Nationale De France Research Articles

Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context ed. by Helen Deeming, Elizabeth Eva Leach

Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context. Edited by Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach. (Music in Context.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xxi, 324 p. ISBN 9781107062634 (hardcover), $99.99; ISBN 9781316236680 (ebook), $80.] examples, figures, tables, list of manuscripts cited, bibliography, index.This eleven-chapter volume edited by Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach explores ten important manuscripts that contain different types of songs composed in England, France, and Germany between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Each author has systematically examined a famous but surprisingly little-studied (p. 3), reconsidering how the contents, paleographical details, and codicological details relate the context in which it was produced and used. Published in Cambridge University Press's in Context series, the essays are generally quite technical and addressed primarily musicologists who study the medieval song repertory. This collection might also find a place as course reading in an advanced undergraduate musicological seminar or in graduate courses on medieval musicology or the history of the book. Important for medieval musicology, however, these essays offer a musical context for larger scholarly conversations of codicology, paleography, and book history. Manuscripts and Medieval ong opens a path for medieval musicologists, in particular, consider the whole manuscript-from an interdisciplinary perspective, not studying simply notes and song texts on the page-in analyzing meanings and the symbolism of medieval song.Several scholars in this collection demonstrate that interdisciplinarity for song scholarship can constitute taking a holistic view of a manuscript that can reveal its larger socio-cultural purpose. Sam Barrett and Sean Curran respectively examine Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, lat. 1154 (F-Pn lat. 1154) and the La Clayette manuscript (F-Pn n.a.f. 13521) from this perspective. These discussions demonstrate what the nonmusical materials in a miscellany can reveal about the sociocultural function of a manuscript-here for training in devotional practice-although both of them could use the literary texts in the manuscripts they examine more effectively. Curran mentions the use of F-Pn n.a.f. 13521 in cultivating lay piety, to be read by or the lay devout (p. 196) in his survey of previous literature on the manuscript, but most fully develops an argument around the fascicle that contains polytextual motets. The polytextual motets, many with Marian tenors, participate in the didactic purpose of the manuscript, being supermusical in their intent purposefully challenge the attention of the listener (p. 217): the motets encourage cognitive labor hone in on the meaning of the Marian prayer evoked in the slowestmoving and lowest voice, the tenor. While it is intriguing consider this argument, the wide variety of texts in F-Pn n.a.f. 13521, some about Mary herself, could be considered in this didactic project. Barrett's article is more effective in this vein; it suggests that music is part of a larger devotional project in F-Pn lat. 1154, which contains a litany, prayers (including two by Alcuin), collects, Isidore of Seville's Synonyma, and a number of versus. F-Pn lat. 1154 could possibly have been intended as a didactic prayer book rather than a miscellany that happens have a set of notated versus in the last 45 folios (pp. 10-11). The different liturgical and musical needs of the monastic audience of F-Pn lat. 1154 and the lay audience of F-Pn n.a.f. 13521 aside, Barrett's work serves as a model of how music and literary works in miscellany can be read together in a way that Curran's work does not. It is frustrating, however, that the strength of Barrett's reasoning relies on scholars examining previous iterations of his work in which he describes the textual content of the versus in F-Pn lat. 1154 (Sam Barrett, Music and Writing: On the Compilation of Paris Bibliotheque nationale lat. …

A Tudor Translator at Work: John Osborne's Manuscript Translations of Demosthenes's Against Leptines (1582) and Aeschines's On the Embassy (1583)

This essay examines John Osborne's manuscript translations of Demosthenes's oration Against Leptines and Aeschines's speech On the Embassy , both dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton. Presented by one mp to another, these translations demonstrate the interest in Greek oratory and its political uses in early modern England. Osborne's manuscripts are also highly unusual in showing a Tudor translator of the classics at work. The main focus of this essay is on the corrections and changes in the two surviving manuscripts of the translation of Against Leptines (Add. MS 10059, British Library, and MS Anglais 60, Bibliotheque nationale de France). The essay argues that Osborne's departures from his source texts evidence a deeper concern to reproduce the political efficacy of Demosthenes's and Aeschines's speeches in Elizabethan England. The essay thus throws new light on both early modern translation practice and the use of manuscript texts to bind together communities through the exchange of material that is designed to appeal to a communal identity.

