Another Coptic Letter from the Dioscorus Archive in the Collection of the Ghent University Library?

Reviewed by: The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript, Ghent, University Library MS 92 by Albert Derolez Mary Franklin-Brown Albert Derolez. The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript, Ghent, University Library MS 92. Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History 76 Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2015 Iv + 355 pp., 22 black-and-white illustrations, 98 color illustrations. €125. ISBN 978-1-909400-22-1. The Liber Floridus (now Ghent, University Library MS 92) has inspired powerful fascination in the Middle Ages and our own day. Compiled by Lambert of Saint-Omer, canon of the Church of Our Lady in the Flemish city, in the period 1111–21, this encyclopedia is preeminent for its remarkable illustrations, some of which are masterpieces of Romanesque drawing. But it is also unique for its proliferation of maps and circular diagrams and the considerable space it accords to poetry and literary narrative. The latter may surprise, given Lambert’s own limitations as a Latinist, and that is just one mystery among many. What was the codex’s original structure, before illustrations and even whole quires disappeared? The question is complicated by the fact that Lambert’s organizational logic is nothing like what we find in antique or scholastic encyclopedias, and he himself altered its structure more than once in the course of his work. Finally, what was Lambert’s relation to the great abbey of Saint-Bertin in the same town? Why would a canon at a neighboring church not have access to essential encyclopedic texts, present in the abbey’s library, until he had already worked on his own encyclopedia for years? Why, if any of the monks did take interest in his work, would he be so poorly supplied with writing materials that he would be obliged to compile an encyclopedia on unevenly [End Page 569] sized pieces of parchment and disused leaves from other books—and to make of his first draft his only fair copy? No scholar working today knows the book as well or has come as close to answering these questions as Albert Derolez, who was for many years the curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Ghent University Library. Derolez’s 1968 edition (semi-diplomatic, semi-facsimile), and his dissertation, published in Dutch in 1978 and in English in 1998 (The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-Omer, Corpus Christianorum, Autographa Medii Aevi, 4 [Turnhout: Brepols]), have until now provided the best access to the Liber Floridus. But the copies of the in-folio edition have themselves become rare books, and Derolez’s dissertation demanded from readers a high degree of prior familiarity with codicology before they could follow his argument about Lambert’s stages of compilation and revision. Fortunately, the new millennium has brought three great contributions to Liber Floridus scholarship and teaching. The Ghent University Library has digitized the entire codex and made it available online, while an attractive affiliated site offers helpful introductory blurbs in Dutch, French, and English on the genre, the author, and the historical and intellectual context (www.liberfloridus.be/index_eng.html). The library has also made the 1968 edition available for download. Now, Derolez has published a new study, The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus, based on his dissertation but updated to reflect the latest scholarship and expanded with new notes providing the incipit of every text, 120 photographic plates, and extensive tables and indices. Derolez has worked very hard to make this new book accessible. It begins with a selective bibliography. This is followed by two pages of “Preliminary Notes and Definitions,” a primer on quire structure and codicological terminology that also shows readers how to understand the diagrams he will use throughout the book, thus preparing students and general readers for what will follow. The introduction is divided into ten sections, beginning with a survey of scholarship and proceeding to treat Lambert, the autograph manuscript, its parchment, quire structure, layout, script, and illumination, and the text, its sources, structure, and table of contents. All this is dispatched in...

KAMIEL G. VAN ACKER La grande histoire de Tristram qu' on appelle le Bret Etude sur la provenance et la datation du ms. 6 de la Bibliothèque de l'Université de Gand L'etudc des anciens catalogues de Saint-Bavon a Gand nous invite a nous de- mander ou sc trouvent actuellement les manuscrits de la riche collection de l' ancienne abbaye et dc la cathedrale gantoise. Evidemment on les suppose conserves dans la collection dc manuscrits de la Bibliotheque de 1'Universite de Gand, puisque celle-ci a ete form6c cn 1797 sous 1'occupation fran?alse. On sait en effet que lcs bibliotheques des institutions

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Mmmonk stands for Medieval monastic manuscripts – open – network – knowledge. It is a collaborative project between Bruges Public Library, Ghent University Library, the Major Seminary Ten Duinen in Bruges and the Diocese of Ghent. The project has been awarded grants from the Flemish Government (Department of Culture, Youth and Media). The project aims to provide digital access to the c. 760 extant medieval manuscripts of the abbeys of Ten Duinen, Ter Doest, Saint Peter’s and Saint Bavo’s. The images and metadata of the manuscripts will be gathered and presented on the mmmonk platform in a sustainable and open manner using the International Image Interoperability Framework (iiif). The platform will gather existing knowledge, present educational content, and encourage further research on the monastic manuscripts. mmmonk will contribute to the development and implementation of iiif for complex book materials.

Edition of Coptic letter from the collection of the Ghent University Library (P. Gand. Inv. 47). The letter is addressed to a certain Dioscorus, most probably Dioscorus of Aphrodite. The fragmentary status of the letter does not allow a full understanding of the text, but the formulary clearly shows a monastic context, in all likelihood the monastery of Apa Apollos founded by Dioscorus’ father in 537 CE. Since the senders address Dioscorus as their ‘brother’, it is likely that the letter belongs to the little-known last period of Dioscorus’ life, when he retired to his father’s monastery around 573 CE.

