Manuscripts

Manuscript Studies · Music

Singing along in the margin

In the early medieval books of Fleury, neumes (an early form of music notation) are a regular occurrence in the margins. Who wrote these neumes and why?

A new reading of medieval ‘doodles’

Doodles in medieval manuscripts are often interpreted as idle and mindless scribbles. But is this an accurate assessment? Could doodles instead reveal a hitherto unexplored way that people in the Middle Ages interacted with their manuscripts?

Art History

John of Pamele’s Illustrated Rent Book

John of Pamele’s illustrated ‘Vieil Rentier’ is one of the few surviving secular rent books from before 1300. Its richly illustrated pages show John of Pamele as a commited landlord managing his far-flung properties.

Leiden's medieval manuscripts online: An update

Erik-Jan Dros, project officer on the ARMA (Art of Reading in the Middle Ages) project, takes us through the developments in the digitisation of the medieval manuscripts in Leiden University Library's collection which took place during 2021.