A Newly Identified Copy of a Prognostication by John of Legnano

At some time between 1375 and 1378 the Bologna jurist John of Legnano composed a judgement on the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in October 1365. One of a number of contemporary authors offering a horoscope and interpretation of this celestial event, Legnano was credited by later fourteenth- and fifteenth-century observers with correctly predicting the outbreak of the Great Schism by means of his chart. Until now, scholars have been aware of two manuscript copies of Legnano's conjunction treatise: a Latin version now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS lat. 2599; and an Italian translation in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS II, IV.313.The present paper identifies and publishes a third, partial copy, in a manuscript compilation in British Library MS Arundel 88.1 briefly survey the manuscript context of these three redactions in order to demonstrate the various ways in which Legnano's text could be read in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Most likely composed just prior to the outbreak of the Great Schism, his prognostication blends the astrological, eschatological and political interests which obsessed the noted law professor even before the circumstances of the Schism gave them increased urgency. A staunch defender of papal over imperial rights, Legnano avidly followed the vicissitudes of politics in the empire as well as in northern Italy; both his astrological analysis and the prophetic texts he quotes in his judgement focus on the fates of the empire, of various Italian cities and of the papacy. The British Library version of Legnano's text helps to reveal an evolving reception of this work and to demonstrate that, while the treatise certainly could be read for clues as to the church's fate during the Schism years, later readers were much more interested in Legnano's political predictions.

Comparing Interpretative Notes in the Syriac and Arabic Translations of the Hippocratic Aphorisms

Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Arabe 6734 contains a bilingual Syriac-Arabic text of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. Whereas the Arabic lemmata are clearly taken from Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s translation of Galen’s Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, the Syriac translator has not been identified conclusively. In the Syriac translation, there is a long note on lemma iv. 47 in which the annotator refutes Galen’s interpretation of this lemma. In his Arabic translation of Galen’s Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, Ḥunayn also notes Galen’s misinterpretation of this lemma. In this article, I present the Syriac note, along with an analysis of Galen’s comment on lemma iv. 47 to show an inconsistency of Galen’s interpretation of this aphorism. I then present Ḥunayn’s note on this lemma for the first time, and illustrate how he edited the Arabic translation.

A Reconsideration of the Authorship of the Syriac Hippocratic Aphorisms: The Creation of the Syro-Arabic Bilingual Manuscript of the Aphorisms in the Tradition of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Arabic Translation

The manuscript Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, fonds arabe 6734 contains a Syriac translation of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. This text remains one of the few examples of an entire Greek medical work translated into Syriac. The copyist however did not include information about the Syriac translator, which has left his identity open to speculation. Since this bilingual manuscript contains both the Syriac translation of the Aphorisms as well as the lemmata from Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Arabic translation of Galen’s commentary on the Aphorisms, it is generally accepted that Ḥunayn is also the Syriac translator. Although the Arabic translation is the key to identifying the Syriac translator, no one has yet attempted to situate the Arabic text within the tradition of Ḥunayn’s Arabic version of the Aphorisms in order to better understand the work of the copyist. This article will analyse the copyist’s editorial process when working with these Arabic lemmata. In doing so, the relationship between the Syriac and the Arabic translations will be explored, providing new insight into the identity of the Syriac translator.

Museum Libraries, University Libraries: Collections at the Service of Art History

By moving into the Labrouste reading room, the library of the Institut national de l’histoire de l’art will fulfill years of preparation, reflection, and debates that have punctuated its long gestation. As a descendant of the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie Jacques Doucet, its affiliation with the university is today lively and meaningful. The incorporation of the Bibliothèque centrale des musées nationaux, formerly at the Louvre, on January 1, 2016 has invited museums into the heart of INHA’s collections. For the three entities concerned, this change has involved – and still involves – a questioning of the orientation and missions of the libraries they represent. The Louvre museum has launched a vast project of promotion and coordination of its libraries. After extensive preparatory work, the Bibliothèque centrale des musées nationaux (BCMN) has been physically absorbed into the INHA, requiring a necessary examination at the INHA, not only of its history, but also of its project. Indeed, for the INHA library, the foundation stone that is the BCMN consolidates this inauguration in completely renovated spaces: a reading room with four hundred seats, together with open-access stacks containing 150,000 documents on three levels, opening with the Bibliothèque nationale de France and in particular its département des Estampes et de la photographie, but also with the École nationale des chartes. The three texts that follow must therefore be read interactively as exchanges relating to what makes writing the history of art possible.

