Early Manuscripts Research Articles

Trading places with the traitor: Pieter Pourbus (c. 1523-1584) and sixteenth-century Last Supper iconography

Pieter Pourbus’ Last Supper of 1548 (Bruges, Groeningemuseum) contains some unusual iconographic elements that have not yet been extensively analysed: the figure of Judas, rising from the table and making a move to leave the gathering; the devilish creature entering the room from the right; the boy picking up the overturned chair in the foreground. By making use of recent scholarly insights into the employment of the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ in the context of the visual arts (notably by Lynn Jacobs on Early and Renaissance Netherlandish painting and manuscript illumination), this contribution aims to show that these features were meant to enhance the contemporary viewer’s involvement in the depiction. The work seems to invite them to enter, as it were, the painted realm and to take Judas’ abandoned place. An investigation of Last Supper imagery in the Western European visual arts from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance reveals that in some cases the figure of Judas plays a distinctive role in the presentation of the iconography and in the viewer’s devotional and psychological experience of participation in the sacred story. Sometimes, as in a panel from the circle of the Master of the Amsterdam Death of the Virgin (c. 1485-1500) or in the likewise anonymous Antwerp Last Supper (c. 1525-1530), a mortal human has been included in the painting, portrayed in the immediate vicinity of the scene and apparently being ready and prepared to take over Judas’ place once the latter leaves the gathering. Pieter Pourbus’ painting, which probably played a role in the literary-religious context of the Bruges rederijkers’ Chamber of the Holy Spirit, is more inventive in nature. Lacking an intermediary worshipper depicted in the foreground, it transfers this worshipper’s role to the viewer, thus establishing a bridge between the painted realm and the real world.

Rens Krijgsman: <i>Early Chinese Manuscript Collections: Sayings, Memory, Verse, and Knowledge. Studies in the History of Chinese Texts</i>

The book under review is a study of manuscript texts from Warring States and early imperial China (approximately the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE); its specific topic is “manuscript collections,” that is, “single manuscripts containing multiple (originally) distinct texts”. In this book, Rens Krijgsman explores what happened when multiple texts came to be combined on the same material carrier: How were texts selected, organized, and integrated into individual collections? What relationships obtained among these different texts? And how did collections affect reception, including interpretation and perceptions of genre? Cautious not to overstep the evidence, Krijgsman acknowledges that certain basic information about production and use of early manuscript collections is wanting: we do not (and cannot) know who collected the texts and produced the manuscripts, nor can we know who used collections. Wielding impressive command of the technical aspects of early manuscripts and of a broad range of texts, he seeks to extract as much information as possible through a careful yet comprehensive analysis of the material aspects of manuscript collections, their content, and their organization.

Early Arab Cookery Manuscripts

Early Arab Cookery Manuscripts

Tablets (Du) and Passages (Zhang): the Material Conditions for the Formation of Early Short Passage Texts

Abstract Several studies have addressed the question of whether the people of early China wrote with thin bamboo strips held in their hands or whether they wrote with the support of flat desks. However, scholars have not addressed the distinction between jian (bamboo strips) and larger du (wooden tablets) in everyday writing. In early China, tablets would be held in the hand to write, while strips would be laid flat on a writing desk. Tablets were the main medium of everyday writing during the period spanning the pre-Qin and Western and Eastern Han dynasties. In the drafting of various literary texts, taking court records, and taking classroom notes, tablets were the primary writing medium. Among written materials from before the Western Han dynasty, duan zhang (short passages) were the most common style of writing, and most texts were composed of short passages. Among the early Chinese manuscripts that have been unearthed, short passages are also very common. However, almost no one has raised the question of why a documentary system dominated by short passages was formed in the pre-Qin and Western and Eastern Han dynasties period. The number of characters that a writing tablet can accommodate essentially coincides with the number of characters in short passages in early Chinese manuscripts. In view of its wide use, I propose that the formation of the short passage form was potentially influenced by the material writing medium of the tablet.

