Medieval scribe
Portrait of Chaucer from Hoccleve's Regement (or Regiment) of Princes.
[licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.]
Posted on 10/15/2011 9:05:37 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Scholars led by Professor Linne Mooney in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, carried out research aimed at identifying the scribes who made the first copies of works by major authors of the 14th and early 15th centuries, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland.
The project has launched a new freely-accessible website www.medievalscribes.com, created by the University of Sheffield's HRI, which illustrates each medieval or early modern manuscript of writings by five major Middle English authors: Chaucer, Langland, John Gower, John Trevisa and Thomas Hoccleve.
Professor Mooney said: "The clerks of the London Guildhall form the invisible link between medieval authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and their first audiences, the original owners of the medieval manuscripts we study today."
The research began with Professor Mooney's discovery of the identity of Adam Pinkhurst, Scrivener of London, who wrote the first copies of works by Chaucer, including his Canterbury Tales.
Funded by a four year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the research also involved Dr Estelle Stubbs, of the University of York and the University of Sheffield and Dr Simon Horobin of the University of Oxford.
The site provides a description of each manuscript, including details such as dating and dialect, detailed descriptions of each scribe's handwriting, and illustrations of a typical page written by each scribe. It also features illustrations of eight letter forms typical of each scribe's writing so that further identifications of work by them can be made.
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Medieval scribe
Portrait of Chaucer from Hoccleve's Regement (or Regiment) of Princes.
[licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.]
DNA Used In Attempt To Solve Christian Mystery
The Guardian (UK) | 7-21-2003 | Tim Radford
Posted on 07/21/2003 3:49:04 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/950128/posts
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The printing press is definitely one of mankind’s greatest inventions.
I wholeheartedly agree.
OTOH, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were both first published in longhand. :’)
I’m just glad no one ever figured out the text is in a combination of Papyrus and Comic Sans MS. ;’)
And now internet.
When you think about it The Canterbury Tales isn’t really THAT much different from.
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Yup... right under beer, tobacco, cheese, and sausage (the four food groups)...
beer started civilization the rest of those items did nothing other then fill our bellies.
Yes, but there's nothing quite like a book written on vellum using blood and horse urine ink.
And there is nothing like hand lettered calligraphy. It’s relaxing and meditative for the person doing it too.
I wonder how much a horse piss collector was paid in those days. I also wonder what his wife told her friends that he did for a living.
A hand hand lettered, calligraphy book is also relaxing and meditative for the reader as well.
It is art on several levels: what the words say, how the words look, and how the book feels.
It's just not the same on a Kindle.
I'm going to guess he didn't have to be paid and just did it for his general amusement, and since the horse piss probably smelled better than his wife, she told her friends he was a perfumer.
After the words were written, a second, third, fourth and fifth scribe would check the work and each would write the exact number of words on the bottom of the page. The center word and character would be marked on each page as well.
The accuracy of the Bible had been questioned for years, until the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls. The oldest manuscripts were identical to those scrolls.
That’s for the Old Testament. Things were a bit looser in the Middle Ages otherwise.
It was meant to be facetious. Sorry it hit you otherwise.
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