Mariken Teeuwen

Irene van Renswoude

Annotations in modern books are a phenomenon that often causes disapproval: we are not supposed to draw, doodle, underline, or highlight in our books. In many medieval manuscripts, however, the pages are filled with annotations around the text and in-between the lines. In some cases, a 'white space' around the text is even laid out to contain extra text, pricked and ruled for the purpose. Just as footnotes are an approved and standard part of the modern academic book, so the flyleaves, margins, and interlinear spaces of many medieval manuscripts are an invitation to add extra text. This volume focuses on annotation in the early medieval period. In treating manuscripts as mirrors of the medieval minds who created them - reflecting their interests, their choices, their practices - the essays explore a number of key topics. Are there certain genres in which the making of annotations seems to be more appropriate or common than in others? Are there genres in which annotating is 'not done'? Are there certain monastic centres in which annotating practices flourish, and from which they spread? The volume thus investigates whether early medieval annotators used specific techniques, perhaps identifiable with their scribal communities or schools. It explores what annotators actually sought to accomplish with their annotations, and how the techniques of annotating developed over time and per region.

Practices of Reading and Writing

The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages

The Latin vocabulary of intellectual life in the Middle Ages has been the focus of the CIVICIMA-series: nine volumes of conference-proceedings, monographs and collective works. The series has proved convincingly that analyses of the verbal expressions of medieval intellectual life and their precise meanings is a worthwhile and rewarding task, which sharpens and deepens our understanding of education and learning in the medieval world. With this tenth volume the series has been brought to a conclusion. It serves as a handbook, a practical tool for finding information and material about a considerable number of key terms, which have been classified in four categories of technical vocabulary--terms that developed specialized meanings in the context of medieval education and learning. The first category consists of the vocabulary of schools and universities (for instance, schola, magister, universitas, etc.); the second the vocabulary of the book and book production (for instance, armarium, pecia, scriptorium, etc.); the third treats the vocabulary of teaching-methods, instruments and products of intellectual life (for instance, concordantia, disputatio, glossa, etc.); the fourth the names of the disciplines, their teachers and students (for instance, artes liberales, canonista, decretista, theologia, etc.). Terms from these four categories are treated, either individually or in groups coherent with respect to content, in short and uniform articles. Their medieval meanings are described, together with their origins, their classical meanings, their semantic development, and the historical or regional differences in meaning.

Mariken Teeuwen

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