Medieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims’ badges, sworn oaths, and small painte... more abstractMedieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims’ badges, sworn oaths, and small painted images. Many of these last items have been classified as manuscript illumination, but Kathryn M. Rudy argues that these pictures should be called, instead, parchment paintings, similar to postcards. In a delightful study identifying this group of images for the first time, Rudy delineates how these objects functioned apart from the books in which they were kept. Whereas manuscript illuminations were designed to provide a visual narrative to accompany a book’s text, parchment paintings offered a kind of autonomous currency for exchange between individuals—people who longed for saturated color in a gray world of wood, stone, and earth. These small, colorful pictures offered a brilliant reprieve, and Rudy shows how these intriguing and previously unfamiliar images were traded and cherished, shedding light into the everyday life and relationships of those in the medieval Low Countries.

Material Culture Studies, Rare Books and Manuscripts, and Codicology of medieval manuscripts

‘Walking in Christ’s footsteps’ was a devotional ideal in the late Middle Ages. However, few nuns and religious women had the freedom or the funding to take the journey in the flesh. Instead they invented and adjusted... more abstract‘Walking in Christ’s footsteps’ was a devotional ideal in the late Middle Ages. However, few nuns and religious women had the freedom or the funding to take the journey in the flesh. Instead they invented and adjusted devotional exercises to visit the sites virtually. These exercises, largely based on real pilgrims’ accounts, made use of images and objects that helped the beholder to imagine walking alongside Christ during his torturous march to Calvary. Some provided scripts whereby votaries could animate paintings and sculptures. Others required the nun to imagine her convent as a miniature model of Jerusalem. This volume is grounded in more than a dozen texts from manuscripts written by medieval nuns and religious women, which appear here transcribed and translated for the first time, and a multiplicity of (occasionally three-dimensional) images. They attest to the ubiquity and variety of virtual pilgrimages among religious women and help to reveal the functions of certain late medieval devotional images.

History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage, and Anthropology of Christianity

More Info: Turnhout: Brepols, 2011

More Info: ed. by Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert, Medieval Church Studies 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

More Info: ed. Kathryn M. Rudy and Gerda C. Huisman, special issue of Quaerendo 39 (2009).

More Info: (Amsterdam: De Buitenkant / Den Haag: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2007).

More Info: ed. by Jos Biemans, Klaas van der Hoek, Kathryn Rudy, and Ed van der Vlist (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2007).

Early users of medieval books of hours and prayer books left signs of their reading in the form of fingerprints in the margins. The darkness of their fingerprints correlates to the intensity of their use and handling.... more abstractEarly users of medieval books of hours and prayer books left signs of their reading in the form of fingerprints in the margins. The darkness of their fingerprints correlates to the intensity of their use and handling. A densitometer -- a machine that measures the darkness of a reflecting surface -- can reveal which texts a reader favored. This article introduces a new technique, densitometry, to measure a reader's response to various texts in a prayer book.

Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, and Codicology of medieval manuscripts

The transition from manuscript to print technologies was not smooth. This was due in part to the barriers of early printed books, which were not only labour-intensive to produce and had high start-up costs (the press,... more abstractThe transition from manuscript to print technologies was not smooth. This was due in part to the barriers of early printed books, which were not only labour-intensive to produce and had high start-up costs (the press, the type, the expertise), but they also threatened tradition, which in monasteries might include book-copying as an element of ora et labora. But another hindrance to print was its plainness; though it was efficient, the printing press eliminated much of what people sought from their books. As opposed to sumptuous manuscripts on parchment that accepted gold and colours and were laid out for decoration as a means of finding texts, printing was austere, monochrome, and on paper that came from an inert vegetal source rather than a once-animated beast. Trading all of these features for cheapness was a hard sell. Moreover, the very cheapness of books threatened the handmade uniqueness that made the manuscript not just an assemblage of text, but a reflection of its owner. If books can be made in multiple, than everyone has the same book. This could never be said of a manuscript, which was defined by its variability. The result was an era of hybrids, books produced to take advantage of the printing press’ efficiency while preserving the value—material and social—of the manuscript.

