Census Of Medieval Research Articles

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Performances: Since January 2022

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Performances: Since January 2022

Collections, Compilations, and Convolutes of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Fragments in North America before ca. 1900

Using evidence drawn from S. de Ricci and W. J. Wilson’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, American auction records, private library catalogues, public exhibition catalogues, and manuscript fragments surviving in American institutional libraries, this article documents nineteenth-century collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscript fragments in North America before ca. 1900. Surprisingly few fragments can be identified, and most of the private collections of them have disappeared. The manuscript constituents are found in multiple private libraries, two universities (New York University and Cornell University), and one Learned Society (Massachusetts Historical Society). The fragment collections reflect the collecting genres documented in England in the same period, including albums of discrete fragments, grangerized books, and individual miniatures or “cuttings” (sometimes framed). A distinction is drawn between undecorated text fragments and illuminated ones, explained by aesthetic and scholarly collecting motivations. An interest in text fragments, often from binding waste, can be documented from the 1880s.

Towards a Universal Catalogue of Early Manuscripts: Seymour de Ricci’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Seymour de Ricci’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, published by the Library of Congress in two volumes in 1935 and 1937 respectively, is a fundamental reference for the history of manuscripts in North American institutions and collections. This article explores the history of the Census’ production, in particular the challenges that De Ricci faced in completing the monumental task of creating a union catalogue of manuscripts before the dawn of the digital age.

Minutes of the 2015 Annual Meeting

Minutes of the 2015 Annual Meeting

A Newly Discovered Witness of Fishacre's Sentences-Commentary: University of Chicago MS 156

A manuscript in the collection of the University of Chicago, which is labeled in the catalogue as Promptuarium homileticum, has turned out on closer inspection to be a partial copy of Richard Fishacre's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the first such commentary composed at Oxford. Bearing the eighteenth-century bookplate of Edward Browne and the 1792 bookplate of the executors of the estate of Thomas Eyre, the manuscript, now catalogued as University of Chicago MS 156, was purchased from Percy Dobell and Son by Shirley Farr, class of 1904, and donated to the university in 1926. The source of the title Promptuarium homileticum can be traced back at least as far as the dealer's listing, which was subsequently tipped into the manuscript and copied uncritically by Seymour De Ricci in his 1935 Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada.

A Remnant of Gislenian Anthology

This article discusses the indentification of the constituent parts of a manuscript volume held in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, McLennan Library. It has the shelf mark Ricci 118, and the only published reference to it is in Seymour de Ricci, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 11, 2214. The description there is sufficiently brief so as to be misleading when it is not erroneous.

Pioneer Index of Manuscripts: A Review ArticleIndex of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. 1: 1450-1625. First Vol. of Projected 5-Vol. Set. Peter Beal

For first seven hundred years of our literature, commented Arundell Esdaile in 1926, the sources are all manuscript; and written book is as much book as most standardised offspring of steam press [1, p. 14]. He went on to refer to possibility of producing a comprehensive catalogue-or perhaps summary list, with references to full catalogues-of all English literary manuscripts in accessible [1, p. 16]. Much has been done in last fifty years to supplement manuscript catalogs of individual libraries. Seymour de Ricci's Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in United States and Canada [2] surveys holdings by location. The continuing National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections [3] reports holdings of American libraries under specific topical headings. N. R. Ker's Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon [4] and his Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries [5] cover early literature; part 2 of E. A. Lowe's Codices latini antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts prior to Ninth Century [6] provides for literary documents in single language; and Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of English Poetry, 1500-1800, in Manuscripts of Bodleian Library, Oxford, indexes manuscripts of single library for single literary form [7]. The compilation American Literary Manuscripts, issued in 1960 and again in 1972 by Modern Language Association of America [8, 9], locates papers in American collections that relate to American authors.

