Call for paper, meeting « Around the Digital Library of Mont Saint-Michel. State of research on the ancient monastic library » [Avranches – Mont-Saint-Michel, September 5-7, 2018] (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Jagiellonian Library’s collection of French manuscripts
2005
The Cracow collection of manuscripts from the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin contains a number of highly valuable medieval manuscripts. Here, from among the Old French collection, the author identifies and studies the composition, among other works, of a unique compilation of religious texts from the region of Metz
Revue bénédictine, 2023
AS ARCHIVIST AND CORRESPONDENT OF THE CABINET DES CHARTES Modern scholarship into the medieval past owes a great deal to the efforts of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century researchers. 1 Labouring in secular and especially ecclesiastical archives, they inventoried, transcribed, and subsequently also disseminated the contents of original documents, many of which were later confiscated, dispersed, or destroyed during the revolutionary period. Arguably the most ambitious of these efforts was coordinated by the Cabinet des Chartes, an office specially created for this purpose by the French government. Here, over the course of less than three decades (1762-90), the staff assembled an extraordinary collection of tens of thousands of copies of charters pertaining to the nation's medieval history. 2 Nearly two thousand volumes full of charter copies, letters, and working papers in the Collection Moreau of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris bear witness to the enormous scope of the project, the Cabinet's origins, and its internal organization. Furthermore, they also reveal the challenges faced by director Jacob-Nicolas Moreau (1717-1803) in realizing the analogue precursor of the modern full-text database that was the Dépôt des Chartes. 3 1. I wish to thank Melissa Provijn for her comments on the draft version of this paper. 2. D. Gembicki, 'Das Dépôt des chartes (1762-1790). Ein historisches Forschungszentrum', in K.
Identifying and Dating Mont Saint Michel's Early Monastic Buildings, c.1070-1228
Architectural History, 2023
One of the best-known monastic settlements of western Europe, the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel occupies the summit of a prodigiously steep island site off the coast of Normandy in northern France. The church was built between 1023 and c. 1080–85. The monastic buildings, to the north of the church, were arranged vertically as much as horizontally, reflecting the constraints of the site. They appear to have comprised three adjacent and interconnecting buildings, two of three storeys, the other of two. However, two of these three ranges were overbuilt in the early thirteenth century by an ambitious development which became known as the Merveille (c. 1212–28). This article seeks to identify the buildings that the Merveille replaced and thus the entire complex as it existed in the twelfth century. This inevitably involves a certain amount of speculation and perhaps for this reason the complex has hitherto been largely ignored, important though it is for an understanding of the abbey’s early history. The article also discusses other building projects relevant to the monks, such as the cemetery, the twelfth-century Hôtellerie and the thirteenth-century infirmary and mortuary chapel, and analyses the genesis of the Merveille. Among the findings or propositions are that the monks’ cemetery was housed in what may once have been a ducal palace; that the abbey’s cloister occupied the same position as it does today but was at a lower, mezzanine level an was smaller than the present cloister; that the chapter house and infirmary were probably adjacent to the west walk of the cloister; that the original provision for kitchen and cellar and for sleeping space was inadequate; and that the Merveille, which was the work of Abbot Raoul des Îles, was not entirely new-build as sometimes thought, but a transformation and redevelopment of buildings that already existed.
In Manuscript and Print: The Fifteenth-century Library of Scheyern Abbey
2014
This dissertation explores the library of Scheyern Abbey through religious, artistic, bibliographical, and historical paths in order to articulate more clearly the history of book production and library growth during the revolutionary "book age" of the fifteenth century. I have reassembled the now scattered fifteenth-century books from the monastery and examined the entire collection to show how one institution adapted to the increasing bibliographic requirements of the period, first through manuscript and then manuscript and This project entailed many quiet hours examining manuscripts and incunabula in rare book libraries in Europe and North America and far too many solitary hours staring at a computer screen, and yet there are a great many people to thank for their help, support, and encouragement during this process. If, in enumerating my gratitude, I have inadvertently overlooked anyone, my sincere apologies and heartfelt thanks nonetheless. First of all, I have to thank all of the librarians, curators, and archivists who allowed me access to their collections and answered my questions, whether in person or via email requests from overseas. Foremost among these is Bettina Wagner at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, whose generosity and hospitality have supported this project since its inception. Also at the BSB, I would like thank Brigitte Gullath, Head of the Manuscript and Rare Book Reading Room, who allowed me to see restricted materials and to produce binding rubbings. I must also thank Johannes Pommeranz and Antje Grebe (Nuremberg,