Early Manuscripts Research Articles

Seeking Margaret Baker: Identifying the Author of Three Manuscript Receipt Books

This paper uses recipe contributors named in three early modern manuscript receipt books (Sloane MS 2485, Sloane MS 2486 and Folger V.a 619) to identify the author as Margaret Baker, daughter of Richard Baker the Chronicler (c.1568-1645) and Margaret Mainwaring (died c.1652). A familial connection is also made to Wellcome MS 212. The Margaret Baker example is used to argue for the necessity of identifying a broader range of receipt, or recipe, book writers in order to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of recipe book production, and their social context. In the case of Margaret Baker, additional information about her family background, marital status and age at the time of writing the books both shed light on the recipes included in the book, and raise new questions about her culinary and medical practices.

A Long View of Change in Caring for Historic House Interiors: from Housekeeping to Preventive Conservation, Collections Care and Beyond

ABSTRACT The care of historic interiors in the U.K. and abroad has evolved over many centuries, from historic housekeeping documented in early manuscripts, to preventive conservation, collections care and management widely practised in museums today. This paper takes a long view of this evolution, considering the causes and instigators of change in approaches taken by public institutions and private owners of historic collections. The influence of increasing professionalisation of the heritage sector and of statutory concern for the care of items of national interest is reviewed, and practice compared in the private and public spheres, to consider the future for conservation housekeeping.

Review: Descendants of Aztec Pictography: The Cultural Encyclopedias of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, by Elizabeth Hill Boone

Review: <i>Descendants of Aztec Pictography: The Cultural Encyclopedias of Sixteenth-Century Mexico</i>, by Elizabeth Hill Boone

Early Sexist Textual Variants, and Claims That Prisca, Junia, and Julia Were Men

There are numerous textual variants in early NT manuscripts that reverse the order of females and males, with the effect of giving precedence to the males. The expectation that males should be named first, the rarity of the name Prisca in the east, and the grammatical ambiguity of the name in Rom 16:3 likely led interpreters to assume that the person referred to there was male. Several textual variants can be explained as attempts to bolster the claim that Prisca, Junia, and Julia were in fact men. The author of the Pastoral Epistles probably shared the mistaken assumption that Prisca was a man.

Чередование та̄’ [t] / т̣а̄’ [ṭ] и кя̄ф [k] / к̣а̄ф [q] в раннем списке рукописи на алхамиадо «Поэмы о Йусуфе»

The paper aims to reveal the causes of ambiguous Arabic transliteration of Spanish letters [t] and [c/q] in early Aljamiado manuscript “Poema de Yusuf” (the end of the XIV century). Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that for the first time in domestic Romance studies the author analyzes orthographic peculiarities of Morisco Aljamiado, reveals the causes of ambiguous transliteration of certain Spa¬nish letters. The findings allow concluding that orthographic ambiguity (tāʾ [t] / ṭāʾ [ṭ], kāf [k] / qāf [q]) is due to phonological changes that occur in Aragonese Spanish in the mentioned period. This conclusion is also relevant for Mozarabic Aljamiado.

A Meshwork of Melodies: Des-making Through the Singing and Wayfaring of Shah Abdul Latif’s Devotees

Abstract This article imagines a conception of Sindh that rejects the bounded ethnolinguistic region created through colonial-modern philology and administration. I explore affective geographies produced through singing, storytelling, and traveling in relation to the poetry of Sufi mystic Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689–1752) by his past and present devotees, drawing on the idea of region as a meshwork of movements created through lived lines of wayfaring, to borrow a concept from Tim Ingold. Focusing on the melodic chapters of verses (Surs) in Shah Jo Rāg, a repertoire for singing Latif’s poetry by specialist devotees (rāgī faqīrs), I reconstruct two kinds of movement. First, traces of historical movement from less-acknowledged Surs in Shah Jo Rāg and the Ganj, an early manuscript. Second, contemporary movements inspired by Surs based on two popular romances, from the narratives of Latif’s devotees. These movements reveal processes of des-making: creating entanglements to a relational and cumulative des (“land, country”).

