Barbara Baert

Kathryn M. Rudy

Textiles and Their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages

Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing

Jos Biemans

Klaas van der Hoek

Ed van der Vlist

Middeleeuwse handschriften – met de hand geschreven, versierde en geïllustreerde boeken – blijven fascineren. Hun inhoud, zowel tekst als beeld, biedt een venster met uitzicht op ons verleden. Ook de bestudering van de uiterlijke vorm van het boek brengt ons dichter bij de middeleeuwse makers en gebruikers. De Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Den Haag bezit een van de grootste en belangrijkste verzamelingen middeleeuwse handschriften in Europa. Daaronder bevinden zich vele topstukken uit de geschiedenis van de middeleeuwse literatuur en boekschilderkunst. Ruim 33 jaar lang was dr. Anne S. Korteweg conservator van deze collectie. Opgeleid als kunsthistoricus, ontwikkelde zij zich ook tot boekhistoricus en werd zij een nationaal en internationaal gewaardeerd kenner van het gedecoreerde en geïllustreerde boek uit de Middeleeuwen. Als dank voor haar voortreffelijke werk en haar onmisbare steun bij de bestudering van het middeleeuwse boek schreven dertig collega-conservatoren, literatuur-, boek- en kunsthistorici bij haar afscheid de hier gebundelde artikelen. Hun onderling verschillende, maar altijd boeiende bijdragen gaan over de productie, de decoratie en illustratie, het oorspronkelijke gebruik en het latere verzamelen van middeleeuwse handschriften. De meeste bijdragen gaan vergezeld van reproducties uit de bestudeerde handschriften, waarvan een deel in kleur.

Studies aangeboden aan Anne S. Korteweg bij haar afscheid van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek

Manuscripten en miniaturen

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts considers how indulgences (the remission of time in Purgatory) were used to market certain images and how images helped to spread indulgences in the decades before the Protestant Reformation.

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

"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 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. "--

The Social Lives of Medieval Books

Postcards on Parchment

In this ingenious study, Kathryn Rudy takes the reader on a journey to trace the birth, life and afterlife of a Netherlandish book of hours made in 1500. Image, Knife, and Gluepot painstakingly reconstructs the process by which this manuscript was created and discusses its significance as a text at the forefront of fifteenth-century book production, when the invention of mechanically-produced images led to the creation of new multimedia objects. Rudy then travels to the nineteenth century to examine the phenomenon of manuscript books being pillaged for their prints and drawings: she has diligently tracked down the dismembered parts of this book of hours for the first time. Image, Knife, and Gluepot also documents Rudy’s twenty-first-century research process, as she hunts through archives while grappling with the logistics and occasionally the limits of academic research. This is a timely volume, focusing on questions of materiality at the forefront of medieval and literary studies. Beautifully illustrated throughout, its use of original material and its striking interdisciplinary approach, combining book and art history, make it a significant academic achievement. Image, Knife, and Gluepot is a valuable text for any scholar in the fields of medieval studies, the history of early books and publishing, cultural history or material culture. Written in Rudy’s inimitable style, it will also be rewarding for any student enrolled in a course on manuscript production, as well as non-specialists interested in the afterlives of manuscripts and prints. The Royal Society of Edinburgh has generously contributed to this Open Access publication. Due to the number and quality of the images in this book, we have provided the option of a more expensive hardback edition, printed on the best quality paper available, in order to present the images as clearly and beautifully as possible. We hope this range of options — the freely available PDF, HTML and XML editions; the economically priced EPUB, MOBI and paperback editions; and the more expensively printed hardback — will satisfy everyone. Furthermore the HTML edition allows readers to magnify the images of the manuscripts displayed in the book.

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?

Kathryn M. Rudy

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