As more and more digital manuscript libraries come on line, I find myself doing more and more work with period (8th through 13th century) manuscripts. I used and mentioned a number of manuscripts and manuscript images in Honey of Souls because I felt it was necessary to give readers a sense of the feel of medieval psalters, commentaries, and other books. Thanks to a smart classroom, I used at least one (and usually more) manuscript images every class period in my Church History class last semester. However, as your typical New Testament PhD full-time IT guy who teaches early/medieval church history and writes on liturgical spirituality—I haven’t actually had a lot of formal training in codicology…
I’ve picked up quite a bit along the way, of course, from NT text criticism classes and Old English courses, but I feel a deficiency there. I do have on the To Read Next section of my bookshelf a nice line-up:
- Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminators by Christopher De Hamel
- Introduction to Manuscript Studies by Clemens & Graham (can’t wait to plow through this one!)
- A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 by Michelle Brown
- Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms by Michelle Brown
However, since I’m trying to finish up Psalming Christ and prep for a Spring semester seminar, it’ll be a while before I get around to them.
But—I’ve just found on Medieval Twitter what looks to be a great new resource to keep my eye on: Teaching the Codex: Pedagogical Approaches to Palaeography and Codicology
I haven’t explored it in depth yet, but it looks like a helpful hands-on way for people with the interest to learn how to use digital libraries and their manuscripts in a better and more sophisticated way!