In 1517, the Collegium Trilingue was established in Leuven. Founded under the will of Hieronymus Busleyden, this institute embodied Erasmus’ humanist program of studying ancient texts, including the Bible, in their source languages. From its beginning, the college greatly contributed to the progress of learning in Western Europe, especially during the sixteenth century. Many renowned scholars, including Gerardus Mercator and Andreas Vesalius, studied at the Trilingue. Despite the undeniable impact of this institute, little is known about its actual teaching practices. This state of affairs is partly due to the scarcity of source material, but at least as much to the negligence of present-day scholars. The present paper aims to partly remedy this research lacuna by tentatively reconstructing the study program and didactic method of Rutger Rescius (c. 1495-1545), the first professor of Greek at the Collegium Trilingue. It principally aims to do so by zooming in on an exceptional document, thus far largely overlooked: the notes taken by a student of the Trilingue, a certain Johannes Aegidius, from October 1543 onward. They are written down in a copy of the 1535 edition of Homer’s Odyssey and related works, printed by Rescius himself in cooperation with Bartholomaeus Gravius (d. 1578). The copy is now preserved at Ghent University Library. The following questions will take center stage in analyzing this document:

Analytical pigment investigation can reveal important information for art-historians. The use of two micro-analytical techniques, micro Raman-spectroscopy and total reflection X-ray fluorescence, is shown to be very successful. These techniques give complementary information: Raman spectroscopy allows the identification of the different materials the pigment grains consist of, and total reflection X-ray fluorescence gives the average elemental composition of the sample. The latter is helpful to distinguish between the different palettes used by different artists or workshops. Samples can be taken with cotton wool swabs (Q-tips), which cause no visible alteration to the artefact. Such a sample allows both Raman-spectroscopy and total reflection X-ray fluorescence to be applied using less than 1 μg of material. This approach is illustrated with the pigment investigation of seven late-medieval Mercatellis manuscripts, kept in the Ghent University Library.

The Middle Dutch verse romance Segheliin van Iherusalem has survived in the following known extant copies: a manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS. Germ. fol. 922, fos. 71r.-122v., on the basis of the watermarks dated by the present author c. 1412-15); an incunabulum (Ghent University Library, Res. 1405 (between 1483 and 1486)); five post-incunabula, all printed in Antwerp (1511-40) and now in The Hague (2 copies), Leiden, Vienna and Paris; and a mid fifteenth-century excerpt (Brussels, Royal Library, Hs. II 116, fos. 2v.-5r.). These sources, all rhyming texts, are described here, and the excerpt is given in full. The gap still facing students of the Segheliin has thus been filled. Both manuscript and incunabulum are incomplete at the end. The text in the sixteenth-century editions differs widely from that of the manuscript version. For its part the incunabulum departs from the text of the post-incunabula with a version (perhaps closer to the original?) which in very many places tends towards the manuscript version, being something of a watershed between the two traditions. Preliminary investigation of the linguistic levels in the text, carried out on the basis of changes in the rhyme words, points to a Flemish and probably more specifically west or south-west Flemish base level (possibly the area where Ingvaonic and Brabantish meet (the region of the Dender), above which there is at least a Brabantish level. This fact, combined with the possibility of an interpretation of the Segheliin to some extent in terms of the context of the medieval veneration of the Cross and the Blood of Christ, more than suggests that the story is of Flemish origin.

Since research output is expanded from published work to research data and communication, guidance and support should follow this evolution. Ghent University Library (Belgium) conducted in 2015 a “Skills@UGent” survey comprising questions considering information literacy skills to identify actual needs. This paper focuses on research planning, deontology and visibility queried in a group of postdoctoral researchers of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. They encounter specific difficulties with respecting ethical codes of conduct, knowing how and where to store data, setting up a data management plan, and knowing and applying new insights concerning data management. Furthermore, they also encounter problems with different aspects of visibility. The results of this survey gave the Knowledge Center a better insight of the information literacy self-efficacy of postdoctoral researchers which lead to several initiatives such as customized lunch seminars and a more user-oriented website.

Mmmonk was a collaborative project between the Public Library of Bruges, Ghent University Library, Diocese of Ghent and Major Seminary Ten Duinen in Bruges. The aim was to improve digital access to some 820 medieval manuscripts from four abbeys in Ghent and Bruges. This included digitising manuscripts, creating metadata and collecting manifests from external collections. For this, Mmmonk used IIIF, a digital innovation for more sustainable and efficient management and use of digital images. Moreover, Mmmonk contributed to the development of IIIF by experimenting with metadata aggregation and the visualisation of annotations on medieval manuscripts. On 17 February 2022, Mmmonk organised a closing event at - KBR focusing on manuscripts and IIIF. In the morning, team members presented the Mmmonk project. After lunch, there was the 8th session of IIIF Fridays, with examples of IIIF implementation in data management and research. All presentations were recorded and are available on Mmmonk.be.

On 7 January 1888, La nature announced a new technique for the indoor photography of theatrical spectacles. Combining electric light with magnesium flash powder and flexible film, the method reduced exposure times to less than a second, thus enabling the photography of performances inside the auditorium. A welcome by-product of this innovation was the arrival of illustrated registers, with which venues could keep track of their growing collections of scenery. One such inventory, the six-volume Décors du théâtre – ville de Gand at the Ghent University Library, records the stage decorations used by Ghent’s francophone opera house, the Grand Théâtre, in the years 1900–1912.