Describing Miscellanies in Late Medieval English Wills

Abstract

abstract: Miscellanies are usually identified through absence: the absence of some unifying codicological, thematic, linguistic, or other cohering principle. After identifying this absence, books can be termed miscellanies—or commonplace books, collections, compilations, household books, and so forth. Such varying terminology highlights the challenges of identifying miscellanies today. Situating the miscellany in its documentary context, this essay examines hundreds of English wills written between 1400 and 1499 to evaluate descriptive trends employed by book owners of the late Middle Ages that clarify how they conceptualized miscellanies. For testators and executors, easy identification of all books, including miscellanies, was necessary to facilitate the distribution of bequests. Consequently, patterns established across wills illuminate aspects of miscellanies perceived as facilitating accessible identification. Moreover, in the role of the will as a public document offering testators one final opportunity to shape their reputation, descriptions of miscellanies also conveyed aspects of testators' identities that they prized or that emphasized their social status, such as aesthetic values, literacy skills, erudition, and more. As this essay argues, examining descriptions of miscellanies in wills reveals not only identification practices for miscellanies among book owners and readers in late medieval England but also roles played by miscellanies as culturally freighted objects.