The Scriptorium And Library At Monte Cassino 1058 1105

In all the history of hand-written books, one of the most distinctive and handsome scripts is that of the abbey of Monte Cassino. This study examines for the first time in detail the development of this script during the Abbey's greatest period of wealth and influence, under Desiderius (abbot 1058-1087) and his successor Oderisius (abbot 1087-1105). The characteristic Cassinese hand was established long before, but in this period it was transformed into what is today considered its classic form. The present study rests on a fresh examination of many details of the Beneventan (South Italian) script in aspects incompletely studied before. It aims to provide a new history of Monte Cassino as a writing centre and to offer a context for many unique or valuable texts manuscripts that it processed.

This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidence gathered from across the medieval Latin West, this book is the first to investigate systematically how and why abbots and abbesses exercised their official authority and resources to lay the foundations on which their communities' historiographical traditions were built by themselves and others. It showcases them as prolific authors, patrons, commissioners, project managers, and facilitators of historical narratives who not only regularly put pen to parchment personally, but also, and perhaps more importantly, enabled others inside and outside their communities by granting them the resources and licence to write. Revealing the intrinsic relationship between abbatial authority and the writing of history in the Middle Ages with unprecedented clarity, Benjamin Pohl urges us to revisit and revise our understanding of monastic historiography, its processes, and its protagonists in ways that require some radical rethinking of the medieval historian's craft in communal and institutional contexts.

This book presents the most recent findings of twenty of the foremost European and North American researchers into the music of the Middle Ages. The chronological scope of their topics is wide, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. Wide too is the range of the subject matter: included are essays on ecclesiastical chant, early and late (and on the earliest and latest of its supernumerary tropes, monophonic and polyphonic); on the innovative and seminal polyphony of Notre-Dame de Paris, and the Latin poetry associated with the great cathedral; on the liturgy of Paris, Rome and Milan; on musical theory; on the emotional reception of music near the end of the medieval period and the emergence of modern sensibilities; even on methods of encoding the melodies that survive from the Middle Ages, encoding that makes it practical to apply computer-assisted analysis to their vast number. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to those engaged by music and the liturgy, active researchers and students. All the papers are carefully and extensively documented by references to medieval sources.

A volume that introduces new sources and offers fresh perspectives on a key era of transition, this book is of value to art historians and historians alike. From the dissolution of the Carolingian empire to the onset of the so-called 12th-century Renaissance, the transformative 10th–11th centuries witnessed the production of a significant number of illuminated manuscripts from present-day France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, alongside the better-known works from Anglo-Saxon England and the Holy Roman Empire. While the hybrid styles evident in book painting reflect the movement and re-organization of people and codices, many of the manuscripts also display a highly creative engagement with the art of the past. Likewise, their handling of subject matter—whether common or new for book illumination—attests to vibrant artistic energy and innovation. On the basis of rarely studied scientific, religious, and literary manuscripts, the contributions in this volume address a range of issues, including the engagement of 10th–11th century bookmakers with their Carolingian and Antique legacies, the interwoven geographies of book production, and matters of modern politics and historiography that have shaped the study of this complex period. .

This volume offers an introduction, critical edition, and fresh English translation of the Muratorian Fragment. In addition to addressing questions of authorship, date, provenance, and sources, Clare K. Rothschild carefully analyzes the text's language, composition, genre, and possible functions with reference to a breathtaking range of scholarly positions and findings from the eighteenth century to the present. She also investigates its position within the eclectic eighth-century Muratorian Codex (Ambr. I 101 sup.). A line-by-line philological commentary draws attention to literary, philosophical, and religious aspects of the individual traditions represented. This study should be of interest to scholars of the New Testament and early Christian literature, as well as experts on the emergence of the canon and historians of the Latin Medieval West.

The Protean Ass provides the most comprehensive account (in any language) of the reception of The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) of Apuleius, the only work of Latin prose fiction worthy of the name of 'novel' to survive intact from the ancient world. Apuleius' second-century account of the curious young man who is changed into a donkey following an affair with a witch's slave-girl, and undergoes a series of adventures (involving robbery, adultery, buggery, and bestiality) before a divine vision transforms him into a disciple of the goddess Isis, has delighted, perplexed, and inspired readers as diverse as St Augustine, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Robert H. F. Carver traces readers' responses to the novel from the third to the seventeenth centuries in North Africa, Italy, France, Germany, and England

"Tracing what the library has meant since its beginning, examining how its significance has shifted, and pondering its importance in the twenty-first century, significant contributors--including the librarian of the Congress and the former executive director of the HathiTrust--present a cultural history of the library"--Dust jacket flap.