The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this fifth episode she discusses the traces that readers left in the books they used.
A medieval manuscript book is an archaeological object with many layers, not only revealing traces from the scribe, but also traces from the users it encountered during the many centuries of its existence.
Interlinear or marginal annotations (called glosses or scholia) contain explanations of or comments on the text. Sometimes the lay-out is designed to facilitate commenting (BPL 82). Some manuscript books contain not only the annotations of several readers or ‘nota-bene’ signs to mark important passages, but also doodles without significant relation to the basic tekst (BPL 186).

Explore these manuscripts (held by Leiden University Libraries) yourself:
BPL 82: [ Ссылка ]
BPL 186: [ Ссылка ]

This video is created for ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ project which explores how medieval reading culture evolved and became a fundamental aspect of European culture. The project is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union. Project website: [ Ссылка ].

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