Medival Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition, Authorship, Use

lntroduction
Medieval manuscript miscellanies are ubiquitous in modern manuscript
collections. They easily form the single largest group of medieval manuscripts
and include texts in all medieval languages. Especially by the end
of the fifteenth century, writing and collecting texts was expanding in
medieval society and the use of paper rather than expensive parchment
meant that more people could hope to possess their own copies of texts
in manuscript form. In this way, this manuscript type is most relevant for
researching the history of everyday Jife. Yet until recently miscellanies
have not attracted much scholarly interest in their own right.l The lack
of scholarly concern may stem from the sheer difficulty of defining them.
One could see them simply as codices that are not easy to categorize as
far as their contents are concerned, as a group of „leftovers“ within
medieval lists of library holdings, as weil as within contemporary
catalogues of medieval manuscripts. As modern scholars have recently
turned their attention to medieval manuscripts as historical artifacts in
their own right, as part of „materialist philology“ and as part of the
flourishing fields of the history of the book and of reading, they have
begun to re-examine the ways that medieval manuscripts were created
and the purposes that they could serve for their owners and their communities.
2
The most important recent volumes on the topic are Edoardo Crisci and Oronzo
Pecere, eds„ II codice misce/laneo. Tipologie e funzioni. Atti de/ Convegno internazionale
Cassino 14-17 maggio 2003, a special issue of Segno e testo: International
Journal of Manuscripts and Their Transmission 2 (2004), Stephen G. Nichols
and Siegfried Wenzel, eds„ The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval
Miscel/any (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996), and R. jansenSieben
and H. van Dijk, eds„ Codices miscellanearum, a special issue of Archives et
bibliotheques de Belgique 60 (1999). Among ongoing projects, there is, for
example, „The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript: Text Collections from a
European Perspective“ (for details see: http://www2.hum.uu.nl/project/medievalmanuscript/
index.htm, accessed january 11, 2013).
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, „Introduction,“ in The Whole Book, 1.
See Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson, „Imagined Histories of the Book:
Current Paradigms and Future Directions,“ in lmagining the Book, ed. Stephen
2 LIJCIE DOLEZALOV A AND KJMBERL Y RIVERS
Such a focus has forced investigators to rethink the role of miscellanies
and to confront the inadequacy of our current definitions. This
relatively recent approach to the study of manuscripts demands that one
considers the relationship of a particular text to the codex in which it is
conveyed, asserting that the way that a text was read and interpreted
could have been affected by the surrounding contents.3 lf one accepts
that the manuscript itself is an object worthy of study and that its
arrangement may affect the way one regards a text, then a miscellany, „a
manuscript into which many things of diverse content have been
copied,“ seems to require a closer look. As Nichols and Wenzel have
noted, that kind of definition can be misleading by implying an arbitrary
principle of organization for contents when in fact the method of
organization could be quite clear; such a definition „does not even
provide an accurate taxonomy for cataloguers, editors, and historians of
bookmaking, Jet alone literary scholars.“4
The question is, how does one make sense of such a manuscript?
How does one define and approach it? In their volume, Nichols and
Wenzel outlined certain areas that require attention:
1. codicological features, such as the physical make-up of a volume,
and especially whether it is composed offascicles;
2. the subject matter of a volume, that is how it is arranged and
whether it possesses thematic unity;
3. intentionality: is there a unifying purpose for the material
collected and if so, what is it, and does it serve a function for a
group ofreaders?5
A number of recent scholars have concentrated on Nichols and Wenzel’s
first point, the codicological issues. The basic terminology has already
been developed (e.g„ by J. Peter Gumbert,6 Marilena Maniaci,7 and Denis
Kelly and John ). Thompson, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 1- 16.
Nichols and Wenzel. „lntroduction,“ 2-3.
Nichols and Wenzel, „Introduction,“ 3.
Nichols and Wenzel, „lntroduction,“ 6.
j. Peter Gumbert, „Codicological Units: Towards a Terminology for the Stratigraphy
of the Non-Homogenous Codex,“ in II codice miscellaneo, 17-42.