Manuscripts and Early Printed Books and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

Email me for a copy. In the late fifteenth century a community of religious sisters in the eastern part of the northern Netherlands theatrically interpreted the Legend of St. Barbara, as recorded in a manuscript th... more abstractEmail me for a copy. In the late fifteenth century a community of religious sisters in the eastern part of the northern Netherlands theatrically interpreted the Legend of St. Barbara, as recorded in a manuscript they wrote and used. “Stage directions” in the text make it clear that the reader was to lie down, stand up, kneel, prostrate herself, and bend her neck for an imagined executioner, while serving as both actor and audience in a Passion play built for one. She – for in this case the readers were exclusively she – undergoes these spiritual calisthenics in order to imitate St. Barbara’s experience of martyrdom, which itself was shaped after the Passion of Christ. Through this re-enactment Barbara’s legend was transformed into a piece of drama, which demanded that its reader physically interact with the story, possibly assisted by narrative images of the saint.

Medieval History, Manuscript Studies, and Medieval Theater and Performance

A short note about one of the most spectacular manuscripts known to have been written and illuminated by women.

Medieval Studies, Medieval Women, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

This essay considers medieval sewing in light of Austin’s speech-act theory. Analysing manuscripts, relics, indulgences, and even a bishop’s mitre, the article argues that stitching was a way to enact, or intensify, ... more abstractThis essay considers medieval sewing in light of Austin’s speech-act theory. Analysing manuscripts, relics, indulgences, and even a bishop’s mitre, the article argues that stitching was a way to enact, or intensify, the ritual purpose of objects, whether that was ceremonial, devotional, or authoritative. Whereas a speech act functions by its utterance, stitches act by forming visible and often ceremonious attachments between materials in order to aggrandise, embellish, assert and layer authority, or swathe an object in textiles as if it were a relic.

Manuscripts (Medieval Studies) and Austin

History of the Book, Printing History, and Jerusalem

Rare Books and Manuscripts, Manuscript Studies, and 15th Century Netherlandish Art

Publisher: books.google.com

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011

When the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) at The Hague purchased a Book of Hours in 1994 (MS 77 L 58), it was thought to have come from Arnhem. This article disentangles some earlier misconceptions about the ma... more abstractWhen the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) at The Hague purchased a Book of Hours in 1994 (MS 77 L 58), it was thought to have come from Arnhem. This article disentangles some earlier misconceptions about the manuscript, including its relationship to Arnhem, and attributes the manuscript instead to a convent of female Franciscan tertiaries in Zutphen. The Book of Hours is related stylistically to two other surviving manuscripts. The tertiaries in Zutphen developed a new medium for the Eucharistic imagery of penance in the form of a Lamb of God medallion, which appears in all three manuscripts.

Medieval Studies, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Illumination (Manuscripts, Books), and 15th Century Netherlandish Art

More Info: special issue of Quaerendo 41 dedicated to Prof. Dr. Jos Hermans, ed. by Jos Biemans and Anne Korteweg (2011), pp. 360-372.

Obtaining access both to the content in medieval manuscripts, as well as to images that scholars can publish to support the creation of new knowledge about the past, often involves significant hurdles. Libraries, muse... more abstractObtaining access both to the content in medieval manuscripts, as well as to images that scholars can publish to support the creation of new knowledge about the past, often involves significant hurdles. Libraries, museums, and archives do not always facilitate the process of making available images suitable for publication. While every manuscript repository has its own policy, the author sees some encouraging trends that foster scholarship as well as some troublesome practices that slow it down. This article compares the access to information in medieval manuscripts and access to images of those manuscripts at three university libraries: Leiden University Library in The Netherlands, Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in the United States. Institutions that have discovery tools on the Web, that provide access to new photography and to existing images, that provide outlets for the publication of new research, and that waive fees for the publication of images in scholarly journals and book encourage the production of new knowledge and the circulation of ideas.