What Did Jesus Say on the Cross? A Sixteenth-Century Quest after a Biblical Transliteration

ABSTRACT Opening Matthew or Mark’s Gospels in one of the countless modern editions and translations of the Bible, one normally finds that moments before his death Jesus cried, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, and with minor changes in Mark 15:34). But what appears to be an unequivocal rendition of Jesus’s Aramaic vernacular was in fact an undecided question from the early Greek manuscripts up until the second half of the sixteenth century. This article follows the spelling of this transliteration in a number of consecutive editions of the Bible which appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century, thus revealing an often tacit but persistent debate regarding the representation of Jesus’s original language, the authority of the Greek ancient manuscripts, the relations between writing and oral speech, and the legitimacy of translation of the Bible.

تحلیل انتقادی بخش اول زنده‌گی‌نامهٔ مولانا

The biographical account of Mowlana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi, relying on ancient biographical sources and the general principle that the earliest manuscripts are the most authentic, has discredited many biographers who have not taken a critical and scientific approach to it. This research, based on credible sources, adopts a critical perspective on Mowlana's life, events, and experiences. The present study examines the first half of Mowlana’s life, which is divided into two parts: the first part covers Mowlana's birth until his education in jurisprudence and his role in delivering sermons and teaching sessions; the second part focuses on the development of ascetic Sufism with the guidance of Sayed Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq Tirmidhi, which can be seen as a precursor to Mowlana’s later period of passionate mysticism. This research addresses the question: Was Mowlana the mystic, solely product of Shams Tabrizi's mystical teachings, or did the companionship of mentors like Sayed Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq Tirmidhi, along with studying under teachers like Ibn al-Adim and others, as well as the influence of sociological factors such as political, social, geographical, and historical conditions, play an undeniable role in Mowlana's becoming a mystic? The findings indicate that despite the views of some Turkish and Western Rumi scholars, Mowlana’s birthplace was the city of Balkh, not Vakhsh. Additionally, Mowlana's process of spiritual asceticism and mystical path began before his meeting with Shams, guided by Burhan al-Din Muhaqqiq Tirmidhi.

Tables and families. Value, emotions and aesthetics of conviviality in two culinary manuscripts of the Mexican elites of the 19th century

ABSTRACT The attributes and cultural meanings of the table as a place for coexistence around food are sources of relevance for the study of the history and daily life of families from the past. The aim of this article is to analyze the social value given by families to the shared act of consuming food at elite 19th-century Mexican tables. This is done through the documentary study of two early and unpublished family culinary manuscripts, handwritten cookbooks created and in use in the period around the declaration of independence of Mexico in 1821. The identification of technical language and words that express affection in recipes, as well as table-mounting related sections in these manuscripts, allows for the assessment of females’ practice or male’s intention of transmitting culinary knowledge orally and in writing. The importance of seasoning as a cultural identity trait is also evident, as well as the weight given by families to affection and aesthetics when transforming, serving, and sharing food in both intimate and public tables. The capacity of Mexican consumption spaces and their associated practices to communicate, maintain or increase prestige is observed as well. These results could be comparable with other environments and historical contexts with similar characteristics and deserve further study.

Resonet Vox Fidelis: Scribal Colophons and Ecclesiastical Reform in Medieval Iberia

ABSTRACT A remarkable number of early medieval manuscripts produced in the Iberian Peninsula preserve scribal colophons recounting the circumstances of their production and naming their makers. Because of their highly unusual level of detail, these statements offer invaluable evidence to understand the individuals and communities who produced them, as well as the broader religious and cultural environment in which they originated. Focusing on the corpora of the Beatus manuscripts and Iberian Latin Bibles, this article considers patterns of colophon use amongst Christian monastic communities in the north-central and western regions of Iberia between the tenth and the mid-thirteenth century. This article argues that significant changes to colophon composition and use coincide with, and were related to, wider ecclesiastical reform and political transformations in the Peninsula in the late eleventh century, which promoted the abandonment of native ecclesiastical practices and critical shifts in monastic culture.