Marilena Maniaci, Terminologia de/ libro manoscritto (Rome: Istituto centrale per
la patologia de! libro, 1996).
l’HRODUCTI0:-1 3
MuzerelleS). Gumbert helpfully sums up the research of Maniaci and
Muzerelle in his article and stresses the importance of two terms: the
codicological unit and the composite manuscript. He defines a codicological
unit as „a discrete number of quires, worked in a single operation
and containing a complete text or set of texts (unless the work has
for some reason been broken off in an unfinished state).“9 Gumbert notes
that many volumes are single codicological units, but many others are
not. These he calls composite manuscripts or composites, that is, manuscripts
that contain two or more codicological units. As an example of
this kind of manuscript, he refers to a volume in the Leiden BPL collection,
which boasts an eleventh-century text by Augustine, a thirteenthcentury
copy of Hugh of St. Victor’s De institutione novitiorum, a thirteenth-
century booklet with excerpts from classical works, and a fourteenth-
century Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam by Guillelmus de
Boldensele. They were bound together just after 1400 by the Benedictines
of Saint-Jacques of Lieges, seemingly „in an action to clean up all the
small fry of separate booklets that had been cluttering up the top shelves
of the library.“JO Gumbert’s point is that in such a case, each unit should
be judged on its own and not in relation to each other; he sees the principle
of organization of the units as a quite arbitrary decision of a given
moment.11 His terms will be taken up by a number of the contributors to
this volume, though they may not all agree with his views.
Nichols and Wenzel’s second and third points can be harder to work
out and can also be subject to disagreement: is the subject matter of a
volume clearly arranged and is there a thematic unity? When point two
is murky, one can ask whether there is a unifying purpose for the
material collected and if so, what is it, and does it serve a function for a
group of readers? The problem here, as Derek Pearsall points out in a
rather humorous piece, is that scholars can be a little too ingenious in
finding organization and clarity where it may not really exist.12 He does
Denis Muzerelle, Vocabulaire codicologique. Repertoire methodique des termes
fran~ais relatifs aux manuscrits (Paris: CEIV‘.I, 1985). For further bibliography, see
the contributions of Alessandro Zironi and Eva Nyström in this volume.
Gumbert, „Codicological Units,“ 23.
10 Gumbert, „Codicological Units,“ 26.
11 One should, however, not assume that composite manuscripts consisted only of
„old and foreign booklets.“ Gumbert’s poir:t is that we need to take into account
the makeup of a manuscript before we make judgements about its contents.
12 Derek A. Pearsall, „The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscella4
LlJC!E DOLEZALOVA AND KiMBERL Y RJVERS
make some useful suggestions in this regard. One is that investigators
should separate out anthologies and commonplace books from the truly
miscellaneous volumes. He defines anthologies as volumes whose
contents are arranged around a single purpose and states that „the
purposes that are described in an anthology or anthology-booklet have
to be specific, direct and fairly obvious to the imagined contemporary
reader.“13 Examples of anthologies in Middle English literature would be
collections of extracts from the Confessio Amantis or from The Fall of
Princes. Such a definition would seem to fall under Nichols and Wenzel’s
point two. Sylvia Huot’s piece on collection of meditative texts in a
manuscript designed for a French-speaking queen provides a nice
example ofwhat an anthology looks like.14
Commonplace books, too, can clearly be discerned as a „classic type
of miscellany with a clearly defined aim and little or no unity of contents.“
15 These were collections of extracts organized under headings
known as /oci communes. Pearsall further emphasizes that these volumes
must contain material that could be ofinterest only to the reader himself
or herself-records of life, family records, lists of rents, etc. This
distinction would also be an illustration of Nichols and Wenzel’s point
three, ifthere is a unifying purpose behind the collection.
Many scholars have noted that it is not unusual to find sections of
uniformity of theme or content within otherwise seemingly miscellaneous
manuscripts. When found within random sermon collections, Wenzel
finds the presence of „a partial arrangement by topic or occasion“ to
be „an interesting feature“ but „to pose no problem for the overall taxonomy.“
16 Pearsall calls these phenomena „spasms of planning,“ and speculates
that many manuscripts are comprised of what the compiler had to
hand, perhaps one or two long texts or items on related themes and then
whatever eise was lying around.17
nies and Their Modern Interpreters,“ in lmagining the Book, ed. Kelly Stephen and
John j. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 17-29.
13 Pearsall, „The Whole Book,“ 21.
14 Sylvia Huot, „A Book Made for a Queen: The Shaping of a Late Medieval Anthology
Manuscript (B.N. fr. 24429),“ in The Whole Book, 123-43.
1s Pearsall, „The Whole Book,“ 23-24.
16 Siegfried Wenzel. „Sermon Collections and Their Taxonomy,“ in The Whole Book,
18.
i1 Pearsall, „The Whole Book,“ 25.
lNTRODUCT!O:\ 5
***
The aim of the Prague conference was to bring together scholars who
have been working with medieval manuscripts in order to attempt to
grasp the elusive nature of miscellanies and to conceptualize the ambiguity
either of their material form, or of their content, or-most
frequently-of both. The participants were instructed to consider three
points-composition, authorship, and use, areas aligning closely with
those of Nichols‘ and Wenzel’s volume but which perhaps address the
notion of authorship more directly. Perhaps the most surprising element
was the varying degree of the participants‘ engagement with the actual
materiality of texts: there was a clear tension among participants
stressing the primary role of codicology and palaeography as opposed to
those who saw the core in philology (mainly contextualized textual analysis).
The heated debates proved that the subject is very much alive,
dynamic, and worthwhile.
This volume presents the results of that encounter. Some of the contributions
deal with Latin texts, others with vernacular (German, Dutch,
Italian, French, and English). Some address the subject of the interpretability
of miscellanies as meaningful coherent wholes, others show the
dependence of a particular text’s meaning on the material context in
which it is found. Some authors use primarily philology, others combine
it with codicology, palaeography, or other sciences. Some present complex
tables and introduce new generally applicable criteria, others
simply describe the contents. They also differ in the degree of the medieval
compiler’s authorship and intent that they argue for. Nevertheless,
they all agree that, although one cannot simply claim that there is a unity
in the apparent variety and a clear purpose behind the seeming randomness,
an exploration of texts in their material contexts offers insights into
the manuscripts‘ texts that would not be gained otherwise.
While each contribution is based on a particular case study, it also attempts
to conceptualize and draw more widely applicable conclusions.
Arranging the contents of the volume proved to be somewhat difficult.
An obvious division would have been to concentrate on the three main
areas of our interest: composition, authorship, and use. Yet, these are very
closely tied to each other and actually inseparable. ln fact every study
included here concentrates on composition, be it composing a new text
out of excerpts and other texts (Gioanni, Rivers, Dinkova-Bruun), composing
a whole codex or apart of it by selecting particular texts (Zironi,
Schepers, Nyström, Müller, Dole:Zalova, and also Rivers), placing a text
6 Ll..:ClE DOLEZALOVA AND KJMBERLY RIVERS
into a particular context among other texts (Wenzel, de! Puppo, Watkins),
or devising accompanying images to go with a text (Cohen). After
some debate, the editors decided to begin the volume with the papers
that most directly addressed questions of taxonomy and methodology
for miscellanies; then to include the papers closely linked to authorship
and the influence of accompanying texts in a manuscript on other texts
(what Diana Müller calls the non-autonomy of medieval texts); and
finally to turn to use. Within each section, the essays are arranged
chronologically.
Thus for issues oftaxonomy, Greti Dinkova-Bruun helpfully distinguishes
between a secondary miscellany, that is, „a codex containing
various parts written at different times and by different scribes,
which did not belong together originally but were bound within the
same covers at a later stage, often at random,“ and a primary miscellany,
that is „a compilation created from the very beginning by a person
or a group of people with an overarching idea and purpose.“ DinkovaBruun
concedes that the organizing principle may not always be obvious,
but that „in the so-called ‚primary miscellanies‘ we are not confronted
with the mechanical gathering of texts, which characterizes to such a
high degree the nature of the ’secondary miscellanies,‘ but with a collection
that exhibits clear evidence of intentionality.“ In her presentation of
a particular „primary miscellany,“ she attempts to go beyond simple
subject descriptions and uncover the underlying intentions of the compiler
of this unique selection of texts.
Adam S. Cohen draws on Dinkova-Bruun’s taxonomy to develop
his analysis of Clm. 14731 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich,
seeing it as a perfectly typical miscellany-both a primary and secondary
miscellany. In noting both types of miscellany within the same volume,
Cohen seems to add currency to the notion of „spasms of planning“ that
were discussed above. His overall focus is the relationship between text
and image. Addressing the problem of the motivation in creation of the
codex and its subsequent use, he manages to show that illuminations in a
twelfth-century miscellany from Regensburg that have hitherto seemed
randomly selected are actually connected to the texts. He sets the case
carefully into the historical and cultural contexts, showing its value for
our understanding of the spiritual and intellectual monastic education of
the Regensburg area.
