Webpages tagged with «manuscript studies»

Sumi Shimahara (Sorbonne Université)

Exegetical Material and Minitexts from the VIIIth to the Xth century

Immo Warntjes (Trinity College Dublin)

The Transmission of Scientific Ideas in Early Medieval Europe

Immo Warntjes (Trinity College Dublin)

The Transmission of Scientific Ideas in Early Medieval Europe

Stefan Esders (Freie Universität Berlin)

Oath-Taking and List-keeping in the Carolingian Empire: A Case-study from Mid-Ninth-Century Italy

Yitzhak Hen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Purifying Texts in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Rosamond McKitterick (University of Cambridge)

In Search of Roman Books and the Papal Library in the Early Middle Ages

Carine van Rhjin (Utrecht University), 

The Priest, His Books and the Road to Salvation in the Carolingian Period: a Story of Bean-blessings, Haemmorrhoid-cures and a Touch of Divination

When I was working with Middle English topics as an undergraduate in Helsinki, I learned that there were two main reference works for finding Middle English works in the department library. These were The Index of Middle English Prose (IMEP) and the Index of Middle English Verse (IMEV). Both could be found in a section entitled Britannica at the department library. Both were consulted fairly regularly by a nerdy student, who had progressed from reading too much Tolkien to developing an interest in the medieval parts of the curriculum. Given the similarity of the names of these series, I naturally assumed they were sister publications. It was only after starting to work for IMEP that I realised there are substantial differences between the two.

The library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton was partly destroyed in a tragic library fire in 1731. Fortunately, a printed catalogue published in 1696 survives. What is less fortunate is that it ignores texts such as two of the most celebrated medieval English literary works.

Manuscript collections tend to be named after the people who collected them. But who were people such as Sir Robert Bruce Cotton or Archbishop Matthew Parker? What did antiquaries of the past use their manuscripts for? What were their personal reasons and motives for collecting them?

Welcome! This is the first blog of the EU-funded Marie Skłodowska Curie project Index of Middle English Prose: Digital Cotton Catalogue Project (IMEP DCCP).