Late Manuscripts Research Articles

Getting in Touch with Troy in Fifteenth-Century France: The First Prose Version of the Roman de Troie in the Manuscript F°26 of the Abbey of Maredsous

Abstract This paper considers how the codex as a medium, specifically via its illustration and layout, translates into material forms the literary and textual choices of the texts it transmits in order to make its version of the Troy story tangible, and thus intelligible for its medieval readers. It takes as an example the first prose version of the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure, probably composed in the last quarter of the thirteenthcentury in Frankish Greece, and focuses more specifically on a late manuscript of Prose 1, recently rediscovered, the manuscript F°26 from the Abbey of Maredsous (Belgium), made almost two centuries later, c. 1450, in the Burgundian Netherlands. This paper argues that this codex, in its specific context of production and within its textual and visual traditions, allow its audience to come into contact with the long-lost city of Troy, and the narrative that evokes it.

Chronologie der Manuskripte 1885–89. Nachtrag zu KGW IX

Abstract Chronology of the Manuscripts 1885–89. Appendix to KGW IX. After the completion of the topological manuscript edition in section IX of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke (KGW IX), the additional chronological indexing of the late Nachlass remained a desideratum. The current manuscript closes this editorial gap. As an appendix to KGW IX, the chronology of the manuscripts 1885–89 provides the date for each distinguishable layer of inscription for every manuscript and note edited in KGW IX. In the first part of the following chronology, the dated inscription layers for all late manuscripts from notebook N VII 1 to the scattered notes are recorded topologically. In the second part, the inscription layers are indexed chronologically from spring 1885 to the beginning of January 1889.

«Сказание о хождении в Тибет пандита-хамбо-ламы Заяева из цонгольского рода» как источник по истории буддизма

The history of Buddhism and the initial period of its spread in Transbaikalia in the XVII-XVIII centuries are insufficiently studied due to the lack of archival materials and sources, while the surviving historical records provide different information about some events, such as the year of construction of the first Buddhist temple and the first sermon, the years of D.-D. Zayaev's life. The earliest extant sources are "Autobiography" and "Travel Notes" written by D.-D. Zayaev in 1768. They contain valuable information not only about the history of Buryat Buddhism, but also about the life and activities of D.-D. Zayaev (1711-1776), the first Buryat pandita Khambo-Lama, whose name is associated with the beginning of the spread of Buddhism among the Buryats and its institutionalization in the Russian Empire, but also with the description of his pilgrimage to Tibet. In this regard, in order to clarify some dates on the early history of Buryat Buddhism, texts related to him have been searched for and analyzed in the funds of the Center of Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs (CVRK) of the Institute for Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies of the Siberian Branch of the RAS. It was established that of the six sources found, the most informative work is "The Legend of the Tsongol Kin Pandita Khambo-Lama Zayaev's Journey to Tibet" in the Old Mongolian script, stored in the Mongolian collection of the CVRK. As a result of the study, it was revealed that this work is a late manuscript consisting of the "Travel Notes", the Biography of D.-D. Zayaev and of an anonymous manuscript containing a brief description of Buddhist sacred places and shrines in India, Nepal, Tibet and Mongolia, what has determined its structure consisting of 3 parts. It was found out that this manuscript contains information about the socio-economic situation of the population of Tibet and neighboring countries, as well as information about the history of Buddhism in Transbaikal region in the middle of the XVIII century. It testifies to Russia's geopolitical interests in this region of Inner Asia and the peoples living there, as the author reports, saying that it was written at the behest of Catherine II, who outlined a range of issues: "to describe what I’ve seen on my way to Tibet, the length of the road and distance, as well as about the customs and habits of people". The unique historical information preserved by the Buryat pilgrim and the Russian citizen D.-D. Zayaev is also relevant for conducting comparative studies of the phenomenon of modern pilgrimage that is becoming popular not only for believers but among ordinary lay population.

Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900 ed. by Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil

Reviewed by: Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900 ed. by Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil Aileen Douglas Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil, eds. Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 54. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2021. xv + 510 pp. + 65 color plates, 5 halftones, 1 map. €61. ISBN: 978-87-63546881. Introducing Hidden Harmonies, the editors invite the reader to apprehend late manuscript culture in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands as "a homogenous cultural bloc whose constituents responded to influences from the European 'centre' in similar ways" (ix). The collection of thirteen essays begins with a wide-ranging consideration by Jürg Glauser of the persistence of the "simultaneity of media," of script and print, into the nineteenth century on the "Atlantic fringe." Deirdre Nic Mhathúna follows with a meticulous account of the scribal transmission of the works of the seventeenth-century Irish poet Piaras Feiritéar, whose poems did not appear in print in Irish until 1903. Moving north and west, Gu∂rún Ingólfsdóttir describes the manuscript miscellany of the Icelandic housewife, Gu∂rún Jónsdóttir (1741–96). Significantly, while Gu∂rún owned the manuscript—a medley of devotional materials, useful knowledge, folklore, and songs—it was not in her hand. The essay argues that strong links to folklore, as well [End Page 172] as the absence of devotional materials already printed, distinguish popular manuscripts such as that of Gu∂rún from those of elite women. With Katarzyna Anna Kapitan's essay, the volume moves to consider what she terms "print-based manuscripts" (82). Her fascinating account in "Manuscripts Derived from Printed Editions in the Transmission History of Hrómundar Saga Greipssonar" begins by asking whether the use of a printed text as source led to more conservative scribal copies, and she finds that this is "only partially true," with factors such as the purpose of the copy and place of the copyist (within or outside Iceland) being more influential. Copying from printed sources also features in Liam Mac Mathúna's vivid account of two manuscripts by the Irish scribe Tadhg Ó Neachtain (1671–1752). Mac Mathúna's main emphasis, however, is on the elements of individuality in the manuscripts: the recorded dialogue between Tadhg and his father Séan in National Library of Ireland MS G 198, which allows the warm relationship between the two to emerge, and Tadhg's recording of "major contemporary domestic events" in British Library Egerton MS 198 (139). Margrét Eggertsdóttir's contribution to the volume provides both a useful overview of the genres of seventeenth-century Icelandic poetry and discusses the dissemination, into the nineteenth century, of one of its most famous works, the Hymns of the Passion (Passíusálmar) of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–74), a clergymember with an eventful early life. Hallgrímur's hymns were first printed in 1666, but the author also made five copies of his hymns that he dedicated and sent to recipients "whom he trusted to judge his work fairly and spread the word" (159). The prodigious life's work of the Icelandic scribe Magnús í Tjaldanesi (1835–1921) is the focus of the contribution of M. J. Driscoll, one of the volume's coeditors. Extant manuscripts by Magnús comprise about twenty-eight thousand pages, more than eight million words, and Driscoll estimates that this is only a fraction of what the scribe produced. Notably, Magnús dedicated himself to "highly popular prose genres—fornaldarsögur, riddarasögur, translations of German Volksbücher," rather than the more usual poetry (189). An unusual feature of his work is that each of the volumes in his collection of sagas, twenty in all, comprises exactly eight hundred pages. Although he adopted certain features of print culture, including prefaces, pagination, and running titles, Magnús appears not to have aspired to print. He did, however, take steps to preserve his work. Driscoll [End Page 173] recounts how, in 1909, Magnús made his one and only trip to Reykjavik to see...

Art, Literature, Manuscripts, Architecture – An Emperor Wants to be Remembered: Emperor Maximilian and the Ambraser Helden Buch, with a Focus on Mauritius Von Craûn

Memory and memoria are closely related to each other, but the latter constitutes the physical, mostly public manifestation of the self through art works, writing, musical compositions, buildings, and the like. After a reflection on the current research pertaining to both aspects, this article deals with the famous Ambraser Heldenbuch compiled by Hans Ried for Emperor Maximilian I (1504–1516) as a collection of major medieval German narratives. In particular, the focus rests on the most unique verse novella, Mauritius von Craûn (ca. 1220) where knighthood and courtly love seem to reach their apogee but then abruptly fail. In an odd way, even this rather deconstructive piece of literature, preserved only in this very late manuscript, obviously contributed to Maximilian’s great effort to secure his gedechtnus, the memory by posterity of his glory and accomplishments. However, there is also a great sense of the precarious nature of this goal, hence of memoria. To understand late medieval aristocratic culture, we can rely profoundly on the efforts by that social class to establish memory as a form of self-identity.