Eva N yströ m analyses a fifteenth-century Greek miscellany, Codex
Upsaliensis Graecus 8. lnspired by the codicological work clone by
Gumbert and Maniaci, she develops a methodology to use with
!NTRODCCTI0:–1 7
miscellanies that takes into consideration both structure and contents.
For structure, she insists on the need to determine whether a given
miscellany is homogeneous or whether or not several codicological units
can be discerned. Are these units connected by paper, layout, script, decorations,
et cetera, or are they unrelated in origin? In terms of content,
one must ask whether the texts-within and also across codicological
units-are related in subject matter, in genre, chronologically, or in other
ways. Nyström draws up a set of parameters to screen her manuscript
for codicological criteria, which includes noting points such as the quire
boundaries, external damage to outer leaves, and different quire construction.
Nyström determines that the book in question was the work of
a professional scribe, and that the book „seems to have functioned as a
personal one-volume library, consisting of texts worthy of keeping for
the sake of their usefulness as model texts, as treasuries, in some cases
for the interesting subject matter and, probably, in other cases for the
sheer joy of reading.“
Another group of papers focuses more directly on questions of authorship
and how the meaning oftexts may be altered in a manuscript by
the presence of other texts. Diana Müller contributes to the general
discussion on non-autonomy of medieval texts, and her example is followed
by Siegfried Wenzel and Kimberly Rivers, each interpreting
particular texts in their material surroundings. The idea that the
meaning of a medieval text is closely dependent on the other texts that
surround it in a codex has already been explored for a number of texts,
especially vernacular ones.1s In her discussion of Gregorius by Hartmann
von Aue within, as she shows, an „educational book for young lay
warnen,“ Müller presents both the „macroscopic“ level of composition of
the codex contents and the „microscopic“ level of comparison of the
individual manuscript witnesses of the text. She employs the concept of
the non-autonomy of texts to suggest six categories of analysis in general
for medieval miscellanies: the idea of a „supertext“ in the manuscript
(such as an educational book for young lay warnen), that is comprised of
a „serial structure“ of individual texts. These are united by a „collaborative
form of production, organized by the compiler. The meaning of the
1a See, e.g„ Fred C. Robinson, „Old English Literature in its Most Immediate
Context,“ in Old English Literature in Context, ed. John D. Niles (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 1980), 11-29; joyce Tally Lionarons, „lntroduction: Manuscript Context
and Materialist Philology,“ in Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context, 1-9.
8 LUCIE DüLEZALOVA AND KlMBERLY RIVERS
text collection is „situationally dependent.“ In addition Müller stresses
the „openness of the reception“ of separate texts within the „supertext“
or of the insights of reading the collection as a whole. Finally, she
suggests that all five characteristics can be condensed into the idea of the
non-autonomy of texts, that the meaning of an individual text may be
revealed through its transmission as a „dependent part of an (intended)
collection.“
Siegfried Wenzel’s study ofthe manuscript transmission of artes
praedicandi surprises by the observation that even the most complete
ars praedicandi never travelled alone. Such texts were usually
accompanied by other theological works and often by other artes
praedicandi. This tendency is even more marked for shorter artes.
Wenzel rejects the possibility that the manuscript compilers were
attempting to create an anthology of artes praedicandi, because these
works generally do not stand alone within the manuscript. Rather, they
travel with other types of works of obvious interest to preachers, such as
concordances to the gospels, lists of the books of the Bible, and the like.
Wenzel sees the explanation for this phenomenon in the notion that
there was not a fixed or uniform technique of preaching to be learned,
but rather that one needed to have access to different types of advice and
examples. His study does indeed teil us more about the role and meaning
of these texts, and thus supports the notion of their non-autonomy.
Various notions of medieval authorship have been hotly debated in
medieval studies,19 and the specific context of medieval miscellanies with
19 See, e.g„ Daniel Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity before Print: Jean Gerson and
the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2009); Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic
Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Scolar Press,
1988); The Cambridge Histo1y of Literary Criticism 2: The Midd/e Ages, ed. Alastair
Minnis and !an Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jan Ziolkowski,
„Cultures of Authority in the Long Twelfth Century,“ Journal of English
and Germanic Philology 108:4 (2009): 421-48; Kevin Dunn, Pretexts of Authority:
The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1994); Elizabeth Andersen, ed., Autor und Autorschaft im Mittelalter:
Kolloquium Meissen 1995 (Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag, 1998); Virginie
Greene, ed., The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006); Sebastian Coxon, The Presentation of Authorship in Medieval
German Narrative Literature 1220- 1290, Oxford Modern Languages and
Literature Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); Stephen Partridge and
Eric Kwakkel, eds., Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Pracl~
TROD UCTIO:\ 9
a number of degrees of authorial intervention and intention behind the
individual compilations presents a special challenge to the current discourse.
While, again, every study in this volume touches on the issue, it is
addressed in detail by Kimberly Rivers. Rivers begins with an analysis
of a small tract Ex johanne de hysdinio de memoria as far as its contents
(extracted from Jean de Hesdin’s Commentary on }ob) and purpose are
concerned. Considering its place within a miscellaneous codex, Melk,
Stiftsbibliothek, 1075, among treatises on the art of memory and on
meditation, she is able to draw general conclusions about the implications
of Benedictine monastic reform.
Lucie Dolefalova, while trying to offer possible reasons for a
scribe copying the same text several times, discusses the library of a curious
wandering monk, Gallus Kemli from St. Gall, and links three of his
miscellaneous codices as subsequent revisions of collections of „useful
material.“ Her paper illustrates the gradually growing role of personal
interests of scribes and compilers in the Later Middle Ages.
Discussions of the use of miscellanies are usually complicated,
because very little explicit evidence on actual manuscript use survives.
The intricacies of exploring this subject are again apparent in all the contributions
but are shown especially weil by Alessandro Zironi, Stephane
Gioanni, Csaba Nemeth, Kees Schepers, Dario de! Puppe, and Elizabeth
Watkins. Alessandro Zironi shows a unity of purpose (and, consequently,
of use as weil) in a Carolingian volume that is miscellaneous by
all other criteria. After carefully delineating the codicological structure of
his manuscript, he demonstrates that it was likely intended as a kind of
schola monachorum, useful for advanced study in rhetoric, Greek, and
astronomical computing. His case is also an especially apt example of the
fruits that the cooperation of philology with codicology and paleography
may bring.
Stephane Gioanni shows the shifting purposes behind compiling
extracts from the Church Fathers as weil as the transformation of the
function and reception of such collections of excerpts. His study reveals
that such collections helped to establish the authority of patristic authors
in the Early Middle Ages. Later, they helped to buttress contemporary
tice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); Slavica Rankovic et al., eds.,
Tradition and the Individual Talent: Modes of Authorship in the Middle Ages (Toronto:
PIMS, 2012). Note also the number of conferences on the topic, e.g„ Medieval
and Early Modem Authorship (Geneva, 2010), or Auctor et auctoritas in latinis
Medii Aevi litteris (Benevento, 2010).
10 LUCIE DOLEZALOV A AND KlMBERLY RJVERS
opinions during theological disputes, such as the Eucharistie Controversy
in the eleventh century. His example is thus focused on high-medieval
text unified in its material aspects (one scribe, one time and place of
origin, the same parchment or paper) but in fact composed from miscelJaneous
extracts.
Like Gioanni, Csaba Nemeth also analyses collections of extracts,
in this case of „theological distinction.“ After he defines this type characteristic
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he examines the purpose
and function of collections of distinctions, which he sees as a special type
ofjlorilegium. He argues that the flexible form of distinctions made them
easy to collect; however, once they had been gathered together, their anonymity
and brevity made the subsequent collections subject to easy
disintegration. Using a particular example, he also shows how these collections
could be used as the basis of biblical commentaries.
Following in the footsteps of The Who/e Book and other studies,20
Kees Schepers seeks a unity of purpose and use in compositions of
especially miscellaneous miscellanies to find coherence in what seems
incoherent at first. He carefully uncovers the possible use of a volum inous
codex containing a wide variety of Middle Dutch devotional texts,
into which was pasted an assortment of drawings. lt would seem to be
the result of a very personal selection, yet, judging from its physical
appearance, it was designed to be used by a community. His analysis
points to an urban group of lay readers impatient with clerics and
wishing to create their own devotional library.
Two final contributions address the changing roles and shifts of
meaning connected to re-positioning (re-contextualization) of texts.
Dario de! Puppo discusses the enduring fascination with Brunetto
Latini’s Tresor during the Renaissance in spite of its outdatedness and
20 A nice example is the study of the miscellany contained in Zurich, Zentralbibliothek,
C.58. lts contents were first carefully described and published by
Jakob Werner (Jakob Werner, Über zwei Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek in
Zürich. Beiträge zur Kunde der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters [Aarau,
1904]). Jean-Yves Tilliette then masterfully analysed the design and purpose of
this miscellany: see his „Le sens et Ja composition du florilege de Zurich
(Zentralbibliothek, ms. C 58). Hypotheses et propositions,“ in Non recedet
memoria eius. Beiträge zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters im Gedenken an
Jakob Werner (1861-1944), ed. Peter Stotz, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des
Mittelalters 28 (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 147-67.
l'<TRODl:CTIO:’\‘ 11
considers the medieval and early modern notions of and attitudes to the
fantastic, science, and philosophy.
Elizabeth Watkins analyzes fragments of codex London, BL,
Cotton Vitellius D.111, which was almost completely burnt. The
composition of this intriguing miscellany, including both French and
English romances, was very probably the result of Sir Robert Cotton’s
later interference, rather than an indication of medieval literary taste.
Thus, Watkins nicely shows the omnipresent dangers of overinterpretation
in analyzing the contents of codices.
Although this volume does not attempt to suggest a line of development
of miscellanies during the Middle Ages, the chronological order of
the studies within the sections makes the gradually growing tendency
towards personal selection within miscellanies apparent. In addition, the
ubiquity of miscellanies especially in the Late Middle Ages becomes
obvious. However, this is surely due to the change of historical, social.
and material conditions ( especially the rise of universities, the popularity
of mendicant orders, and the use of paper instead of parchment)
rather than a development of a „gcnre.“ Since most of the work to date
has taken the form of case studies, it is difficult to decide what is
common and what is unusual. Moreover, an agreed terminology is
lacking, although certain descriptive phrases reappear, such as „personal
interests,“ „useful material,“ or „practical relevance.“ Indeed, the late
medieval miscellanies in particular often seem to have served as
personal encyclopaedias and handbooks, as a source of condensed
knowledge otherwise available only in thick volumes. The combination
of fact and fi.ction, personal devotion and general prescriptions, or
science and entertainment they present is perhaps a characteristic
feature of this type which seems to be centred on selected easily
accessible practical information. At the same time, however, these miscellanies
do not tend tobe exhaustive or fully coherent.
* * *
Each of the studies included in this volume cautiously establishes an argument
for some type of a unity of purpose or use behind a specific miscellany.
lt should, howcver, be kept in mind that such a guiding purpose is
not the rule. As Yincent Gillespie puts it: „Miscellany manuscripts are
frequently governed by an inscrutable intemal logic and even more often by
12 LUCJE DOLEZALOVA A~D KJMBERLY RlVERS
the random acquisition of material.“21 On the other hand, even a „random“
collection is never absolutely random: one can only gather what is accessible
at a certain time and place, which means the choice is certainly not unlimited
and is depcndent on historical, intellectual, and social conditions.
To give a full description of a medieval miscellany, with all codicological,
palaeographical, and philological aspects included, is a very
difficult task, and surely one of the reasons why the catalogues of medieval
manuscripts have become thicker in recent years. Such a description
can be most revealing but the wealth of detail may obfuscate the patterns.
While careful descriptions of medieval codices should surely be
the starting point of any enquiry into miscellanies, more precise typology
should also be developed, i.e., terminology that goes beyond general
vague titles like „pastoral,“ „moral,“ or „spiritual“ miscellany. Notwithstanding
several illuminating studies addressing these issues,22 much
remains tobe done.
The tension between randomness and order, the question of recoverability
of intention, and the problems of identification of meaning form
part of any historical enquiry. This volume stresses the necessity to
study medieval texts in their material context, that is, in the immediate
context in which they were transmitted. Looking at the material form of
texts enables us to see the actual way they „lived“ (were read, copied,
adjusted, and understood) during the Middle Ages, it opens up for us the
everyday experience of textual reception. Thus we move away from
mere philological analysis into actually „touching“ the Middle Ages. This
context may be time-consuming to study and difficult to interpret but is
undeniably relevant and opens up new possibilities of research.
Lucie Dolefalova and Kimberly Rivers
21 Vincent Gillespie, „Vernacular Books ofReligion,“ in Book Production and Publishing
in Britain, 1375-1475, ed. jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 325.