The Disappearance of Leo Africanus: Rival Repertoires of Historical Scholarship in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract This article is about two twentieth-century attempts to produce an edition of the famous Cosmography and Geography of Africa (1526) by Johannes Leo Africanus. One attempt was French, colonial, collaboratively authored, presentist and successful; the other was Italian, academic, single-authored, historicist and unsuccessful, in that it never appeared. Drawing primarily on unstudied archival material from several countries, I reconstruct the trajectories of each edition and its author(s), in an effort to understand more broadly the different ways in which scholarship was produced inside and outside universities in the period between the end of the First World War and the early 1960s. In other words, this is a comparative study of two ‘repertoires’, to borrow a term recently introduced by Rachel Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli: two institutional praxes embodying different understandings of the world, but also different material resources and codes of personal conduct. But this essay also attempts to say something about the Cosmography itself. One of Leo’s greatest achievements was to reach out beyond his own world to adopt the language, ideas and culture of his Italian readers; this could only be fully grasped after the rediscovery of an early manuscript in 1931, which showed that the supposedly foreign, Italian elements of the book were not added later by others. It was precisely this feature, I argue, that was better reflected by the successful French edition than by the unsuccessful Italian one.

A Handlist of Illustrated Early Solomonic Manuscripts in British Public Collections

As material objects bearing textual and visual information, illustrated Christian manuscripts from the Horn of Africa are among the most valuable sources of data for scholars specializing in this field. This article is the second handlist produced within the framework of the AHRC-DFG project Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270– 1527). It focuses on illustrated Early Solomonic manuscripts housed in public libraries in the United Kingdom. This is the first time that this body of illuminations has been comprehensively analysed. The resulting work sheds new light on the history of book illustration in Early Solomonic Ethiopia and provides insights into the connected histories of the Christian empire of the Ethiopian-Eritrean highlands and the wider Mediterranean world. Moreover, it showcases the movements of manuscripts and the development of collections of Gǝʿǝz manuscripts in Europe.

Causes of Suffering: Unravelling Suśruta and Sāṅkhya

A passage on suffering (duḥkha) in the first section of the Suśruta­saṃhitā (SS), one of the foundational compendia of Āyurveda, elaborates on three kinds of suffering. The very same scheme also occurs in the commentarial literature of Sāṅkhya, one of the oldest and most important philosophical systems of South Asia. In the SS, however, this account leads a solitary life, never referred to in the whole work again, nor in other contemporary medical literature. This article will determine the actual position of this passage within the work and its relation to the Sāṅkhya parallels, and examine other approaches regarding the causation of suffering and disease in the SS. To this end, not only its representation in the vulgate edition of the SS, but also the version appearing in three early Nepalese manuscripts will be considered.

The Dagulf Psalter (Austrian National Library Cod. 1861): A Multi-Analytical Approach to Study Inks, Dyes, and Pigments of this Early Carolingian Manuscript

Abstract The Dagulf Psalter is a precious Carolingian manuscript on calf parchment, dated to 793–795. Its unique and high historical value required a non-invasive, multi-analytical approach to gain insights into the material composition of gold and silver inks, pigments, and dyes used for writing and illuminations. Elemental mapping based on X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), Fibre Optics Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) measurements, and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) gave complementary information on colour media and their brilliant shades. Knowledge of the material composition of inks, dyes, and pigments is of crucial importance not only for art historical research, but also for the preservation of the manuscript, as it is known that among other factors, silver inks and some pigments can lead to deterioration of parchment supports. The purple dye orchil and blue indigo were used for painted backgrounds on the initial folios. Lapis lazuli was found in decorative frames on these folios. Orchil, indigo, and lapis lazuli also appear in decorations of small initials throughout the manuscript. Red lead, ochre, cinnabar, orpiment, and lead white were also found in various painted details. Gold and silver inks of high purity were identified. The proof of chlorine in the silver ink indicates the presence of corrosion products.

Pope’s Scrapes and Ghosts

Abstract This essay describes a previously overlooked feature of Alexander Pope’s early poetic manuscripts: the erasure of words by scraping. It contextualizes this habit within Pope’s broader practice as a maker of manuscript books for circulation among friends and patrons, and recovers for the first time several previously unnoticed variants in major early poems.

Performance Analysis of Handwritten Text Augmentation on Style-Based Dating of Historical Documents

One of the main questions paleographers aim to answer while studying historical manuscripts is when they were produced. Automatized methods provide tools that can aid in a more accurate and objective date estimation. Many of these methods are based on the hypothesis that handwriting styles change over periods. However, the sparse availability of digitized historical manuscripts poses a challenge in obtaining robust systems. The presented research extends previous research that explored the effects of data augmentation by elastic morphing on the dating of historical manuscripts. Linear support vector machines were trained on k-fold cross-validation on textural and grapheme-based features extracted from the Medieval Paleographical Scale, early Aramaic manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and volumes of the French Royal Chancery collection. Results indicate training models with augmented data can improve the performance of historical manuscript dating by 1–3% in cumulative scores, but also diminish it. Data augmentation using elastic morphing can both improve and decrease date prediction of historical manuscripts and should be carefully considered. Moreover, further enhancements are possible by considering models tuned to the features and documents’ scripts.

