lisafdavis.bsky.social
Medievalist, Paleographer, Codicologist, Voynichologist; Executive Director, @medievalacademy.bsky.social; Brown Univ. and Yale Univ. alum; PhD; Red Sox fan
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Getting Started
Active Commenter
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Yes, for the central bifolium of a quire.
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Sure, that's a possibility, but there's absolutely no way to prove or disprove it unless an older manuscript is found. Without that, there's no evidence that it is a copy of an older manuscript.
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Thank you so much!
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Now all you have to do is remember how to spell “Luxeuil”!
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The Newberry fragment is online here: collections.newberry.org/asset-manage...
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And another in Munich (BSB Clm 29265(1): www.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb0007...
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Here's a fragment of the same manuscript at Yale (Beinecke MS 193): collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/1026...
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One of the other really cool things about this manuscript are these Caroline annotations! They should be pretty legible to you, since they were written after the standardized letterforms were adopted in the Caroline era. Gotta love evidence of later readership!
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How’d you do?
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Once you know the rules, it’s actually not that difficult! Give it a try:
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As with other pre-Caroline minuscules, however, [e] ligates with other letters to create a form that is easily confused with [et]. Here’s [ex] followed by [er]:
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[&] for [et], as expected:
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…when it doesn’t. The hard part about Luxeuil are the ligatures. In particular, [te]. The form is essentially a sideways [t] attached to an [e]:
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[t] has a lovely curl at the left, except…
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As usual, [s] and [r] are sometimes hard to distinguish. The difference is that [s] has a round bow, while [r] is pointed (this is true for nearly all pre-Caroline scripts):
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And just look at those [g]s! 😍
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One of the most distinctive features of the script is the [a], essentially a slightly-skewed version of the [cc] form we see in Insular manuscripts. That’s because the script was influenced by the Insular manuscripts St. Columban brought with him!
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So let’s get to it. Most examples of Luxeuil are fragmentary. This ca. 700 CE fragment from the Newberry Library(MS Frag. 1) is a great example. It comes from a manuscript of the Biblical Prophets of which several other fragments are known. This one preserves Haggai I:7-9 (recto) and 11-14 (verso).
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It is unfamiliar because it was superceded by Caroline minuscule, which is the direct ancestor of the letterforms we use today. See how easy Caroline is to read? Just wait...
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Like other pre-Caroline minuscules, Luxeuil has lots of features that would later be transformed by the regularization of script during the reign of Charlemagne. That’s why it can be so difficult for modern students to read.
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Like many of the other newly-established abbeys in northern Europe, the monks at Luxeuil developed their own style of writing the Latin alphabet, known as Luxeuil Minuscule. Luxeuil was one of several styles of script known as pre-Caroline (i.e. “before Charlemagne”).
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in 590 CE, one of those Irish missionaries, St. Columban, founded a Benedictine monastery in Luxeuil-les-Bains, formerly the Roman settlement of Luxovium in NE France. The Abbey became an important center of learning and manuscript production.
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First, a little background. After the Romans gave up on northern Europe in the 5th century & retreated to Rome, things were a little chaotic in what we now know as France and Germany (and elsewhere). But monasteries – many of them founded by Irish missionaries – kept the intellectual flames burning.
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The people have spoken! Luxeuil thread coming tomorrow...
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Thank you!
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Thank you so much!
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Yes!
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It will be recorded and posted on the website of The Getty Center.
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I don't know what it is, but I am convinced it is not a fake of any kind but is an authentic fifteenth-century manuscript that does contain meaningful text.
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Click "Get Tickets" - it's free, but you have to register.
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Cool!
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"Duperie"? I don't think so.
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Want to learn more? You know what to do. www.getty.edu/calendar/art...
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Check out the entire manuscript here: collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002...
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See what I mean? You don't have to be able to read the text of the #Voynich Manuscript to learn something about it! You just need to be able to "read" the material evidence (but it would be cool if we COULD read the text...)
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Inside the manuscript, vellum guards were added to reinforce some of the more-fragile gutters.
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Finally, modern restoration work was undertaken in 1967, when the manuscript was owned by New York bookdealer H. P. Kraus: vellum strips were added to support the sewing stations, attached with white cotton thread.
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Paper was adhered to the spine-side of the quires during that early-modern rebinding to protect them from wear.
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When the manuscript was rebound by the Jesuits in Rome in the 18th or early 19th century (its current limp-vellum binding), they had to cut the cords of the sewing stations to release them from the boards to which they were attached. You can clearly see that the cords were cut.
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You can still see the offset of the leather turnins along the upper edge of the last page (the darkened section).
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In the 15th c., the manuscript was bound between wooden boards covered with leather. The cords would have been attached to the boards by securing them in channels running through the wood.
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Paula Zyats (in Clemens, ed., The Voynich Manuscript, p. 25): “The Voynich Manuscript is sewn with bast fiber thread (linen or hemp) onto double cords made of flax.” This early binding was from the 15th century. The three sewing stations are clearly visible, with their original cords and thread.
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Believe it or not, there is a lot of evidence here, spanning the entire history of the manuscript!
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In this image of the exposed spine of the bookblock, the horizontal striations are the spine-side of each gathering, or quire, of the manuscript. The three vertical columns are the sewing stations that attach the quires to one another and to the covers.
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Here's some of the physical evidence I was looking at when I spent a few hours with the #Voynich manuscript earlier this week. Lucky for us, Yale conservator Paula Zyats has left the spine accessible, so we can see the manuscript's structure!