22 E.g., see Daniel Hobbins‘ analysis of a new type of text he calls „late medieval
tract,“ which appeared and quickly spread in the fifteenth century, „The Schoolman
as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the Late Medieval Tract,“ The American
Historical Review 108 (2003): 1308-37; see also Franz Josef Worstbrock’s
article on late medieval condensations of knowledge: „Libri pauperum. Zu Entstehung,
Struktur und Gebrauch einiger mittelalterlicher Buchformen der Wissensliteratur
seit dem 12. Jahrhundert,“ in Der Codex im Gebrauch, ed. Christei
Maier et al., Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 70 (Munich: Fink, 1996), 41-60.
Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies:
Composition, Authorship, Use
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XXXI
Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies:
Composition, Authorship, Use
edited by
Lucie Dolezalova and Kimberly Rivers
Krems 2013
Reviewed by
Holly Johnson
and Farkas Gabor Kiss
Cover design by Petr Dolefal
with the use of MS St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 692
(photo Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen)
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG
VON
CHARLES UNIVERSITY RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
„UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL
INTELLECTUAL T RADITIONS“
AND
„PHENOMENOLOGY AND SEMIOTICS“ (PRVOUK 18)
BOTH AT THE FACULTY OF HUMAN!TlES, CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE
UND DER
CZECH SCIENCE FOUNDATION
WITHIN THE RESEJl.RCH PROJECT
„INTERPRETING AND APPROPRIATING ÜBSCURITY
IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT CULTURE“
(GACR P405/10/P112)
Alle Rechte vorbehalten
– ISBN 978-3-901094-33-.10
Herausgeber: Mediwn Aevum Quotidianurn. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen
Kulrur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, 3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich
zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche Zustimmung jeglicher
Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. Druck: KOPITU Ges. m. b. H., Wiedner
Hauptstraße 8-10, 1050 Wien, Österreich.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
Table of Contents
Lucie Dolefalova and Kimberly Rivers
1. TAXONOMY AND METHODOLOGY
Medieval Miscellanies and the Case of Manuscript British library,
Cotton Titus D.XX
Greti Dinkova-Bruun
The Art of Regensburg Misce/lanies
Adam S. Cohen
looking for the Purpose behind a Multitext Book:
The Miscellany as a Personal „One-Volume library“
Eva Nyström
II. AUTHORSHIP AND NON-AUTONOMY OF TEXTS
Non-auconomous Texts: On a Fifteenth-Century German „Gregorius“ Manuscript
1
14
34
70
[Constance, City Archive, Ms. A 11) 84
Diana Müller
The Appearance of „A rtes praedicandi“ in Medieval Manuscripts 102
Siegfried Wenzel
Creating the Memory of God in a Medieval Miscellany: Melk MS 1075,
Jean de Hesdin (fl. 1350-1370), and late Medieva/ Monastic Reform 112
Kimberly Rivers
Multiple Copying and the lnterpretability of Codex Contents:
„Memory Miscellanies“ Compi/ed by Ga/lus Kemli {1417-1480/1) of St Gall 139
Lucie Dolefalova
III. USE
An Educational Miscel/any in the Carolingian Age: Paris, BNF, Tat 528 168
Alessandro Zironi
The Constitution and Functions of Collections of Patristic Extracts:
The Example of the Eucharistie Controversy (9th-11 th centuries) 182
Stephane Gioanni
Theological Distinctions, Their Col/ections and Their Effects. The Example
ofln Abdiam and In Naum 194
Csaba Nemeth
The Wiesbaden Miscel/any.
The Deli berate Construction of a Haphazard Collection 218
Kees Schepers
An Interpretation of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor in a
Fifteenth-Century Miscel/any Manuscriptnuscripts 240
Dario del Puppo
The Romances of British Library, Cotton Vite/lius D.111 256
Elizabeth Watkins
Contributors 270
Index librorum manuscriptorum 275
General Index 279
Colour Plates 285
Figures
Figure 1: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14731, fol. 78r, Table ofthe
Temple Showbread (Mensa propositionis). See also the colour plate at the end of
the volume.
Figure 2: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14731, fo l. 80r, Noah’s Ark. See
also the colour plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 3: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14731, fo l. 82v-83r, Labyrinth/
Jericho. See also the colour plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 4: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cl m. 14731, fo l. 83v, World map. See
also the colour plate at the end ofthe volume.