The Interpretation of the Epiclesis from the Acta Graeca of the Council of Florence (1439) and Its Impact on the Editio Princeps of the Liturgies of St. John Chrysosotom and St. Basil the Great: Nicholas Cabasilas Reinterpreted

In this article we demonstrate that the interpretation of the epiclesis of the Byzantine liturgy, contained in the so-called “descriptive” part of the Acta graeca of the Florence Council (1439), is a reinterpretation of Nicholas Cabasilas's anti-Latin argumentation, presented in his “An Explanation of the Divine Liturgy.” This reinterpretation had as its source the explanation of the epiclesis in the Thomistic spirit offered in the debate by a Dominican cardinal Juan de Torquemada and recorded in the Acta Latina. Further we hypothesize that this new interpretation became the basis of a new method of Catholic proselytism in the following centuries and impacted the editio princeps of the texts of the Liturgies of St. John and St. Basil in 1526, on which subsequent editions of the Venetian euchologies depend. In that edition, we believe, the specific interpolations, which were previously seldom encountered in the early manuscripts in different contexts, have been made to form a correct “intention” of the celebrant according to the sacramentology of the Catholic Church. We are sure that the results of our study could become a paradigm for reconsidering, for instance, the causes and content of the disputes on the moment of consecration that have taken place since the sixteenth century.

Mostri musulmani. La deumanizzazione dell’antagonista miscredente nella storia di Buovo d’Antona dalla tradizione anglonormanna al Bovo-Bukh di Elia Levita

The story of Beuve of Hampton circulated throughout the Late Middle Ages and was printed in a number of incunables issued in Venice and Bologna in the 1480s. One of those inspired Elia Levita to compose his own Old Yiddish version known as the Bovo-Bukh. Though written in Padua in 1507, Levita’s poem was printed in Württemberg in 1541. The Bovo-Bukh became so popular that it continued to be widely read and adapted in several Ashkenazi centres in Europe until the late 18th c entury. T he original story goes b ack to Anglo-Norman Boeuve de Haumtone, whose earliest manuscripts are dated to the end of the 13th century. Its plot features a creature called Escopart. It is a giant freak in the service of the Saracens. Yet, once baptised, it turns into a magical Auxiliary. In the early 15th century, Andrea da Barberino adapted the story in prose as Book IV of his largely fictional chronicle of The Royal House of France. In this text, the unbeliever appears as a werehound named Pulicane, but its narrative function is quite similar to Escopart’s. With its name changed into Pellucano, the character is depicted in the Venetian incunables too. In Levita’s version, it becomes Pelukan. The purpose of this paper is to present the ideological changes in the depiction of the monstrous unbeliever, both in historical terms (the timespan of more than two centuries) and with reference to different axiologies. The strong prejudice of the Anglo-Norman tradition, in which the low-born and the unbelievers were depicted as hell spawn never to be trusted, was replaced by a common-sense approach in the later versions of the story. Finally, in Levita’s poem, the confessional background becomes unimportant in determining personal allegiances.