Reconstructing Middle Byzantine Arabo-Greek Astrology from Later Greek Manuscripts

This paper sheds light on one aspect of the large-scale influx of Arabic scientific knowledge into Byzantium through an analysis of three Byzantine astrological compendia that contain texts originally written in Greek as well as those translated from Arabic to Greek. While written c. 1200–1400, each manuscript contains a compilation that was assembled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The paper first considers the dating of each of the three compilations and shows the utility in using these late Byzantine manuscripts to study Middle Byzantine astrology. Second, it analyzes the Arabic texts translated in these compilations and uses them to explain the chronology and the scale of the translation of astrological material from Arabic to Greek. Third, it considers how the Arabic and Greek material is combined within these manuscripts, and what the resulting synthesis says about Middle Byzantine astrology writ large.

Conductus, Sequence, Refrain

Latin conducti do not typically come to mind when considering the medieval practice of French refrain citation; intertextual refrains were conventionally interpolated into French songs, narratives, and the upper voices of motets. Yet three conducti copied in late thirteenth-century northern French manuscripts intervene in this traditional narrative by engaging compositionally with French refrains: Veni sancte spiritus spes in GB-Lbl Egerton 274 (known as LoB or Trouvère F), and Marie preconio and Superne matris gaudia in F-Pn lat. 15131 (the St. Victor Miscellany). Previously identified as contrafacts of French refrain songs, Veni sancte spiritus spes shares its melody with a widely cited French refrain, while Marie preconio and Superne matris gaudia are rubricated with French refrains and scribal cues that suggest a musical relationship with French refrains. However, the poems of these conducti exhibit significant relationships not with French refrains but with homonymous and widely sung liturgical sequences. These conducti are not simply contrafacts but reflect a compositional negotiation between variously borrowed and new elements, resulting in Latin songs implicated within citational networks of liturgical chant and French refrains. Significantly, the repeated refrain serves in each song as the site for intertextual and intermusical processes, with borrowed material from French refrains and Latin sequences shaping the music and poetry of the new refrain-form conducti. Considered together, these conducti shed light on understudied Latin contexts for practices of multilingual intertextuality and intermusicality in late thirteenth-century France.

Subjectivity Viewed as a Process

Abstract Husserl, in his late manuscripts, made a number of apparently opposing assertions regarding the subject. These assertions are reconciled once we realize that they apply to the different stages of the genesis of the subject. This means that the subject has to be understood as a process – i.e., as continually proceeding from the living present, which forms its core, to the developed self that each of us is. As such, the subject cannot be identified with any of the particular stages of its genesis. The genetic account of its becoming must be understood accordingly. It is not an account that details the progressive acquisition of features that remain as “sedimented layers” of our selfhood. Rather, such layers, like the selfhood they form, exist as part of the ongoing process, the motion, that is our subjectivity. This view, I argue, is Husserl’s final, if undeveloped, insight into the nature of our selfhood.

Le lien des images avec le texte dans les manuscrits tardifs de l’“Epistre Othea”: un indice de leur parenté avec les cycles iconographiques des manuscrits de présentation?

In the late manuscripts of the Epistre Othea, the filiation of the images takes on different aspects. The miniatures of MS Laud Misc. 570 present iconographic similarities with those of MSS BnF, fr. 606 and BL, Harley 4431, which were illuminated under Christine de Pizan’s supervision. On the contrary, MS Erlangen, UB 2361 includes numerous miniatures, which illustrate different themes from those which the author chose at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In MSS Bodley 421, Bodmer 49 and Lille, BM 175, the filiation of the images seems to be more complex. Some miniatures of MSS Lille, BM 175 and Bodley 421, that have an identical iconography, but differ from those of MSS Français 606 and Harley 4431, draw particularly the reader’s attention.The unifying thread of this contribution consists in taking account of the link between text and images which characterizes the manuscripts of the Epistre Othea illuminated under Christine de Pizan’s supervision. As the images participate in the meaning together with the text in these manuscripts, the analysis of the link between images and text in late manuscripts could permit to study the transmission of the original link, but also to detect the existence of kinship relations between the iconography of late manuscripts and that of lost manuscripts of presentation.

