Writing culture

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?