MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS BLADE AND KNIFE PROFESSIONAL

It is probably fair to say that theoretical knowledge is best when mediated through practical experience. Heather Child (London, 1985) are useful and improving works, but they were penned to revive and develop, or improve and nourish a modern craft, not to aid inquiry into an historical technology (Lowe and Brown used Johnston, Drogin is cited in the bibliography of the commentary volume to the 1990 Kells facsimile, and Child contains contributions by Donald Jackson, chief scribe of the 'scriptorium' currently producing the monumental bible for St. Edward Johnston, Writing, Illuminating and Lettering (London, 1906), Marc Drogin, Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique (Montclair, 1980), and The Calligrapher's Handbook, ed. They have had to rely on works chiefly penned for calligraphers.

MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS BLADE AND KNIFE PROFESSIONAL

In their efforts to gain insight into 'furrowing' text (Isidore, Etymologies, VI, 14, 71), palaeographers have not had the benefit of a text specifically written for them, a work which can assume professional knowledge of ancient and medieval remains of manuscript culture, and which can instruct the learned in the construction, range, capability, and handling of tools used to write the scripts of Antiquity, and the Middle Ages. Lowe, Jean Mallon, and Julian Brown stand out. Few have been the palaeographers who have followed Winckelmann's example, but the names of Otto Hurm, E. Although I can site no exceptional epigrapher who took chisel in hand, in their respective domains Gibbon, and Winckelmann, are notable exceptions, the first riding around Hampshire with the militia (a colonel but no Blimp), the second experimenting with writing tools from Herculaneum. Epigraphers, historians, and art historians have, by and large, kept their hands clean and not become 'vile mechanical artists' for a seemingly more immediate experience of what was usually encountered in the study.

Some philologists have proved memorable poets, and decent authors. Military historians used to be made out of Colonel Blimps after they retired, and had had enough of tasting (or ordering others to taste) the conflicts of their day. Archaeologists have had little choice in the matter. Th ere have always been scholars for whom the temptation to dirty their hands in their work has proved too much. The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Suzanne Karr Schmidt, curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry, states that it is possible that the depiction is a transfer copy from a drawing where Jerome was right-handed, but there is no conclusive evidence to prove this theory. However, as historian Timothy Graham mentioned when reviewing Parkes’ book, there is a rare depiction of Saint Jerome writing with his left hand, in a 15th-century manuscript kept in Chicago’s Newberry Library. The knife was used to pin down and stabilise the parchment on the desk as the right hand glided from left margin to right margin. Most artistic depictions of scribes show them with quill in the right hand, and knife in the left. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)ĭespite the impracticality of left-handed writing, Parkes detected several features in surviving medieval writing that were caused by writing this way: awkward rhythms, blotting, and difficulty in maintaining a controlled movement from the left to the right. Many artistic portrayals of medieval scribes show them holding a quill in their right hand and a knife in their left.

Medieval manuscripts blade and knife