The USC Illuminated Manuscripts Project: A Polymathic, Multimedia-Rich Digital Initiative

By Danielle Mihram and Melissa Miller

• Cicero, De officiis (15th century);
• Giles of Rome, Liber sententiarum, cum duobus tabulis (13th century);
• Petrus de Palude, Commentary upon Peter Lombard's Quatuorum libri sententiarum (15th century); and,
• William of Ockham, Scriptum aureum inceptoris Willielmi Occham supra praedicabilia et praedicamenta, with the quodlibets of Walter Burley (14th century).

• To highlight our Special Collections' primary and secondary sources within a specific area, and to continue incorporating such resources into interdisciplinary research and curricular activities.
• To conserve and preserve our manuscripts as artifacts by facilitating their access for a wider audience on campus, locally, and internationally, via our USC Digital Library's Collections
• To build quality control into all phases of the project, from initial planning to final evaluation.
• To build on our evolving best practices.
• To make available a model of interdisciplinary collaboration, one that provides multiple levels of discovery so as to open new research perspectives both on Medieval Europe and on antiquity.
• To develop strategic alliances by bringing together scholars and students from different fields of the humanities including (as a start) faculty and students in disciplines such as history, philosophy, religion, art history, music, classics, manuscript culture, and medieval literature, so as:
  • To reflect upon the role that the Medieval period historical sources can play in the contemporary humanistic and social sciences debates
  • Engage students in multiple literacies and evolving multi-modal forms of expression.

• To cultivate partnerships that complement our strengths, expand our reach, and apply our unique capabilities to support USC’s strategies and ambitions; and,
• [To promulgate] an appreciation of scholarship, in all its forms, and of the libraries’ essential role in informing the scholarship of the future.

• Build more inclusive and sustainable, relationships with communities of teaching, learning, research, and practice. (Theme 1, Goal B)
• Integrate Digital Library collections and processes more comprehensively with the work of USC faculty, students, and centers pursuing digital knowledge initiatives. (Theme 1 Goal B(b) )

4. Discovering the Unseen: Two examples (among many)

Hidden drawings

Current polymathic research in manuscript analyses includes the discovery of details of production methods such as hidden drawings beneath painted surfaces, and, sometimes, evidence of origin and authenticity. Non-invasive methods such as IR [Infrared Reflectography] imaging allows for the virtual stripping back of layers of paint and for seeing things that have been covered for hundreds of years. Such a technique helps to detect any overpainting or “retouches” – and it also allows the visualization of any under-drawing or preparatory sketches that the artists might have done.

Palimpsests

The medieval practice of autumn livestock-butchering, to conserve fodder for the winter, is thought to have been the primary source of skins used in the production of books. The production of a complete Bible, for example, could require the skins of several hundred animals, thus making books a rare and expensive commodity. By re-cycling pages of books that were unused, incomprehensible, or perhaps banned, it was possible to scrape or wash off the old writing to achieve a new blank page. It is the outcome of this recycling process that we call a palimpsest (the “re-scratched” page); see the British Library’s blog post, Palimpsests: The Art of Medieval Recycling. If the recycling was done meticulously, special techniques are necessary to recover the erased text. Thanks to multispectral imaging technology, many of the seemingly unreadable undertexts can now be recovered.

In our USC illuminated manuscript collection, a palimpsest can be found in the manuscript (written on vellum), Scriptum aureum inceptoris Willielmi Occham supra predicamenta et predicamenta Aristotelis, by William of Ockham’s (ca.1285 - ca.1349); Burlaeus Gualterus (1275-1345?). USC Libraries Call Number Z105.5 .O35 13-- .

One excellent example of a comprehensive research project relating to palimpsests is The Jubilees Palimpsest Project, founded and directed by Todd Hanneken at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

Over the past 4 or 5 years, there have been an increasing number and a variety of research papers reporting on the results of scientific analyses of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts (including the detection of forgeries). The role of analytical methods (e.g., advanced image technologies, fluorescence microscopy, and analytical algorithms) as indispensable tools for the comprehensive study of manuscripts is no longer in question (See: Clark, 2001); Ricardi, 2019).

An exemplar of this area of digital multidisciplinary research is Cambridge University’s “MINIARE; - Manuscript Illumination: Non-Invasive Analysis, Research and Expertise.” This project, launched in 2012, is an interdisciplinary initiative, using a combination of advanced scientific methods, together with cutting edge scientific protocol and digital technology, for the study of illuminated manuscripts.

MINIARE’s scientific objectives are to inform studies of the artistic, cultural, political, social, and economic environments in which the manuscripts were created, taking into account trade routes, social and international mobility, intellectual and technological developments. 

See also the very detailed Catalogue Raisonnẻ of the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) and, the companion Video (6.55 mins) - Secret histories of illuminated manuscripts: the MINIARE project.