Comprehensive Chemical Characterisation of Byzantine Glass Weights

The understanding of the glass trade in the first millennium CE relies on the characterisation of well-dated compositional groups and the identification of their primary production sites. 275 Byzantine glass weights from the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France dating to the sixth and seventh century were analysed by LA-ICP-MS. Multivariate statistical and graphical data analysis discriminated between six main primary glass types. Primary glass sources were differentiated based on multi-dimensional comparison of silica-derived elements (MgO, Al2O3, CaO, TiO2, Fe2O3, ZrO2) and components associated with the alkali source (Li2O, B2O3). Along with Egyptian and Levantine origins of the glassmaking sands, variations in the natron source possibly point to the exploitation of two different natron deposits. Differences in strontium to calcium ratios revealed variations in the carbonate fractions in the sand. At least two cobalt sources were employed as colouring agents, one of which shows strong correlations with nickel, indicating a specific post-Roman cobalt source. Typological evidence identified chronological developments in the use of the different glass groups. Throughout the sixth century, Byzantine glass weights were predominately produced from two glasses that are probably of an Egyptian origin (Foy-2 and Foy-2 high Fe). Towards the second half of the sixth century a new but related plant-ash glass type emerged (Magby). Levantine I was likewise found among the late sixth- to early seventh-century samples. The use of different dies for the same batch testifies to large-scale, centralised production of the weights, while the same die used for different primary production groups demonstrates the co-existence of alternative sources of supply. Given the comprehensive design of our study, these results can be extrapolated to the wider early Byzantine glass industry and its changes at large.

Debret, professor de desenho: gravuras inéditas da coleção da Bibliothèque nationale de France

RESUMO Este artigo apresenta e discute três conjuntos de gravuras inéditas de Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848) encontradas nas coleções do Département des Estampes et de la Photographie da Bibliothèque nationale de France, em Paris. O primeiro grupo foi gravado por Gilles-Antoine Demarteau (1750-1802) em 1802; os outros dois foram gravados por L. M. Petit entre c. 1810-1813, o Nouveau Recueil Élémentaire de Dessin e as Têtes d´étude d´après David. A pesquisa busca fazer uma filologia histórica dessas gravuras, discutindo questões de autenticidade, atribuição, finalidade e correspondência com obras semelhantes do período. A metodologia adotada foi a análise e a comparação de bibliografia sobre o tema, de documentos de época e o cotejamento das informações levantadas com os dados já conhecidos sobre a biografia do artista. Os objetivos principais deste trabalho são tentar compreender quais as particularidades dessas pranchas em relação a outros exemplares da mesma época, como essas imagens se inserem no contexto da produção de estampas didáticas no início do século XIX, e como a carreira francesa e brasileira do pintor pode ser reinterpretada a partir das informações colhidas e dos debates sugeridos.

The Codex Mexicanus: Time, Religion, History, and Health in Sixteenth-Century New Spain

About 60 years after the Spanish invasion and conquest of Mexico, a group of Nahua intellectuals gathered in Tenochtitlan. On the very site of the heart of the Aztec empire stood a city of a new name: Mexico City, capital of New Spain. There the Nahuas set about compiling an extensive book of miscellanea, now known as the Codex Mexicanus. Owned by the Bibliothèque National de France, the codex includes records pertaining to the Christian and Aztec calendars, European medical astrology, a genealogy of the Tenochca royal house, and the annals of preconquest and early colonial Mexico City, among other intriguing topics.

The Discourse on the seashells […, found] in Champagne, written by Vignier to Peiresc (1635): An early text supporting the organic origin of fossils

The ‘Bibliothèque nationale de France’ keeps a manuscript entitled Discourse on the seashells that are found on dry land, particularly in Champagne, written in French in 1635 by the Jesuit Jacques Vignier. Vignier describes, 55 years after Palissy, the Lutetian fossils of Champagne (France) and discusses their presence in a place as far from the sea; 32 years before Steno, he refutes the in-situ generation of the fossils, which he considers to be seashells transported by the Flood. Peiresc, to whom the manuscript was addressed, endorses the marine origin, brings other examples of such fossils, but suggests a deposit by the sea prior to the Flood. In a second version of the discourse, written 20 years later, Vignier equates roughly the Flood with an “invasion” of the sea, shifting towards the modern concept of marine transgression. In the 1750s, Dieudonné, Calmet, Musard and Guettard continued to debate on the origin of these fossils.

Le VIe traité du Theophrastus redivivus: Nature, Raison, bonheur et liberté?

In 1937, the scholar Spink (1909–1985) discovered at the Bibliotheque nationale de France a bulky anonymous manuscript, written in Latin, with an impressive title: Theophrastus redivivus, sive historia de iis quae dicuntur de diis, de mundo, de religione, de anima, de inferis et daemonibus, de contemnenda morte, de vita secundum naturam. Opus ex philosophorum opinionibus constructum et doctissimis theologis ad diruendum propositum. That text supposedly dated back to 1659. Translated, presented and annotated by Ostrowiecki-Bah, the VIth and last treatise of the Theophrastus (Life According to Nature), is reproduced in Volume II of, Libertins du XVIIe siecle. It is on that latter part that my study rests. That libertine voice, as eloquent as it is anonymous, is resolutely atheistic. From the outset, the author lists several philosophical doctrines from Antiquity, rejecting them one after the other because he finds them tainted with religion (rather surprising, especially for epicureanism). The only philosophical school he finds acceptable is stoicism, because it preaches that the sovereign good is to live according to virtue, that is “according to the experience of what conforms to that nature common to all animate beings and to Man…” For the Theophrastus, all that conforms to Nature also conforms inevitably to Reason, to which it attributes an absolute axiarchy, paradoxically resulting, in the end, in a tyranny just as oppressive as that of religion.

More than meets the eye: Fibre and Paper Analysis of the Chinese Manuscripts from the Silk Roads

This study contributes to the history of paper in Central Asia during the first millennium C.E. and aims to create a typology of paper based on a systematic study of Chinese manuscript collections found along the Silk Roads. The further aspect of this study aims to improve our knowledge of archaeometric research considered with the revision and test of scientific methodology which can then be used for historical and philological scholarship. By using fibre analysis and the technological study of paper combined with codicological and textual information, research has aimed to explore the possibilities for dating these materials, and fingerprinting their places of origin. The fact that many of Chinese manuscripts being studied (which are the oldest preserved and dated artefacts from Central Asia) are fixed in time by dates mentioned in colophons makes them valuable and reliable references for building a typology of paper and for comparative study of any yet to be discovered papers from that region. A sample of studied manuscripts comprises a total of 182 Chinese manuscripts selected from the Dunhuang Collection in the British Library in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (BnF), the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg, and the Turfan collection in the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) and the Berlin State Library (StaBi).

Jeanne Dumée as Astronomer and Woman in Seventeenth-Century France: The Myth and Her Lost Voice

As the author of a manuscript defending the Copernican system in 1680, Jeanne Dumée is often cited among the few women who practised astronomy in early-modern France. However, her reputation is largely founded on a myth that was in place even before her work was available to the public. After her manuscript resurfaced at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, it took a long time for people to recognize that it hardly was original at all, a misunderstanding that is still leading some historians astray. In this paper, attempts are made to understand more about Dumée’s life and work, especially through a careful reading of her work and of her sources. It is argued that a careful rendering of Dumée’s voice may provide clues for a better understanding of astronomy’s place in early-modern women’s sociability.

A Kingdom of images: French prints in the age of Louis XIV, 1660-1715

Once considered the golden age of French printmaking, Louis XIV’s reign saw Paris become a powerhouse of print production. During this time, the king aimed to make fine and decorative arts into signs of French taste and skill and, by extension, into markers of his imperialist glory. Prints were ideal for achieving these goals; reproducible and transportable, they fueled the sophisticated propaganda machine circulating images of Louis as both a man of war and a man of culture. This richly illustrated catalogue features more than one hundred prints from the Getty Research Institute and the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, whose print collection Louis XIV established in 1667. An esteemed international group of contributors investigates the ways that cultural policies affected printmaking; explains what constitutes a print; describes how one became a printmaker; studies how prints were collected; and considers their reception in the ensuing centuries. A Kingdom of Images is published to coincide with an exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute from June 16 through September 6, 2015, and at the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris from November 2, 2015, through January 31, 2016.

Hearing King David in Early Modern France: Politics, Prayer, and Louis XIII's Musique de la Chambre

Scholars of Louis XIV have long recognized the “representational” strategy employed by the composers of the Chapelle Royale (and those who designed its liturgy), in which the words of the psalms (the work of poet-musician King David) allied to an elaborate musical setting (the grand motet) attested to the king's strength and power in both spiritual and temporal domains. By contrast, in the absence of a comparable repertory inspired by the psalms from an earlier period, the role of King David at the court of Louis XIII has received almost no attention. Yet, as this article shows, the biblical king did indeed play a central role at the court of Louis XIII, albeit in unexpected ways. The “public” voice of David—the voice of a warrior who defeated his enemies—spoke outside the confines of the court in orations, pamphlets, and psalm paraphrases (with simple musical settings), celebrating, in particular, the king's victory over the Huguenots at La Rochelle in 1628. On the other hand, study of the psalm-texted works composed for Louis XIII's Musique de la Chambre (recently identified in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Vma rés. 571) reveals a “private” voice, a voice that reflected Louis's anxiety and penitence in the years around 1620 and that was heard only by the king's closest allies at court. By contextualizing this “private” voice it is also possible to account for the rise of the Domine salvum fac regem, a musical genre that originated in the same circumstances, and to suggest that Louis XIII and Louis XIV in fact had a common interest in David as supplicant.

Byzantine Art and Gospel Commentary: The Case of Luke 13:6–9, 10–17

This paper represents a conversation between two disciplines that too rarely enter into dialogue: New Testament studies and the history of Byzantine art. Two gospel passages have been chosen for analysis here: the first is a parable, the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–9); the second, which follows immediately upon the first, is a miracle story that provokes a controversy (Luke 13:10–17). Both passages appear exclusively in the Gospel of Luke. Our joint study will start with exegetical notes on the Gospel of Luke and the history of the interpretation of these particular verses and will then turn to the miniatures that illustrate them in an eleventh-century Byzantine manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Parisinus graecus 74 (figs. 1–2). François Bovon has interpreted the Gospel of Luke in a German collection, the Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, a series attentive to the history of the reception (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the biblical text in the life of the Christian church. He will explain the two New Testament passages and follow the path of patristic and Byzantine interpretation during these periods.

Shakespeare, Sidney, and Spenser in an Early Continental Library

This article presents an account of a hitherto unpublished library list in the Bibliothàque nationale de France: MS fr. 4188. The list, preceded by an inventory of mathematical instruments, provides entries for a little under 1,000 books of poetry, theology, philosophy, history, antiquarianism, mathematics, and the trivial arts, published between 1474 and 1621. The entries are distinguished by a high degree of bibliographical detail, including information about the books’ bindings. Dominated by Latin imprints, the library also includes a number of titles in French (the probable nationality of the owner) and English, including works by Shakespeare, Spenser and Sidney. It constitutes very early—perhaps the earliest—evidence for continental ownership of Shakespeare's poems The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. The English works are discussed in relation to the other learned interests of the owner, whose identity, profession and confession are speculated upon.

Noter, annoter, éditer la musique: Mélanges offerts à Catherine Massip ed. by Cécile Reynaud and Herbert Schneider (review)

Reviewed by: Noter, annoter, éditer la musique: Mélanges offerts à Catherine Massiped. by Cécile Reynaud and Herbert Schneider Darwin F. Scott Noter, annoter, éditer la musique: Mélanges offerts à Catherine Massip. Edited by Cécile Reynaud and Herbert Schneider. ( Hautes études médiévales et modernes, 103.) Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France; Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2012. [xvi, 752 p. ISBN 9782717725087 (BNF); 9782600013680 (Droz). i95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. For decades the scholarship, dedication, and influence of Catherine Massip—librarian, musicologist, teacher, and administrator extraordinaire—have identified her as a force majeure for the collection, preservation, editing, and study of French music and a champion of the trove of music sources housed in the libraries and archives of France. Following her retirement in 2010 after twenty-two years as director of the music department at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (henceforth BNF), an array of colleagues, former students, and friends from the ranks of librarians, musicologists, and musicians assembled to pay her collective homage with a volume of essays to celebrate a stellar career of accomplishment—a festschrift filled with heartfelt gratitude, admiration, and appreciation. Lauding Massip as one of the BNF’s “grandes figures” (p. xii), the congratulatory preface by the library’s general director Jacqueline Sanson (2007–14) and the introductory portrait by coeditors Cécile Reynaud (chief curator at the BNF’s music department) and Herbert Schneider (emeritus professor of musicology at Saarland University) capture the essence of Massip’s epic contributions. Her impact on the field is fully verified in the volume’s final pages by an exhaustive bibliography of her voluminous published output as author and editor of monographs, essay collections, library and exhibition catalogs, music editions, articles, encyclopedia entries, reviews, and recording notes. An overture and finale frame the essay collection with special tributes: William Christie, founder of the ensemble Les arts florissants, fondly recounts his long professional association and deep friendship with “notre chère Catherine” (p. 4), while Marcelle Benoit shares (from recently rediscovered documents) the evaluation she prepared as a member of the examination jury during Massip’s dissertation defense at the Sorbonne, noting her admiration for Massip’s methods and great intellectual precision. A pupil of Norbert Dufourcq, Massip quickly established herself as an authority on seventeenth-century French music with her published thesis, La vie des musiciens de Paris au temps de Mazarin( 1643–1661): Essai d’études sociale(La vie musicale en France sous les rois Bourbons, 24 [Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1976]), and her dissertation, revised and published as L’art de bien chanter: Michel Lambert, 1610–1696(Publications de la Société française de musicologie, troisième série: t. 6 [Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1999]). Upon employment in the BNF’s music department in 1976, her expertise expanded to encompass the sources of eighteenth-century French music and eventually a vigorous agenda for acquiring, documenting, and promoting the legacies of nineteenth-and especially twentieth-century composers, musicians, and dancers active in France, with a surge of interest during the 2000s in the life and work of Hector Berlioz. Massip’s recognition as an uncontestable research authority coupled with her relentless dedication to service led to prominent roles within many academic and library-based music organizations and initiatives from the late 1980s through 2013, [End Page 548]including membership on the advisory board of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles (CMBV), terms as president of the Société française de musicologie, the International Association of Music Libraries, and Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), as well as vice president of Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM). To mirror the sweeping range of Massip’s acumen, the editors have employed a comparably broad thematic and chronological scope flavored by the multiple French contexts of the title words to craft a volume of specialized essays that address microcosms of music’s written historical record, be they the practices of composition, notation, revision, transmission, and publication conveyed by the primary sources; the description, history, or analysis of the music and its social milieu; texts created or appropriated for musical setting and the special correlations...

Reassigning an Eleventh-Century Monastic Antiphoner: From Fossés to Glanfeuil (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 12584)

This article argues that an eleventh- or early twelfth-century Benedictine antiphoner and graduale, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 12584—thought to originate at the Parisian abbey of Fossés—was actually produced at Glanfeuil, a small monastery in southern Anjou. It is important to establish the correct provenance of this manuscript, since it is widely used by scholars owing to its early date, completeness, and position as one of the six monastic offices used in René-Jean Hesbert’s Corpus antiphonalium officii. The comparison of several elements of the office of Paris lat. 12584 with identical elements from a genuine, contemporary antiphoner from Fossés, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 12044 makes it clear that the former must come from Glanfeuil.

The Question of the Formation of Manuscript Production Workshops in Iran According to Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allah al-Hamadhānī’s Majmūʿa Rashīdiyya in the Bibliothèque nationale de France

In his main charitable foundation, the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī, near Tabriz, Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allah al-Hamadhānī (ca. 645-648–718/1247-1250–1318) set up a manuscript production workshop in order to produce regular copies of the Qurʾān, a collection of Ḥadīth and his own works. This article addresses the question of whether this workshop can be identified as a kitāb-khānah. It focuses on the earliest preserved manuscript that was most likely produced in, or in relation to the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī: the compendium of four theological books titled Majmūʿa Rashīdiyya (The Compendium of Rashīd al-Dīn), dated to 707–710/1307–1311 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 2324). This large-scale and lavishly illuminated volume is submitted to a detailed stylistic and spectrometric analysis. Unlike previous works where style and technique, especially pigments, are usually studied independently, this article proposes a new, unprecedented approach where both dimensions are examined in close connection in an attempt to reconstruct the manuscript’s decoration process and the type of organization that lies behind it.