Category: Image, Medieval manuscript, United States, Connecticut
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This collection draws together images from The Medieval Book, the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Beinecke Library in 1988 and curated by Vice-Provost Barbara Shailor. A celebration of the Beinecke Library?s extraordinary collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, the exhibition examined the development, construction, and function of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The manuscript collections have been described extensively in the Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University , volumes 1-3 of which were edited by Barbara Shailor, and volume 4 of which was edited by Robert Babcock, Lisa Davis, and Philip Rusche.
The Collection The Beinecke Library’s Medieval and Renaissance collections document the history of human thought from the Byzantine era through 1600. The first medieval manuscript recorded in the Yale collection was acquired in 1714, and was the gift of Elihu Yale. An illustrated copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis , it attracted the special attention of Yale President Ezra Stiles, who read the manuscript and annotated it in the 1790s. The systematic collecting of medieval manuscripts at Yale, however, dates from the late nineteenth century, and the most active period for collecting was after 1930.
The Arthurian Romances, or MS 229, is one of the jewels in the crown of medieval manuscript illumination. Written in Northern France toward the end of the 13th century, this copy of the great French romance is known for the abundance and richness of its illuminations, and even more so for the intricacy, mystery, and wildness of the images in the margins including animals, jesters, archers, and musicians. About the Codex Parchment, ff. i (paper) + 363 + i (paper). Written in elegant gothic textura by one scribe, with a few interlinear corrections in later hands.
