A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Christian, Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and writer serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank. He also founded a monastery, Vivarium, where he worked extensively the last three decades of his life.
A scriptorium was a writing room in medieval European monasteries for the copying and illuminating of manuscripts by scribes.
The St Cuthbert Gospel, also known as the Stonyhurst Gospel or the St Cuthbert Gospel of St John, is an early 8th-century pocket gospel book, written in Latin. Its finely decorated leather binding is the earliest known Western bookbinding to survive, and both the 94 vellum folios and the binding are in outstanding condition for a book of this age. With a page size of only 138 by 92 millimetres, the St Cuthbert Gospel is one of the smallest surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The essentially undecorated text is the Gospel of John in Latin, written in a script that has been regarded as a model of elegant simplicity.
The Book of Deer is a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book with early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It contains the earliest surviving Gaelic writing from Scotland.
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons. They were commonly used for learning to read. Many Psalters were richly illuminated, and they include some of the most spectacular surviving examples of medieval book art.
Books of hours are Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures. These illustrations would combine picturesque scenes of country life with sacred images.
The Codex Amiatinus is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside, and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older. It is the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts.
The Vergilius Vaticanus, also known as Vatican Virgil, is a Late Antique illuminated manuscript containing fragments of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics. It was made in Rome in around 400 CE, and is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid. It is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.
The Vespasian Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter decorated in a partly Insular style produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of the Bible. It was produced in southern England, perhaps in St. Augustine's Abbey or Christ Church, Canterbury or Minster-in-Thanet, and is the earliest illuminated manuscript produced in "Southumbria" to survive.
The Paris Psalter is a Byzantine illuminated manuscript, 38 x 26.5 cm in size, containing 449 folios and 14 full-page miniatures. The Paris Psalter is considered a key monument of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance, a 10th-century renewal of interest in classical art closely identified with the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (909-959) and his immediate successors.
The Utrecht Psalter is a ninth-century illuminated psalter which is a key masterpiece of Carolingian art; it is probably the most valuable manuscript in the Netherlands. It is famous for its 166 lively pen illustrations, with one accompanying each psalm and the other texts in the manuscript. The precise purpose of these illustrations, and the extent of their dependence on earlier models, have been matters of art-historical controversy. The psalter spent the period between about 1000 to 1640 in England, where it had a profound influence on Anglo-Saxon art, giving rise to what is known as the "Utrecht style". It was copied at least three times in the Middle Ages. A complete facsimile edition of the psalter was made in 1875, and another in 1984 (Graz).
The Grandes Heures de Rohan is an illuminated manuscript book of hours, painted by the anonymous artist known as the Rohan Master, probably between 1418 and 1425, in the Gothic style. It contains the usual offices, prayers and litanies in Latin, along with supplemental texts, decorated with 11 full page, 54 half page, and 227 small miniatures, decorated with tempera paints and gold leaf. The book margins are decorated with Old Testament miniatures with captions in Old French, in the style of a Bible moralisée. The full page illuminations are renowned for the highly emotional and dramatic portrayal of the agonies of Christ and the grief of the Virgin. According to Millard Meiss, "The Rohan Master cared less about what people do than what they feel. Whereas his great predecessors excelled in the description of the novel aspects of the natural world, he explored the realm of human feeling." Meiss concludes that the Rohan Master was the "greatest expressionist in 15th century France." The manuscript is currently housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The Eadwine Psalter or Eadwin Psalter is a heavily illuminated 12th-century psalter named after the scribe Eadwine, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, who was perhaps the "project manager" for the large and exceptional book. The manuscript belongs to Trinity College, Cambridge and is kept in the Wren Library. It contains the Book of Psalms in three languages: three versions in Latin, with Old English and Anglo-Norman translations, and has been called the most ambitious manuscript produced in England in the twelfth century. As far as the images are concerned, most of the book is an adapted copy, using a more contemporary style, of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, which was at Canterbury for a period in the Middle Ages. There is also a very famous full-page miniature showing Eadwine at work, which is highly unusual and possibly a self-portrait.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.
The Munich Serbian Psalter is a 14th-century illuminated psalter written in Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension. With its 229 leaves illustrated with 148 miniatures, it is regarded as the most extensively illuminated Serbian manuscript book. It was written after 1370 in Moravian Serbia, either for its ruler Prince Lazar, or more likely, for his successor Stefan Lazarević. The book was rebound in 1630 by Serbian Patriarch Pajsije. It was taken to Bavaria in the late 17th century, and has been kept in the Bavarian State Library in Munich since the beginning of the 19th century.
The Theodore Psalter is an illustrated manuscript and compilation of the Psalms and the canticles, or Odes from the Old Testament. "This Psalter has been held in the British Library since 1853 as Additional 19.352," wrote Princeton Art History professor Charles Barber in his first essay that is a companion to the Theodore Psalter E-Facsimile. Barber called the Psalter, "One of the richest illuminated manuscripts to survive from Byzantium."
Florentius was a monk, scribe and artist of the monastery of San Pedro de Berlangas (Valeránica) in the County of Castile.
