Dr. Ilana Tahan explores the illumination of Jewish biblical manuscripts, looking at the religious grounds for artistic expression in the Bible, and the differences in styles between manuscripts produced in the Near East and those in Europe
Making the medieval book
Dr. Kathleen Doyle introduces the characteristics and evolution of medieval biblical illumination, discussing the various functions of images in biblical texts, together with the use of different materials, calligraphic embellishments and stylistic influences.
Biblical illumination
How did scribes prepare their pages for writing?
Making Manuscripts: The Page
Expressive, emotional, and energetic, the Utrecht Psalter is not what you expect in a book written 1200 years ago.
The Utrecht Psalter and its influence
One of the oldest surviving bibles was made in England but has clear visual ties to traditions from the ancient Mediterranean.
Codex Amiatinus, the oldest complete Latin Bible
From scraping skin and cutting quills to painting and bookbinding, making a manuscript is a long, complex process.
Making manuscripts
Angular or rounded? Medieval script reveals not only what the author wrote, but when and where the book was made.
An introduction to medieval scripts
Go on, judge a book by its sound. The thinner the parchment, the higher the pitch—and the price.
Listening to the medieval book
This 1000-year-old math primer is nothing fancy, but it took months for a scribe to make.
A medieval textbook
Animal skin lent a durable writing surface to medieval scribes. When tanned and tooled, it also protected books.
Medieval books in leather (and other materials)
Is that a body, or a book? Arms, hands, feet, skulls—all can feature in the anatomy of a medieval manuscript.
Clasps: hugging a medieval book
Medieval libraries hid a forest in their shelves—wood boards, covered and clasped, protected precious parchment.
Binding the book
Decorators drew inspiration from design books, from enlarged capitals to elaborate figures in the margins.
Medieval supermodels
From penwork and gilding to one-letter stories, decorators offered a range of services to dazzle medieval readers.
Decorating the book
Like modern marketers, medieval scribes advertised on posters and even inserted “spam” pages into texts.
Making books for profit in medieval times
Caroline Minuscule, the main script of the early Middle Ages, was replaced by Gothic—and later, “Times Roman.”
Words, words, words: medieval handwriting
Long before ruled notebooks hit the shelves, medieval writers lined, laid out, and folded their own parchment.
The work of the scribe
Prime cuts, or strips? Scribes weren’t butchers, but they did cut skin and pick out different grades of parchment.
Skins and scraps
Not all medieval cows went to heaven—some ended up in books. Hair follicles and holes offer clues to a page’s past.
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