Analysis and Commentary on Mao Zedong’s Views on Women’s Liberation in His Early Manuscripts

Analysis and Commentary on Mao Zedong’s Views on Women’s Liberation in His Early Manuscripts

Acts 17:26: God Made of One [Blood]—Not of One Man—Every Ethnic Group of Humans

Acts 17:26 has been word-for-word translated as "God made of one (henos) blood (haimatos) every ethnic group (ethnos) of humans." "Of one blood" appears in most ancient manuscripts and Patriarch quotations, including Irenaeus, whereas "of one" appears in several preeminent ancient manuscripts and in a Clement quote. Nonetheless, several recent English translations read "from one man," even though "man" does not appear in any early handwritten manuscripts. Some English translators perceive that "man" could be added as an ellipsis word after "one." Ellipses are words that Koine Greek authors omitted from their writings, anticipating that their readers would "supply-in-thought" these missing words in their minds, from the immediately preceding linguistic context. However, inserting "man" here would not match the patterns of any other Koine ellipses. "Of one blood" or "of one" concurs with scientific discoveries, whereas "from one man" conflicts. We are indeed all one blood of God’s creation; and thus there is no room for racial bias.

Chaucer’s Retraction: Examining the Case for Disavowal

Abstract Chaucer’s Retraction, which concludes both the Parson’s Tale and the Canterbury Tales in most manuscripts, presents a number of interpretive problems. Many of these problems stem from the widespread assumption that, as its (editorially supplied) title asserts, the Retraction constitutes a retraction or disavowal of Chaucer’s literary corpus. But on what basis do we assume that the work we know as the Retraction does in fact constitute a retraction or disavowal? This article examines the evidence for the presence of a disavowal, arriving at the conclusion that the element of disavowal has been overestimated. Editorial conventions that have persisted into our modern editions, some of which date to the earliest manuscripts, have the effect of not only creating the distinct work we know as the Retraction, but of subtly smoothing over many of the most vexing problems presented by the text in favor of a reading that highlights Chaucer’s supposed disavowal.

Il volgare trentino in una tariffa rivana del 1409

This article analyses the language of an early fifteenth-century manuscript concerning the muta (excise taxes) of Riva del Garda (Trentino, Italy). The linguistic interest of said document, written mainly in Latin, lies in the number of vernacular terms and their nature (mostly mercantile goods). The authors provide a partial edition of the source, which includes also a series of business notes, a linguistic analysis, a glossary and onomastic indices. In order to better characterise the document’s linguistic phenomenology comparisons are drawn with other Northern Italian Vernaculars (such as Veronese and Bresciano) and with the few known texts from medieval Trentino.

Rid Us (Not) of the Temptation: A Note on the Text of Hebrews 11.37

Prior to the publication of [Formula: see text]46 (P.Beatty II; LDAB 3011), at Heb. 11.37 the earlier critical editions printed one of the longer readings, though from Erasmus onwards the passage was subject to a considerable number of conjectural emendations. With [Formula: see text]46, the evidence for the reading ἐπρίσθησαν gained significant early manuscript support, thus impacting subsequent editorial practice and textual analysis. This study offers a reinvestigation of this textual problem and brings a new proposal based on a fresh evaluation of external and internal criteria.

Digital matters: early Iberian manuscripts from the Lisbon vantage point

ABSTRACT Manuscript surveys, digitization efforts, database building: all have been pursued in the past fifteen years at the Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music (CESEM) in Lisbon’s Universidade Nova. In so doing, the materiality of medieval and Renaissance codices has been both confronted and abstracted from. Digital tools have been used to expand the reach of past methodologies, but research has also been transformed by their power and ubiquity. This paper will contrast the situation before and after 2010, addressing the ways in which Lisbon-based research on music-related codices and fragments has furthered awareness of their characteristics. The manuscripts referred to include the Ajuda songbook, the Cantigas de Santa Maria codices, and, among the many manuscripts included in the Portuguese Early Music database, the twelfth-century plenary Missal in the Salamanca University Library.

Секстина Арнаута Даниэля в зеркале филологических исследований и критических изданий

The editions of Arnaut’s sestina and the history of its study reflect the general trend: both its editors and researchers endow trobadours’ lyrics with an elevated meaning. This is also noticeable when referring to their other poems; however, this tendency can be traced especially clearly in the case of sestina. In the early manuscripts A, B and S (13th century) its text is obscene: the key words-rhymes “cambra” (room) and “verja” (branch) have the meaning of obscene euphemisms, and the tornada itself frankly expresses the poet’s hope for a carnal union with his beloved. This variant of tornada seems to us a possible author’s ending of the poem, since it corresponds to its other verses. In addition, we believe that by singing the carnal and “close” love Arnaut argues with the famous song of love from afar by Jaufre Rudel. In the later manuscripts, the obscene sense of tornada became more obscure, and in the two of them — U (turn of the 13th–14th centuries) and C (15th century) — obvious is the intention of the scribes to put accent on the beauty of the poem rather than its content. In the editions of 19th–21st centuries the sense of the sestina and of its tornada has continued to be transformed in the same direction.

