Much of what is known about the past often rests upon the chance survival of objects and texts. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the fragments of medieval manuscripts re-used as bookbindings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such fragments provide a tantalizing, yet often problematic glimpse into the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages. Exploring the opportunities and difficulties such documents provide, this volume concentrates on the c. 50,000 fragments of medieval Latin manuscripts stored in archives across the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. This large collection of fragments (mostly from liturgical works) provides rich evidence about European Latin book culture, both in general and in specific relation to the far north of Europe, one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. As the essays in this volume reveal, individual and groups of fragments can play a key role in increasing and advancing knowledge about the acquisition and production of medieval books, and in helping to distinguish locally made books from imported ones. Taking an imaginative approach to the source material, the volume goes beyond a strictly medieval context to integrate early modern perspectives that help illuminate the pattern of survival and loss of Latin manuscripts through post-Reformation practices concerning reuse of parchment. In so doing it demonstrates how the use of what might at first appear to be unpromising source material can offer unexpected and rewarding insights into diverse areas of European history and the history of the medieval book.

This collection of essays engages with a variety of aspects of early modern book culture in the 16th-17th centuries, considered in the Catholic context. The contributions reflect on the engagement of institutions and authorities in the process of book production, bringing to the fore the role of networks in this process; show the book as a tool of resistance to the Protestant Reformation; give insight into the content and design of book collections; showcase textual production in the context of cultural appropriation and shed light on the role of the image in the propagation of Catholicism. Together the sixteen contributions demonstrate the diversity of the Catholic book in its forms and functions, in various social and national contexts.

An examination of hagiographical traditions and their impact.

The textual heritage of Medieval Latin is one of the greatest reservoirs of human culture. Repertories list more than 16,000 authors from about 20 modern countries. Until now, there has been no introduction to this world in its full geographical extension. Forty contributors fill this gap by adopting a new perspective, making available to specialists (but also to the interested public) new materials and insights. The project presents an overview of Medieval (and post-medieval) Latin Literatures as a global phenomenon including both Europe and extra-European regions. It serves as an introduction to medieval Latin's complex and multi-layered culture, whose attraction has been underestimated until now. Traditional overviews mostly flatten specificities, yet in many countries medieval Latin literature is still studied with reference to the local history. Thus the first section presents 20 regional surveys, including chapters on authors and works of Latin Literature in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. Subsequent chapters highlight shared patterns of circulation, adaptation, and exchange, and underline the appeal of medieval intermediality, as evidenced in manuscripts, maps, scientific treatises and iconotexts, and its performativity in narrations, theatre, sermons and music. The last section deals with literary “interfaces,” that is motifs or characters that exemplify the double-sided or the long-term transformations of medieval Latin mythologemes in vernacular culture, both early modern and modern, such as the legends about King Arthur, Faust, and Hamlet.

A 3-page manuscript in Latin, probably a fragment of a longer manuscript, circa 18th century.

Law | Book | Culture in the Middle Ages takes a detailed view on the role of manuscripts and the written word in legal cultures, spanning the medieval period across western and central Europe.

This book investigates the nature of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages from the perspective of medieval Scandinavia by discussing how a multimodal and multilingual Scandinavian culture emerged through the dynamic interchange of foreign and local impulses in the minds of creative intellectuals. By deploying cognitive theory, this volume conceptualizes intellectual culture as the result of the individual's cognition, which incorporates physical perceptions of the world, memory and creation, rationality, emotionality and spirituality, and decision making. In doing so, it elucidates the diversity of social roles that could be assumed by people engaged in the activity of thinking. Attention is paid in particular to the key intellectual activities of negotiating secular and religious authority and identity; to thinking and learning through verbal and visual means; and to ruminating on worldly existence and heavenly salvation. These processes are explored in a series of essays that focus on various visual and textual artefacts, among them Church art and sculptures, manuscript fragments, and texts of both different languages (Latin and Old Norse) and genres (sagas, poetry and grammatical treatises, laws, liturgical explanations and theological texts). The variety of intellectual and ideational processes connected to the textual and material culture of medieval Scandinavia forms the focal point of this study. As a result, this book actively seeks to transcend the traditional cultural dichotomies of written versus oral material, Latin versus vernacular, lay versus secular, or European versus Nordic by foregrounding the cognitive and creative agency of intellectuals in medieval Scandinavia.

Two small manuscript fragments.