exploring!
Well, a week later the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies uploaded 5 new videos to their YouTube channel. In one of these there is something I have never seen before: manuscript collages. Yes, you read it right: a manuscript collage. It appears that in the 18th century, or slightly earlier, someone had the idea of getting a book of hours (use of Rome?), tear it to pieces and make something completely different out of it: two squares composed of the miniatures from the manuscript in the middle (Jesus blessing and teaching his followers, but also show the annunciation, the second coming of Christ, possibly the calling of Peter and Andrew, a figure wearing a mitre praying to an angel, and possibly the moneylenders in the temple, as mentioned in the video description); the marginal decoration on the sides of these, and in the middle of the four borders, parts of texts from the manuscript: excerpts from the New Testament gospels, a calendar of feast days, and homilies of Pope Gregory I. The result is, in my opinion, beautiful.
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies has recently uploaded a series of videos in which some of their manuscripts are presented. I believe this is a fantastic initiative for many reasons. First of all, it is a great way to promote their manuscripts and their treasures; I never had the pleasure to visit their website and their digitized manuscripts, but when their videos popped-out on the Sexy Codicology YouTube feed I discovered a wealth of digitized books. OK, the videos aren't the most refined, and maybe the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies' YouTube channel could use some stylistic retouches here and there, but they are informative; they do exactly what they are meant to do: orientate the viewer (a researcher, an enthusiast) by describing the book. Some information about the binding, the history, the quality of the manuscript; the miniatures and illuminations if there are any. Plus an invitation to visit their website where the digitized version of the manuscript just described is (a good "marketing" move, according to me.) No protesting because in the Schoenberg Institute videos they are not using gloves, please! Manuscripts were build to last. They are rarely taken out of the box nowadays; if you have washed your hands, dried them well, and are very careful with what you handle, they will last thousands of years more. I truly hope that many more institutions start making similar videos. There are only good things to come from them: more visits to the digitized collections, possible extra income from the monetizing of the videos, giving the impression of being able to bridge an ancient medium (a manuscript) with contemporary media. Well done Schoenberg Institute!
Yesterday we wrote about a beautiful manuscript on the Sexy Codicology blog. Today, we give a look at the repository where we found that pearl: the Digital Library of Spain (access it here). As understandable, the Digital Library of Spain is the digital library of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. It aims to give free access to thousands of digitized documents: books from the 15th to the 19th century, manuscripts, drawings, engravings, pamphlets, posters, photographs, maps, atlases, music scores, historic newspapers and magazines and audio recordings. It was created in 2008 and back then the Digital Library of Spain had around 10,000 works which were selected by experts in different subjects as a cross-section of the bibliographic and documentary heritage of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. Today it comprises more than 134,000 works on all topics in all documentary forms, freely accessible from anywhere in the world.
For the series: "Some manuscripts are more interesting than others", we give you: Beatus de Liébana : Códice de Fernando I y Dña. Sancha, call number: VITR/14/2 from the National Library of Spain.
Emperor Frederick I in a manuscript from Hochschul und Landesbibliothek Fulda (100 D 11) Today we will be looking at the digitized medieval manuscripts from the Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek Fulda (University and State Library of Fulda). You can access them here.
It has been a busy Easter here at Sexy Codicology. You have certainly seen our posts on our Facebook page (almost 4'000 Likes! Wohoo!), we also wanted to create a short video with miniatures from various books of hours representing the death and resurrection of Christ but, alas, time was to short and we didn't manage. Nonetheless, we saw fantastic illuminated manuscripts this week, especially from the Getty Museum's website (we reviewed it here). So, as a late Easter present, we have made a selection of the most beautiful scenes from the Getty Museum's digitized medieval manuscripts. All the images in this post are from the Devotional Books collection and cover most of the events celebrated during the Holy Week. As you may notice, most of the miniatures below come from Book of Hours from the 15th / 16th century. I truly recommend looking at Ms. Ludwig IX 19. The miniatures in this manuscript are particularly evocative and present all the events that are narrated in the Bible.