Memory and Memoirs: The Past as a Foreign Country

The posthumous publication of Iurii Dmitrievich Rykov’s most important contributions to the study of the writings of Prince Andrei Kurbskii (including for the first time his kandidat dissertation) has inspired this essay as a tribute to Rykov, one of the leading specialists on early Russian manuscripts. Rather than focus on the substance of the Kurbskii material, the emphasis is on Rykov’s own memoir in the book and more generally on memoirs as historical sources, among them ones written by the noted scholars S. V. Zhitomirskaia and A. A. Zimin. Appended to the essay are a number of letters which Rykov wrote to his American colleagues.

Heavenly Tablets and “Eschatology”: Looking for Later Layers in the Book of Jubilees

A widespread consensus underscores a substantially constant and more or less fixed Ethiopic text of the Book of Jubilees that also includes the early Hebrew manuscripts from the Second Temple era. It took a lengthy scholarly discussion, especially on the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, to free oneself from the shackles of “canonical” presuppositions, when it comes to the interpretation of ancient Israelite and Second Temple compositions. But, among recent exegetes, the idea of estimating textual versions not only as variants, but foremost as independent texts, finds more support. The following examination focuses on eschatological passages in Jub. 1 and 23 and their “counterparts” among the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q216 and 4Q176). It leads to the conclusion that reading the Book of Jubilees as a stable Ethiopic text that should profit from the Hebrew fragments as variants only should be avoided. The fragments of 4Q216 and 4Q176 may instead be discussed as genuine texts providing important indications of the growth of the book.

Carine van Rhijn, Leading the Way to Heaven: Pastoral Care and Salvation in the Carolingian Period. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, xii, 274 pp.

Abstract Early medieval manuscripts give up their secrets in this excellent monograph by Carine van Rhijn, who studies the books that enabled parish priests to perform their duties in the Carolingian countryside. Recognizing that the lineaments of the pastoral project outlined in royal normative texts issued by Charlemagne and his advisors were expressive of “ideals and intentions” (5), she argues convincingly that the practical challenges of implementing this project of expanding and deepening the knowledge that Christians required to assure their salvation fell increasingly to local priests in the Carolingian period. By the eighth century, a fundamental reorganization of the secular clergy resulted in priests being assigned to specific churches, where they lived, preached, and administered the sacraments in small communities for the rest of their lives.

Investigation of the sacred documents of Tokkosan Zensanji Temple in Ueda-shi, Nagano-ken: Focusing on the Keshucho 結衆帳 of the early modern manuscripts

Investigation of the sacred documents of Tokkosan Zensanji Temple in Ueda-shi, Nagano-ken: Focusing on the <i>Keshucho</i> 結衆帳 of the early modern manuscripts

Who was first? Mary Magdalene, Peter and the Ending of Mark

This article discusses one of the most perplexing questions in textual criticism – the wide variety of endings for the gospel of Mark. The most reliable early manuscripts end at verse 8, but this is a very strange ending, and other endings seem to have been added later: the shorter and the longer ending. The article discusses various hypotheses about whether an original ending was lost or whether this ending was deliberate and concludes that Mark decided to end this way because of conflicting versions of the Easter story circulating in his community: One was the early traditional version, probably proclaimed by the Jerusalem apostles and taken up by Paul, that Peter was the first one to see the risen Christ. The other was more controversial and had implications for questions of authority and leadership in the church: the testimony that Mary Magdalene, or several women, were first. Mark chose to allow the women the place of first witnesses to the empty tomb, but to leave open the question of who had the first encounter with the risen Christ. The different factions were then free to choose their own ending. As the empty tomb was not an integral part of the Petrine resurrection narrative, Mark’s version did not undermine this early Easter account, but opened the way to integrate the women’s story in official Christian tradition. Keywords: Ending of Mark, Mark 16, Mary Magdalene, Resurrection, Empty Tomb, Easter, Mark 16:8

Time, History, and Eternity in Early Manuscripts of Fleury

Time, History, and Eternity in Early Manuscripts of Fleury

К текстологической и рецептивной истории южных поэм А. С. Пушкина: «&lt;Вадим&gt;», «Братья разбойники» и их ранние списки

The article introduces the academic community to the earliest and the most complete manuscript copy of Alexander Pushkin’s poem Vadim, discovered in the Mukhanovs’ Archive (stored at the Manuscript Department, the State Historical Museum, Moscow), which should be acknowledged as the most authoritative source of the main text, and systematizes the early manuscript copies of an-other Southern poem — The Robber Brothers, outlining its creative history. The close connection between the creative and reception history, illustrated here by the Southern poems, broadens our understanding of the textual status of early manuscript copies and prompts us to reconsider our operational methods, both in textual and literary, and historical perspectives.