Lucas, Peter J. and Lucas, Angela M.
(2014)
The Medieval Manuscripts
at Maynooth - Explorations in the Unknown.
Four Courts Press.
ISBN 978–1–84682–534–7
Abstract
Foreword :
In the middle ages, when the catalogue of a library was a hand-list of its
manuscripts, the entries were generally minimal: Horae for a Book of hours,
or Commentarius in Exodum, a commentary on the Book of exodus. Nothing
more. Thus in a medieval catalogue these two items, which are to be found in
this book, would have taken two lines! so much more can be said. There was
often no information on who wrote the commentary, and certainly it was rarely
stated where and when a manuscript was copied out and decorated. It is therefore
a serious challenge to determine these elements. as the authors explain, there can
also be false trails, as happened with one of ours, where the fifteenth-century
prior stated unambiguously that a fine substantial commentary on psalm 118 was
by Alexander of Hales and later, the binder, taking a lead from this, stamped the
name of the thirteenth-century Franciscan theologian accordingly, in gold on
the spine. It was only through a careful examination of the text that the true
author came to light in the person of englebert of admont. again, it was common
practice to bind up several works together, with only the title of the first on the
binding. so our earliest manuscript from the eleventh century, a record of conciliar
events in the diocese of reims in 991, is tucked away at the end of a volume that
contains eight separate booklets, spans three centuries and begins with a thirteenth century
hand copying a work thought then to be by St Augustine – and with
only his name on the spine. a love of detection work is an essential qualification
for cataloguing medieval manuscripts. Today, there are still medieval manuscripts
in libraries that are one-liners in the catalogue or are not in a catalogue at all.
We have been most fortunate, and grateful, that the authors have gone to great
trouble to describe in detail the medieval manuscripts in Maynooth. It began
with a conversation over a glass of wine at a Christmas party in the 1990s. It came
to light that we had a collection of medieval manuscripts which, tantalizingly,
were almost unknown to scholars as no list had ever been published: they were
hooked, what might they find! the two authors began a very detailed description
of each of our latin manuscripts. The Russell library staff devoted much time
in assisting them in different ways, glad to see the manuscripts in their care
receiving the attention they deserved. We are particularly indebted to Penny
Woods for devoting her expertise and knowledge to the process for many years.
After the authors moved to Cambridge, they were able to maintain progress by
many visits to the library and through transmission of images from the manuscripts.
When the catalogue of our library’s large collection of manuscripts in the Irish
language was published, the contents became widely known thereby and more
easily accessible for consultation. As a result, there were regular visits and enquiries
from our own departments, and from readers elsewhere in Ireland and abroad,
seeking to examine and research the manuscripts in greater detail. Resulting
publications from these researches cite the manuscripts and open their contents
still further to readers. Publication of The Medieval Manuscripts at Maynooth:
explorations in the unknown will bring our holdings to the notice of medievalists
worldwide and each manuscript will become part of the corpus of surviving
recensions of its text.
The contents of each manuscript have been carefully noted and a detailed
physical description given. this will make the book invaluable to students of
codicology, learning how medieval books are put together. The authors also made
use of the library’s ‘unique to the Book’ project which was devised after they
expressed a desire to include manuscript fragments incorporated in the older
printed books. As part of the project’s remit, therefore, books in the printed
collection were recorded where early binders had used cut-up scraps of vellum
manuscripts with fragments of text or sometimes musical notation as part of the
bindings. sixty per cent of the Russell Library Collection had been examined by
the time of writing, beginning with theology, as that area was known to have
many of the earliest bindings. Photographs of these fragments with bibliographical
details of the books have been included in this book to tempt further research
by other scholars. The book explores sixteen medieval latin manuscripts, some of which are
composite – one contains eight separate booklets. They range in date from the
eleventh century to 1529. there are three further illuminated single-leaf items,
each extracted at some stage from a liturgical manuscript or Book of hours.
Because they were decorated, it seems it was a common practice to break up such
manuscripts and sell leaves individually as ‘pictures’. Bibliographical details are
given of nineteen books ranging in date from 1491 to 1694, each containing
scraps of manuscript in its binding. Two of the manuscripts are known to have
belonged to laurence renehan, president of maynooth (1845–57), an energetic
collector of books and manuscripts.
Almost all the manuscripts are very naturally associated with the church.
There are five manuscripts that came from Liège, four of them from the Benedictine
abbey of St Jacques whose collections were auctioned in 1788. The authors were
able to track down others from the same sale, now in other libraries throughout
europe. There is a very finely decorated Benedictional that had belonged to a
fourteenth-century Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence. the authors visited that city
and, with what must have been great excitement, examined a companion pontifical
in the same ornate style. There are three Books of hours, with some deftly painted
miniatures. While the manuscripts are essentially all in latin, there is some French,
italian and dutch present also.
This volume is the culmination of many years of work and we have been
fortunate enough to get an occasional glimpse of the fruits of that labour over
the past decade. The authors previously published two articles in the journal
Scriptorium, on six of the manuscripts (tome lviii, 1 (2004), pp 83–99 on the
five Liège manuscripts; and tome LXIV, 1 (2010), pp 119–26 on the Benedictional
from Aix-en-Provence). The information there has been incorporated and greatly
expanded. Peter Lucas also gave a memorable public lecture on the medieval
manuscripts on 19 February 2008 in the Russell Library.
This is a book whose importance cannot be overstated. It will be an essential
tool for a broad spectrum of scholars and researchers. We are not aware of any
other Irish libraries that have a whole book devoted to such detailed descriptions
of all their medieval latin manuscripts. We are delighted that the medieval
manuscripts held at Maynooth have received the attention they deserve and
congratulate the authors and all who made this possible.
Item Type: |
Book
|
Keywords: |
Medieval; Manuscripts; Maynooth; |
Academic Unit: |
University Library |
Item ID: |
13753 |
Depositing User: |
IR Editor
|
Date Deposited: |
11 Dec 2020 12:45 |
Publisher: |
Four Courts Press |
Refereed: |
Yes |
URI: |
|
Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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