The Tractatus de iride “Inter omnes impressiones” Formerly Attributed to Oresme and Its Grossetestian Milieu: Introduction and Edition

Abstract This article presents a study and a critical edition of the short anonymous treatise on the rainbow starting with the incipit Inter omnes impressiones. The text was known to Nicole Oresme who engages with it twice: in his Questiones in Meteorologica de prima lectura and in Le livre du ciel et du monde. This Tractatus de iride, previously unknown to scholars, is transmitted in three late thirteenth-century manuscripts. It uses Robert Grosseteste’s theories of the rainbow as caused by the refraction of sunlight and of colour as light incorporated in aereal particles. However, contrary to Grosseteste, the Tractatus de iride adopts the idea of different degrees of incorporation of light, which is also found in the scientific writings by Adam of Exeter, a Franciscan scholar belonging to the same Oxonian circle as Grosseteste. Moreover, the Tractatus de iride develops original propositions in regard to the role of individual raindrops, the importance of the angle from which the rainbow is observed, and the idea of the spirituality of the colours in the medium, which were central also for Roger Bacon’s and Nicole Oresme’s own theories of the rainbow.

A Syriac Dialogue between Joseph and Benjamin

Among the many Syriac poems on the biblical Patriarch Joseph are two Dialogue poems, one between Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, the other between Joseph and Benjamin. The latter, for which the scenario is the moment when Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers (Gen. 45:1-15), is edited here from late manuscripts belonging to both East and West Syriac tradition, accompanied by an English translation.

A Syriac Dialogue between Joseph and Benjamin

Among the many Syriac poems on the biblical Patriarch Joseph are two Dialogue poems, one between Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, the other between Joseph and Benjamin. The latter, for which the scenario is the moment when Joseph reveals his true identity to his brothers (Gen. 45:1-15), is edited here from late manuscripts belonging to both East and West Syriac tradition, accompanied by an English translation.

FORMS МЪНОГО AND МАЛО IN RUSSIAN CHRONICLES OF THE 13TH TO 15TH CENTURIES AND COLLOCATIONS WITH THEM: COMPARATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE-STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

The article is devoted to 1) the analysis of the chronicle contexts with the forms мъного and мало to determine parts of speech of these words in the Old Russian language, 2) the determination of the collocations and colligations with the forms мъного and мало in order to extract the patterns and N-grams which can be classified as the fixed lexical and grammatical chunks. This study presents the results regarding the specific forms of syntagmatics in determining parts of speech of these words. Having analyzed and compared the examples, we can infer that there was the evolution of non-finite forms into adverbs due to the activation of verb forms as the core of syntagma in the late manuscripts and the need to eliminate ambiguous connections of forms ending in -o if their semantics allows them to define both names and verb forms. It has been found that during the comprehensive analysis the modern research methods, especially the quantitative and statistical analysis, have an importance in extracting the collocations from the Old Russian texts. The article demonstrates statistically significant combinations - collocations obtained using the N-gram module.

ИСТОРИКО-КРАЕВЕДЧЕСКИЕ РАССКАЗЫ И СКАЗАНИЯ О МЕСТНОЧТИМЫХ ИКОНАХ И СВЯТЫХ XVII – XIX ВЕКОВ

The local-history stories and legends about locally venerated icons and saints of the XVII-XIX centuries are studied. They are considered as the sources on the history of icon worship in the interfluve of the Oka and the Don. The identification of the genre originality of regional Legends about icons is carried out. Much attention is given to new monuments of literary tradition starting from the Late Middle Ages and up to the present. The paper presents the relevance and scientific novelty. It is stressed that the historical existence of regional texts about locally venerated icons and regional hagiographic texts of the lives of saints, which belong to the late manuscript and oral tradition of the XVII-early XX centuries, is formulated and studied by the authors for the first time. Finally, the authors focus on the fact that previously, researchers were only aware of local history publications of a number of texts. Their descriptive characteristics are given.