朴世采의 『東儒師友錄』 사본과 구성에 대한 검토

In this article, we focused on the fact that Park Se-chae's 《Dongyoo saurok》 exists in various forms of manuscripts and compared each manuscript. 《Dongyoo saurok》 was a hagiography of Eastern Confucians compiled by Park Se-chae throughout his life with the purpose of preserving records of the origins of Confucianism in the East. Park Se-chae's munin Lee Se-hwan continued his teacher's work, but was unable to publish it. Afterwards, 《Dongyoo saurok》 was distributed in manuscript form. The extant manuscripts of 《Dongyoo saurok》 can be roughly divided into two types. First, there were early manuscripts of 20 fascicles in 10 volumes compiled by Park Se-chae, and second, there were later manuscripts edited by Lee Se-hwan. 《Dongyoo saurok》 encompassed about 700 Eastern Confucian scholars, from Seol chong and Choi Chi-won of Silla to munin of Yi I and Seong hon of Joseon, and it clearly revealed the relationship between teacher and munin. In particular, Park Se-chae attempted to highlight the status of the two schools as the pinnacle of Eastern Confucianism by including Yi I and Seong hon and their munin as the most recent school of 《Dongyoo saurok》. In 《Dongyoo saurok》, a total of about 200 books were used, along with a variety of sentences for which no bibliographic reference was recorded. Among 《Dongyoo saurok》, the munin of Yi I and Seong hon had missing content due to limitations in individual manuscripts. Through comparison between manuscripts, the munin of the two schools were supplemented, and the munin of Yi I and Seong Hon were reconstituted with 85 and 112 people, respectively.

Gastric Outlet Obstruction from Stomach-Containing Groin Hernias: Case Report and a Systematic Review.

Most abdominopelvic structures can find their way to a groin hernia. However, location, and relative fixation are important for migration. Gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) from a stomach-containing groin hernia (SCOGH) is exceedingly rare. In the current report, we present a 77-year-old man who presented with GOO from SCOGH to our facility. We performed a review of the literature following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) of patients presenting with SCOGH since it was first reported in 1802. Ninety-one cases of SCOGH were identified (85 inguinal and six femoral) over the last two centuries (1802-2023). GOO from SCOGH occurred in 48% of patients in one review and 18% in our systematic analysis. Initial presentation ranged from a completely asymptomatic patient to peritonitis. Management varied from entirely conservative treatment to elective hernia repair to emergent laparotomy. Only one case of laparoscopic management was documented. Twenty-one deaths from SCOGH were reported, with most occurring in early manuscripts (1802-1896 [n = 9] and 1910-1997 [n = 10]). In the recent medical era, outcomes for patients with this rare clinical presentation are satisfactory and treatment ranging from conservative, non-operative management to surgical repair should be tailored towards patients' clinical presentation.

Gianfrancesco Corradino dall’Aglio and Two Manuscripts of Catullus That He Did Not Invent

Abstract A new edition of the poems of Catullus was published in 1738 in Venice by a young scholar named Gianfrancesco Corradino dall’Aglio. The title and preface promised a revolutionary edition that would surpass all its predecessors and restore the authentic text of Catullus with the help of an excellent early manuscript discovered in Rome. Corradino dall’Aglio’s grandiose claims attracted criticism and he soon came to be accused of having invented his manuscript sources. This article shows that the accusations go back to a misunderstanding by Scipione Maffei, who accused the editor in 1749 of having invented a liber Maffei. In fact the references to that manuscript stem from Achilles Statius’ commentary of 1566. More recently, that manuscript has been identified by Berthold Ullman with BAV, Ott. lat. 1829, that is, the famous codex Romanus of Catullus. But from the late eighteenth century onwards, the accusations of fraud directed against Corradino dall’Aglio centered on the Roman manuscript that is mentioned in his title and preface. This article shows that that manuscript cannot be identified with any surviving manuscript of Catullus, but due to several factors there is no reason to believe that it was invented by Corradino dall’Aglio. The article closes with an examination of the editorial practice of the young scholar, who turns out to have been a conservative editor of Catullus: he often advocated the reading of the manuscripts against the conjectures of earlier editors.

Mīrā’s “Earliest” Song and Her Images in History and Hagiography


 
 
 This essay revisits the scholarly consensus about the “earliest” song and early images of Mīrā—the sixteenth-century Rajput noblewoman who is a leading female voice in north Indian devotional (bhakti) movements. I show that what scholars have considered as Mīrā’s oldest extant poem—recorded in the Kartarpur manuscript of 1604, which culminated in the making of the Sikh Guru Granth Sāhib—has a different history of recension in the devotional sects of Rajasthan. In the early seventeenth-century manuscripts of the Dādūpanth, the same poem is not attributed to Mīrā but to Sukhānand, one of the twelve disciples of Rāmānand— the first Guru of the major Rām devotional sect of north India. Various possible explanations for this double attribution will be explored, and the question asked: What do the varied attributions of Mīrā’s “earliest” song tell us about the growth of a Mīrā corpus and the multiple Mīrās as represented in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hagiographies that emerged from her own region?