Figure 5: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 13002, fo l. 7v, Microcosm. See
also the colour plate at the end ofthe volume.
Figure 6: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cl m. 13105, fol. 83r, Initials from
Honorius, lnevitabile. See also the colour plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 7: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 13074, fol. 81v-82r, Scenes from
the Life of James the Less. See also the colour plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 8: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 14159, fol. 187v, Sons of Noah
diagram. See also the colour piate at the end of the volume.
Figure 9: An example of an easily recognizable break between codicological units,
where the blank Jeaf at the end ofthe preceding unit was later used for personal
annotations by an owner ofthe book (Cod. Ups. Gr. 8, fo l. 87v- 88r).
Figure 10: Compared to Figure 9, the break between the units is here less apparent,
since the space left over at the end ofthe quire was in a second relay utilized by
the scribe himself. The micro-texts added at the end ofthe unit link up with the
preceding narrative and rhetorical texts, whereas the next unit, beginning on f.
104, is devoted to medical texts (Cod . Ups. Gr. 8, fo l. 103v-104r).
Figure 11: Drawing of a cherub. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex
Vindobonensis 12465, fol. 75v. By permission ofthe Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek. See also the colour plate at the end ofthe volume.
Figure 12: Drawing of a seraph. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex
Vindobonensis 12465, fol. 76v. By permission of the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek. See also the colour plate at the end ofthe volume.
Figure 13: Conrad Celtis’s mnemonic alphabet, Melk, Stifstbibliothek, 1075, pp. 878-
79. Image provided by the Hili Museum and Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN.
Figure 14: Alphabetic table to the Rule of St. Benedict: Si9nationes capitulorum
Re9ulae S. Benedicti secundum a/phabetum. Melk, Stifstbibliothek, 1075, pp. 881-
82. Image provided by the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN.
Figure 15: St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 972b, p. 150, Cena nuptialis.
Figure 16: St. Gall, Stiftsbiblioth ek, 293, p. 29, Cena nuptialis.
Figure 17: St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 692, p. 13, Cena nuptialis.
Figure 18: St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 692, cover.
Figure 19: Paris, BNF, lat. 17371, fol. 153 (electronic elaboration).
Figure 20: Paris, BNF, lat. 528, fol. 71v (electronic elaboration).
Figure 21: Paris, BNF, lat. 5340, fol. 146v, 11’h century.
Figure 22: Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004B10, fol. lv: Salvator
Mundi ( copyright Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv). See also the colour plate at the end
of the volume.
Figure 23: Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 2v (copyright
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv). See also the colour plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 24: Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 3r (copyright
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv). See also the colour plate at the end ofthe volume.
Figure 25: Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 24v: The
Adoration ofthe Magi (copyright Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv). See also the colour
plate at the end of the volume.
Figure 26: New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library, 1030, c. 52v.
Figure 27: New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library, 1030, c. 53r.
Figure 28: New Haven, CT, Beinecke Library, 1030, c. 2r.
Acknowledgements
This volume contains selected, peer-reviewed and revised contributions to
an international conference Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies: Composition,
Authorship, Use, which took place at the Charles University in Prague on
August 24-26, 2009. The event and the publication of the book were
supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, a junior research grant to Lucie
Dolefalova from the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech
Republic, no. KJB801970701 („Remembering One’s Bible: Reception of
Summarium Biblie in 13t1′-15th c.“), by two Charles University Research
Development Programs: „University Centre for the Study of Ancient and
Medieval lntellectual Traditions“ and „Phenomeno-logy and Semiotics“
(PRVOUK 18) both undertaken at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles
University in Prague, and by a three-year post-doc grant to Lucie
Dolefalova from the Czech Science Foundation „Interpreting and Appropriating
Obscurity in Medieval Manuscript Culture,“ no. P405/10/Pl12,
carried out at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. lt was
possible to finish editing the book thanks to a Sciex-CRUS fellowship to
Lucie Dolefalova at the „Mittellateinisches Seminar“ at the University of
Zurich. We are also grateful to Petr Dolefal who designed the book cover, as
weil as to Adela Novakova who prepared the index.
Further gratitude goes to the Centre for Medieval Studies, part of the
Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Prague for providing
the rooms for the conference. We are especially ind ebted to all the
contributors for their kind patience du ring the editing process.