Eighteenth-Century Identified Copies of MāšāʾAllāh’s Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ from Yemen: Text Edition and Contextualization

Abstract A copy of the Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ (Book on the reign of Rulers), identified in Ḏamār, Yemen, in 1993, is dated 8 Ǧumādā Awwal 1150 AH (= Sept. 1737 AD). Under the name of the famous Jewish astrologer MāšāʾAllāh, who practised at the early ʿAbbasid Court together with the Banū Nawbaḫt, this book displays the horoscopes of the Prophet Muhammad and of the caliphs up to Hārūn al-Rašīd. E.S. Kennedy & D. Pingree offered an English translation of the Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ in The Astrological History of MāšāʾAllāh, Cambridge (MA), Harvard U. Press, 1971, Appendix 2, on the basis of “two late manuscripts”, one from Berlin, the other at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Since then, K. Yamamoto & Ch. Burnett have edited the text on the basis of three manuscripts, adding one from Bursa, and offered a revised English translation. Meanwhile, I came upon a second copy of the book in Ṣanʿāʾ. The copy preserved at the Waqf Library of Ḏamār belonged to the personal collection of a Yemeni cadi, who was a divinatory practitioner (munaǧǧim). At the intersection of textual studies and field work, this paper, following an introduction to the text, will concentrate on the circulation of the 1150/1737 manuscript and its potential uses.

The Vita of Marie d’Oignies and Late Medieval England

Two late medieval Latin manuscripts and one fifteenth-century Middle English manuscript testify to English interest in Jacques de Vitry’s thirteenth-century Vita of Marie d’Oignies, a mulier religiosa of the diocese of Liege. Both the Latin fifteenth-century Oxford codex, St. John’s College, MS 182 and the Middle English fifteenth-century Oxford Bodleian MS Douce 114 were owned by Carthusian charterhouses. The contemplative English Carthusians helped supply secular readers with texts as can be seen in MS Douce 114 which contains the Middle English translation of De Vitry’s Latin Vita. Readers of the Book of Margery Kempe recall that Margery writes that her priest-amanuensis comes to understand her tears after reading about Marie’s weeping in De Vitry’s Vita. De Vitry saw Marie d’Oignies as the icon of a new type of lay piety; Margery Kempe takes her as a model.

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context, by Elbert, Monika M., editor.

<i>Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context</i>, by Elbert, Monika M., editor.

Synonyms and Lexical Substitutions in Texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt

ABSTRACT Among the unusually high number of variants in the three surviving texts of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt are many instances in which a scribe has changed an inherited reading by substituting one word for another. Many of the substitutions are the result of error or unconscious scribal preference but this article demonstrates that all three texts of the Old English Life, which is of likely Anglian origin, also reveal a pattern of deliberate rewording. This rewording arises from a desire to regularise and “improve” the language of the Life, bringing it more into line with the norms of Late West Saxon, the literary language generally in use in the period when our scribes were at work. No such pattern of substitution is evident in other hagiographical texts in the same manuscripts. The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt was clearly viewed by compilers of late Anglo-Saxon hagiographical manuscripts as a work worthy of inclusion but, unlike other lives, as one in need of some linguistic revision to make it fit in with accepted literary standards.

Invoking body and voice: deixis and multivalency in the Techialoyan manuscripts

A referential, gesturing figure and the word “here” punctuate the pages of a corpus of New Spanish, late colonial manuscripts known as the Techialoyans. These pictorial and textual deictic features direct readers’ attention to specific foci in the documents. Although the presence of pictures is less common in indigenous-language documents of the later colonial period, in this case images played a critical role. In conjunction with alphabetic script, pictures harken back to earlier traditions, while simultaneously iterating a new pictorial strategy to reinforce the aim of protecting indigenous territory and political authority. This article examines the role of deictic pictures and text, as well as the multivalency of language and declamatory tone, to understand better how indigenous authors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries drew upon earlier ritual and scribal practices in order to invent new communicative traditions. The documents’ emphasis on images, oral discourses, and performative features in addition to alphabetic text broadens understandings of what constituted indigenous literacies of the later colonial period.

Thinking with Ferrar Papers 1422: A c. 1681 Verse Miscellany

Abstract This article explores a late seventeenth-century manuscript verse miscellany held amongst the Ferrar Papers in Magdalene College, Cambridge, not previously discussed by critics. By attending to both the specific features of this manuscript miscellany (including poems by John Dryden, Katherine Philips. and others), and the larger Ferrar archive, the article considers broader questions about how to read and interpret manuscript miscellanies.