Some Melismas for Office Responsories

1 For a list of liturgical sources of Sens, see Henri Villetard, Office de Saint Savinien et de Saint Potentien, Bibliotheque musicologique, Vol. V (Paris, 1956), pp. 91-114. Villetard did not know of the Walters Breviary, but there seems little reason to doubt that it originated in Sens, as is said by Seymour de Ricci in Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York, 1935), 1, 777, No. I30. The Walters Breviary is small in size and beautifully executed; it contains only the feasts of the Temporale, except for a few saints' days after Christmas. I am profoundly indebted to Miss Dorothy Miner of the Walters Art Gallery for graciously permitting me to examine this manuscript on several occasions, and to Albert and Mary Ellen Meyer, who first called my attention to it. The dates given here for the two other manuscripts are taken from Jacques Chailley, Un Document nouveau sur la danse ecclesiastique, Acta musicologica, XXI (1949), 20, 22; Villetard says they are both of the I3th century. Lat. 1028 is described by Victor Leroquais in Les briviaires manuscrits des bibliotheques publiques de France (Paris, 1934), III, 3-5. Leroquais's catalogue has been relied on for dates and places of origin of other breviaries referred to in this study.

Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript in the United States and Canada. W. H. Bond , C. U. Faye

<i>Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript in the United States and Canada</i>. W. H. Bond , C. U. Faye

The Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada.

The Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada.

Greek Uncial Fragments in the Library of Congress in Washington

There is preserved in the Rare Book Department of the Library of Congress in Washington a sheet of parchment comprising two folia of a medieval manuscript, each covered on both sides with Greek text in uncial script. Seymour de Ricci, in his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (N. Y. 1935, I, 211), lists this unique and precious fragment and describes it as follows:‘Library of Congress, ms. no. 60: Sermons, in Greek. Vel. (VIIIth c.), 2 ff. only (27 × 20 cm.), the 2 outer of a quire, 36 lines to a page, written in sloping uncials….Obtained in 1929 … from Casella of Naples (Ms. Ac. 4189, 10, nn. 1–6); certainly of South-Italian origin.’The catalogue does not undertake to identify the author of the text.

Greek Uncial Fragments in the Library of Congress in Washington

There is preserved in the Rare Book Department of the Library of Congress in Washington a sheet of parchment comprising two folia of a medieval manuscript, each covered on both sides with Greek text in uncial script. Seymour de Ricci, in his Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (N. Y. 1935, I, 211), lists this unique and precious fragment and describes it as follows:‘Library of Congress, ms. no. 60: Sermons, in Greek. Vel. (VIIIth c.), 2 ff. only (27 × 20 cm.), the 2 outer of a quire, 36 lines to a page, written in sloping uncials….Obtained in 1929 … from Casella of Naples (Ms. Ac. 4189, 10, nn. 1–6); certainly of South-Italian origin.’The catalogue does not undertake to identify the author of the text.

An Unpublished Record of Michelangelo

In view of the rarity of unpublished autographs of Michelangelo, it would seem of interest to bring to light a document in the collection of Roger W. Barrett, Evanston, Ill.1 It is a single folio with notes in Michelangelo's hand on both sides (See plate). Doubtless it once belonged to the Buonarroti in Florence, who sold it as well as other autographs of the artist now preserved chiefly in the British Museum.2 In the second half of the nineteenth century the folio entered the collection of Luigi Arrigoni in Milan.3 It was briefly mentioned in the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada by Seymour de Ricci and W. J. Wilson as “autograph memoranda of expenses for marble.”4 The document does not, however, refer to expenses for the purchase of marble but for the transportation of it. In the great recent book by Maurenbrecher, who intended to publish all the existing records, this page of the Barrett collection is lacking.

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Seymour de Ricci, W. J. Wilson

<i>Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada</i>. Seymour de Ricci, W. J. Wilson

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. By SEYMOUR DE RICCI, with the assistance of W. J. WILSON Three volumes. [The American Council of Learned Societies.] (New York: H. W. Wilson Company. 1935; 1937; 1940. Pp. xxiii, 1102; xviii, 1103-2343; vi, 222. $6.50; $7.50; $3.00.)

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. By SEYMOUR DE RICCI, with the assistance of W. J. WILSON Three volumes. [The American Council of Learned Societies.] (New York: H. W. Wilson Company. 1935; 1937; 1940. Pp. xxiii, 1102; xviii, 1103-2343; vi, 222. $6.50; $7.50; $3.00.)

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada