Yale Library Website on Medieval Bookbinding

Yale University Library has a helpful website called the Traveling Scriptorium that’s meant to serve as a teaching aid for the study of the medieval and early modern book. It’s run by by the library’s conservators and curators and, although updates appear infrequent, what’s online is really helpful and well presented. I expect the material would work great in a classroom and their photos would look great in a presentation. Here are the PDFs that are online:

• Ink & Pigment Sampler
• Medieval Manuscripts: Bookbinding Terms, Materials, Methods, and Models
• Medieval to Early Modern Ink & Pigment Recipes

Here are samples from the Medieval Manuscripts PDF:

HT: @roger_pearse

Medieval Musings in the Margins

The brainpickings blog lists a number of curious notes in margins and colophons made by medieval scribes (originally from the Spring 2012 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly:

"New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

"I am very cold."

"That's a hard page and a weary work to read it."

"Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen."

"This page has not been written very slowly."

"The parchment is hairy."

"The ink is thin."

"Thank God, it will soon be dark."

"Oh, my hand."

"Now I've written the whole thing; for Christ's sake give me a drink."

"Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims you sight, it twists your stomach and your sides."

"St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing."

"While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight."

"As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe."

"This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, 'The hand that wrote it is no more'."

Cf. the nice little directions for use in Greg.-Aland 1030.

Do you know of any other gems? Share in the comments!

HT: Ingrid Lilly