![]() Īlthough it is often difficult to study the habits, private rituals, and emotional states of people who lived in the medieval past, medieval manuscripts carry signs of use and wear on their very surfaces that provide records of some of these elusive phenomena. #LATE MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS BOOK OF HOURS ARCHIVE#184 C 2 (Photo: Byvanck archive artwork in the public domain). 1400-10, tempera and gold on vellum, 349 x 270 (265 x 179) mm, 2 columns, 32 lines, littera textualis, Latin. Missal of the Haarlem Linen Weavers Guild, North Holland (Haarlem?), ca. 149v), showing damage where the priest repeatedly kissed it. Many of these animals do not exist, or the information about the ones that do is inaccurate, but throughout the Middle Ages, this book was wildly popular, and many richly illustrated copies are extent.Fig. Books on astronomy and astrology (these two subjects were more tightly linked in the Middle Ages), herbals (books about plants and their uses), and medical texts were frequently included in major ecclesiastical libraries, as well as some lay ones.Īmong the most famous and widely circulated type medieval manuscript was the bestiary, an often-illustrated book of animals. Some types include computus manuscripts which were books dealing with the calculation of time these were particularly important in the early Middle Ages, when the matter of calculating the date of Easter was a major point of contention. Many of these are types of manuscripts are concerned with aspects of the natural world. Most manuscripts created during the Middle Ages had an explicit function, both for clerics and lay people, but some manuscripts were more fundamentally function based. Many books of hours were also girdle books, a book that could be attached to a girdle or belt. Many books of hours and similar lay books were made small and portable, able to be used anywhere, a direct counterpoint to the large, lavishly bound format of many ecclesiastical manuscripts. Few of these survive, as they were generally not as richly decorated and of less interest to collectors in later generations. In a similar vein, there was the biblia pauperum, a Bible, though told mostly through images, designed for members of the populace with little money or literacy. These books became wildly popular, and an incredibly wide range of them were produced, from sumptuously decorated to plain and utilitarian. Perhaps the most popular book created in the latter half of the Middle Ages was the book of hours, a book of prayers used for private devotion, modeled off the divine office practiced by members of the clergy. These became, in a sense, the best-sellers of the mid- and late-Middle Ages. While monastery scriptoria were the primary center for manuscript production in the early medieval period, in the later Middle Ages, a market grew up for manuscripts among the laity, or people who are not members of the clergy. Monastery and ecclesiastical centers were not the only source of manuscripts. ![]() ![]() These types of manuscripts were both created and used at religious institutions, primarily monasteries but also churches and cathedrals, and would have been used frequently and daily. Other ecclesiastical books included hagiographies (collections of saint's lives), martyrologies (collections of martyr's lives), and collections of letters from members of the Church (often called decretals, or a pontifical if they came from the Pope). Other important ecclesiastical books were those relating to music, such as the antiphonal and gradual, both of which were typically large-format books consisting of the parts of the divine hours or the Mass that are sung. ![]() These types of books were often highly decorated, depending on the monastery's resources, with rich illustrations, decorated initial letters, and elaborate binding. All of these types of books contain different prayers or rites. These included the following: breviary, collectary, epistolary, evangeliary, missal, sacramentary, psalter, sanctorale, and temporale. Many types of books were created for use in the divine office, a cycle of daily devotional prayers performed by members of the clergy, or for use in the Mass. Here is a brief introduction to some of the major types of ecclesiastical manuscripts that were produced during the Middle Ages: As such, many books focused on ecclesiastical matters. Throughout most of the medieval period, books were made in monasteries, which frequently included a scriptorium - a workshop for manuscripts. ![]()
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