Digital Humanities, Open Access, Manuscript Studies, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

More Info: Visual Resources, 27:4, 345-359.

http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2011articles/articles.html Christianity as practised in the late Middle Ages demanded physical rituals. These rituals encompassed great public displays, such as processions around town walls and ... more abstracthttp://www.bl.uk/eblj/2011articles/articles.html Christianity as practised in the late Middle Ages demanded physical rituals. These rituals encompassed great public displays, such as processions around town walls and through churches, led by clergy dressed in ceremonial garb; smaller public displays, such as a priest’s performance of Mass; and actions by the laity, including small private rituals involving a votary with his book and perhaps an image. While rituals can be difficult to reconstruct, some instructions that prescribe rituals have survived, which specify actions, utterances, and props. Occasionally signs of wear on ritual objects themselves reveal how they were used. Manuscripts in particular often hold signs of wear, including dirt, fingerprints, smudges, and needle holes, which index some of the physical rituals they have witnessed. This article considers some of the physical rituals performed by lay votaries in the context of their private devotion, as recuperated through instructions (including directive rubrics within prayer books) and through the physical evidence within certain well-worn manuscripts. Many of these rituals and patterns of use reveal that votaries treated their manuscripts as a proxy for the body of Christ, with which they were encouraged to cultivate a close physical relationship.http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2011articles/articles.html

History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, and Manuscript Studies

More Info: Proceedings from the Harley Conference, British Library, 29-30 June 2009, eBLJ (2011), article 5.

Medieval Studies, Pilgrimage, and Manuscript Studies

More Info: A short, non-academic version of an article forthcoming with Oxford UP.

Written for the occasion of an excavation of the Convent of St Ursula in Delft, this article discusses a previously unpublished manuscript from that convent: Cambridge, Trinity College, B.I.46. This convent had one of... more abstractWritten for the occasion of an excavation of the Convent of St Ursula in Delft, this article discusses a previously unpublished manuscript from that convent: Cambridge, Trinity College, B.I.46. This convent had one of the most productive manuscript-making centers in the Netherlands. B.I.46 was probably made for a convent sister. It contains an added leaf with a prayer to the "personal angel," which shows a woman in Franciscan garb kneeling wither her angel behind her.

Medieval Studies, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Archaeology, and Early Netherlandish Painting

More Info: published in: Delf: Cultuurhistorisch magazine voor Delft 12, 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 24-27.

Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, and Art Conservation

More Info: A popular account of the densitometer research written for the City of London Archives.

Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, and Early Netherlandish Painting

More Info: Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis 16 (2009), pp. 199-216. I have put the images in colour here (but send me a message if you have difficulty downloading them: file size 45 mb): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4466883/RudyTrivulzio-GhentAltar.pdf

Medieval Studies, Children's and Young Adult Literature, and Manuscript Studies

Publisher: JSTOR

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006

Publication Name: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, and Early Netherlandish Painting

More Info: Manuscripten en miniaturen: Studies aangeboden aan Anne S. Korteweg bij haar afscheid van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ed. Jos Biemans, Klaas van der Hoek, Kathryn Rudy, and Ed van der Vlist (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2007), pp. 311-336.

Medieval Studies, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, and Pilgrimage

Art History, Pilgrimage, and Manuscripts

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2000

Publication Name: Studies in Iconography

Publisher: lirias.kuleuven.be

Publication Name: status: published

Publisher: monasticmatrix.org

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2000

Publication Name: Ons geestelijk erf

Publisher: cat.inist.fr

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2009

Publication Name: Quærendo

Medieval Studies, Manuscript Studies, 16th Century Netherlandish Art, and 15th Century Netherlandish Art

Publisher: JSTOR

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007

Publication Name: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

Art History, Visual Culture, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

Publisher: cat.inist.fr

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010

Art History, Medieval Studies, and Pilgrimage

Publisher: JSTOR

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2000

Publication Name: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte

Publisher: Columbia University

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2001

Review of an exhibition catalogue about early printing. The exhibition took place at the Louvre in 2014.

Rare Books and Manuscripts, Printing History, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Crusades, and Jerusalem

Print Culture and 17th Century Netherlandish Art

Publisher: JSTOR

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2004

Publication Name: Renaissance Quarterly

Publisher: muse.jhu.edu

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: Renaissance Quarterly

Medieval Art, Pilgrimage, Reliquaries

Publisher: muse.jhu.edu

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: Renaissance Quarterly

Art History, Material culture of religion, Visual Culture, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

Art History, Material culture of religion, Visual Culture, and Manuscripts (Medieval Studies)

More Info: Review of As-Vijvers, Anne Margreet W. From the Hand of the Master: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Antwerp: Ludion, 2009, translated by Kathryn M. Rudy.

Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage, and Pilgrimage and Art

More Info: in Renaissance Quarterly (2006), pp. 246-248.

Medieval Studies and Sculpture

Publication Date: Dec 2012