Because Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts require a complexity of analysis, our strategic approach to the digitization of each manuscript is as follows:

(a) Identify its particularities/idiosyncrasies such as (and to name just a few): Original binding, parchment or vellum, gold and gold leaf, brilliant colors and composition of the illustrations, the mise-en-page (the French expression meaning ‘putting-on-the-page&rsqu;: i.e., the layout of the page, including text and images), the ductus (the specific handwriting of the scribe) and scribal practices, and provenance.

(b) Determine the pertinent digitization tools that will allow for a multifaceted and reflective understanding of the artifact: the constantly expanding toolbox of digital technologies now allows the exploration of manuscripts, early printed books, and rare books not only as historical and cultural documents, but also as richly produced artifacts and works of art featuring representative craftsmanship of the period in which they were designed and created.

(c) Choose advanced imaging techniques including 3-D, RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), hyperspectral and multispectral imaging. It is now possible to create specialized images such as those captured by raking light from angles other than a camera held directly above a flattened leaf. Like archaeological artifacts, manuscripts can be explored gradually using technological tools to gradually “excavate” the complex layers that make up each manuscript, so as to build a multifaceted digital archive of the manuscript.

6. Medieval Manuscripts

One of the earliest surviving examples of manuscripts of the Western world date from late antiquity. The Herculaneum Papyri (more than 1.000 papyrus scrolls, uncovered at Herculaneum, now stored at the National Museum in Naples, Italy), constitute the only extensive library of texts to survive from the classical world. According to scholarly research, the philosopher and poet, Philodemus of Gadara (ca.110 - ca. 30 BCE), wrote most of these works [7].

Most of the surviving examples of manuscripts of the Western world date between the third and eight centuries (Brown, 1971). They were made during a period that ranges between the late Roman Empire and the high Renaissance. Before the year 1200, medieval manuscripts were made in monasteries by monks and sometimes nuns, who were scribes and artists working “in the service of God.” After 1200, and with the rise of towns, manuscript production moved to city centers (Paris, Oxford, Florence) and scribes, artists, binders, and publishers belonged to guilds; they were paid for their works. Though Latin (the common language of the Church and of higher learning) is the language we find most often in medieval manuscripts, we can find medieval manuscripts containing histories, treatises, poetry, and devotional writings, written in native vernaculars: medieval French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish.

The great majority of early books in the Western world are of religious content so that most manuscript leaves and books surviving today are Bibles, Books of Hours, Antiphonals, Missals, and Breviaries, as well as Latin writings from before the common era (BCE). Generally, these works are attributed by the style of the script and rubrication [8], which are quite unique to their time and place of origin, and they can readily be so recognized. Thus, surviving works can be attributed with authority both to a correct city or region, and to their period within a date range of a generation or so.

Among these early books, the many surviving Books of Hours constitute one of the most significant groups of cultural artifacts from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance (mid-13th to mid-16th centuries). By reading these texts and looking at their illustrations, we can learn a great deal about this period. Prayers centered around the cult of the Virgin Mary are examples of great literary expressions of core human emotions, while the frequency of invocations to Saints Sebastian, Apollonia, and Margaret inform us about “the chronic problem of plague, the annoyance of toothache, and the dangers of childbirth.” (Pierce, 1997)

7. Scope of the Medieval Manuscripts in Our USC Collection

The acquisition of books by our Hoose Library of Philosophy began in the early 1900s with James Harmon Hoose (1835-1915). He joined USC’s College of Librarl Arts in Fall of 1896. At that time there were fourteen members of the faculty, with ninety students in the College, and he soon was recognized as an educational force in Southern California (Knoles, 1915-1916).

When Ralph Tyler Flewelling (1871-1960) came to USC, in the Fall of 1917, and became Head of the Department of Philosophy, the budget for the acquisition of books for the library was quite meager, and Flewelling began a successful fund-raising campaign which led to the acquisition of a significant number of the rare books and invaluable manuscripts (Nethery, 1076; and Werkmeister, 1962) which are now in our Special Collections Department.

Every manuscript in our collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts is unique, and the collection is quite diverse, including both religious and secular manuscripts, dating from the 13th-15th centuries, For example, and to name just a few, the collection includes:

• A leaf from a Breviary, with Latin text and music notation (Catholic Church, 1201-1300?) for use by the nuns in the Church of St. Pierre at Langres, France, and, more specifically, for Vespers for the fourth Sunday of Lent;
• Two Books of Hours, one from Bruges (Catholic Church, between 1460 and 1470) [9] and one from Louvain and/or Ghent (Catholic Church, between 1445 and 1460) [10]; and,
• A commentary by Petrus de Palude (Petrus de Palude, 1480) that belonged to Federigo de Montefeltro (1422-1482), Duke of Urbino, gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church, a patron of the arts and civil leader in Renaissance Italy [11]. This book includes an illuminated frame for its frontispiece, with Montefeltro’s coat of arms showing (in the center) the insignia of the gonfaloniership of the Holy Roman Church, granted to him in 1465 when Pius II became Pope. In the 18th century Federico’s huge collection of books and illuminated manuscripts was transferred to the Vatican Museums. That this manuscript is now part of our Special Collections is quite significant.

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