From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V1 #30 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Monday, February 2 1998 Volume 01 : Number 030 In this issue: Re: [scribes]: Re: Heraldry Re: [scribes]: line spacing and cutting quills Re: [scribes]: cutting quills [scribes]: Illumination/Calligraphy resources on the web (a little long) [scribes]: Post on MSS. images from Web sites ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 08:07:21 -0800 From: John Stracke Subject: Re: [scribes]: Re: Heraldry (Off topic, but...) ab873@jepms4.jep.cummins.com wrote: > >> %"Amberglyph@aol.com wrote: >> >> I don't know what to do about 'defuct' arms, those held by dead or >> inactive members. The college has taken the stand that registered arms are >> forever, just like in the Middle Ages. > I agree - especially with inactive people. Inactive, yes, definitely. However, in the long run--say, if the SCA lasts another 30 years--we're going to have a huge problem. I suspect the medieval heralds didn't have to deal with quite so many registrations. We have devices for non-nobles; even without that, we have hundreds of new nobles per year. We also don't have families inheriting arms. Mind you, I don't have a good solution, nor do I think we need one yet; but I do think the time will come when we'll have to change the rules somehow. /================================================================\ |John Francis Stracke| http://www.thibault.org |S/MIME & HTML OK| |francis@thibault.org|===========================================| |Power Mac w/PPP | My strength is as the strength of ten | |My Mac, my opinions.| because my code is pure. | \================================================================/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 11:03:39 EST From: Luiseach@aol.com Subject: Re: [scribes]: line spacing and cutting quills Dorinda wrote in her inquiry about line spacing: the pieces I have seen with the guidelines left intact seem to have the letters "floating" in between They must have let their eye mark both the bottom and the top. Were there other lines that I couldn't see or were they just REALLY good after years of practice?.>> This question came up in a mundane calligraphy class I took several years ago. The teacher said that it was "relatively easy" to float between the lines and challenged us to go home and try it, using an ordinary pen and regular lined notebook-type paper. I tried it and she was right; it only took a few days to get fairly consistent in size with letters floated in the narrow space. As far as cutting quills, I've tried it and I'm very glad I live in the era of metal pen nibs--personally I suspect that the medieval scribes had apprentices do most of the preliminary work and just did the final trimming themselves, also they may well have cut several quills at a time which would have made it easier to keep the size consistent and let the scribe simply switch to a new quill when the old one got soggy, thus avoiding any interruption in writing. Luighseach nic Lochlainn Dreiburgen, Caid ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:09:11 +0000 From: "Jessica Wilbur" Subject: Re: [scribes]: cutting quills > As far as cutting quills, I've tried it and I'm very glad I live in the era of > metal pen nibs--personally I suspect that the medieval scribes had apprentices > do most of the preliminary work and just did the final trimming themselves, > also they may well have cut several quills at a time which would have made it > easier to keep the size consistent and let the scribe simply switch to a new > quill when the old one got soggy, thus avoiding any interruption in writing. > > Luighseach nic Lochlainn > Dreiburgen, Caid Well, I haven't actually cut any quills yet, but I've been doing some research on it lately, in preparation to try doing it. I read (I think in de Hamel's _Scribes and Illuminators_) that medieval scribes would cut 60-100 quills at a time, in preparation for a full day of writing. Apparently they wore down fairly quickly. The nibs could be re-cut, but only so often... My two feathers, Muireann ni Riordain Ponte Alto, Atlantia (Jessica Wilbur, Northern VA, USA) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:02:18 -0500 From: "L.A. Christie" Subject: [scribes]: Illumination/Calligraphy resources on the web (a little long) Hello, all. I’ve been doing a bit of mss research on the web recently, I thought I’d post some of the more useful sites I’ve found, for you to use and peruse as you will. This is not a comprehensive list, but there are thousands of images, and many of the pages have links to even more pages I haven't listed here. Some sites are better than others at mentioning original materials, history, and dimensions of the leaves, but you may be able to email the webmaster & get more information that way (I haven't tried that yet) If you can’t get to a link that means I’ve mistyped it; please email me and I will correct it. Also, I have been collecting color printouts of many of these pages, & have them in a notebook which I will have with me at events, if anyone is interested in seeing them. (If you email me I can tell you where I’ll be showing up. I'm mostly in Meridies/Trimaris/Southern Atlantia) This list is in no way comprehensive, but should be a good starting place for anyone interested in finding manuscript images on the web. All of these sites (except for the Celtic one at Oxford, as noted) can be accessed even from ancient browsers (the one I did most of the research on is a Netscape 1.2 :) -- Enjoy. SITE WITH MSS IMAGES: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/rare/images/date.html “Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts” listed by date, then by country Contains images from mss from the 8th century through the mid-16th century. Includes leaves from Ireland-Spain-Flanders-Germany-Italy-France-Rhaetia-England-Switzerland Lists type/origin of manuscript, does not note mss size. Gives thumbnails, with options for seeing the full image in small, medium, or large size. Includes over 100 images, good for calligraphy & illuminated letters. http://www.princeton.edu/~lancelot/ "The Charette Project" Chretiende Troyes LeChavalier de la Charette (Lancelot, ca. 1180) Images from a 12th-c. mss. Includes project list, line by line transcriptions, translations, & images - mostly calligraphy, some illuminated letters. http://lcweb.loc.gov.exhibits/bnf/bnf0003.html "Creating French Culture: Monarchs & Monasteries: Knowledge & Power in Medieval France" Annotated list of good images from late 8th c. through late 15th c. Richly decorated illuminations - includes one page done on purple vellum (colored vellum - a personal ‘turn-on’ of mine!! :) ) 16 images. No thumbnails. Also, go to “next page” for “Renaissance & Early 17th c.” mss, where they have 27 more images including pages from books of hours, a map of the world, & also some coins. http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/aaccueil.htm "The Age of King Charles V (1338-1380)" 1,000 illuminations from the Department of Manuscripts Images of people, places, not much in the way of calligraphy. Can access by theme of by manuscript. Thumbnails. Includes information on leaf dimensions. http://www.library.uiuc.edu/hoursdb/search.htm "Book of Hours Archive" Links of specific manuscripts (not the entire sites) for select leaves (only a few from its own site). Includes images from 14th-15th centuries. Variety of calligraphy/illumination. Examples from Valencia - Utrecht - France - Netherlands - England - Bruges - Flanders - Milan. http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/a-vatican_lib/City_recov ers.html#vlib07 From Vatican Exhibit - “The City Recovers” Eleven images from 14th -16th century, including images of Rome/maps/manuscripts/a couple of 17th century images. Includes thumbnails & annotation. No dimensions listed. http://wally2.rit.edu/cary/manuscripts "Medieval Manuscript Leaves" One of my faves - a well-done site. Includes 51 images from medieval manuscripts from Western Europe, 12th - 16th centuries. Thumbnails lead to choice of viewing full image or detail (for each leaf). Good images. Includes leaf dimensions and material. Mss images from Italy - England - France -- Netherlands - Germany - Spain - Switzerland - Flanders. http://www.bnf.fr.enluminures/manuscrits/manuscrit.htm "Liste de Manuscrits", 14th-15th centuries. Same style as Charles V site. In French. Includes manuscript dimensions. Good for illumination, not much in the way of calligraphy. http://www.clues.abdn.ac.uk:8080/besttest/firstpag.html "The Aberdeen Bestiary Online." Another personal fave! Site features many images from a 12th century bestiary, including codicology (how it was made), references, bibliography...and some great images/details. Mm! http://www.csbsju.edu/hmml/exhibits/exhibits.html "Hill Monastic Manuscript Library" 50+ images from 5 different collections, including several late period books of hours from France & Flanders, a French Breviary-Missal from the late 13th century, 2 images of a 16th century choir book from Iberia (big!), 15th/16th century charters. Includes thumbnail images. Good for illumination, not too much calligraphy, but some. http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium/ukentucky/uky.html Several books of hours, many images, includes dimensions. http://www.konbib.nl/100hoogte/hh-en.html "One Hundred Highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliothec" ...18 of which are medieval mss/several more are from period block books/post-period incunabula Another fave. Good images using larger thumbnails, includes materials, leaf dimensions, annotation/history for each page. Includes images from Flanders - Normandy - Brabant - Meuse Valley - Paris - Utrecht - Netherlands - Bruges - Ardenarde. Mostly 14th-15th century mss, but a few from earlier (earliest is from 975). Good for calligraphy & illumination. http://www.bl.uk/collections/ This page indexes the British library collection, which includes one (small) image each of a few harder to find styles - in the Slavonic section, an Albanian portrait from 1520, an image from the (Bulgarian) Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander from 1355, a Belarusian portrait (early printing) from a Bible, a Hungarian print of King Matthias of Hungary from 1488, Romanian gospels in slavonic printed in 1512, and a portrait from medieval Serbia. Under Africa, there is an image (again, not full sized) from a 14th century Quran in Arabic. Small images, no mss details, but at least they're *something* of those harder to find cultures. If only I could find out what the Poles were doing... :(. http://image.ox.ac.uk/ "Celtic Manuscripts at Oxford University" Includes a *lot* of images from celtic mss from collections at three Oxford colleges (Jesus College, Corpus Christi College, Bodleian Library). NOTE for old browser users: I have only been able to access one of these collections, the Jesus one, without FRAMES. The others seem to require it. I haven’t been through nearly all of this site, but it seems mostly good for calligraphy -- though they have some nifty illuminations/knotwork on the intro pages - if anyone finds which leaves these are from, please email to let me know. I doubt I’ll get through all of these! Other celtic mss sites I’ve run into are: http://www.tcd.ie/kells.html Contains 3 images from the Book of Kells. http://www.minos.bl.uk.diglib/treasures/lindisfarne.html 2 images from the Lindisfarne gospels. A couple more interesting images at this site, (indexed at http://minos.bl.uk/diglib/treasures/overview.html) including the earliest printed book (9th century - the Diamond Sutra), the Sforza Hours & the Magna Carta. http://www.osl.state.or.us/csimages/kells/bk2.htm Various images from the Book of Kells - zoomorphs, letters, a few odds & ends, good detail, no full leaves. SITES WITH LINKS: http://www.sca.org.au/lochac/scribes/ Lochac College of Scribes Annotated index of mss collections online. http://www.interlog.com/~hermans/manuscripts.html Nixnet Website for Medieval Art & Architecture Links to other mss pages. A couple of links are out of date (to British library, which has apparently reorganized its site), includes a link to Russian Icons page. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2963/links.html Links to manuscript pages. http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/subjects/mss/mss.html Lists research libraries with manuscript collections, by country. http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium/ Links to various online collections, online manuscript images, etc. I hope these are helpful. Enjoy, EWA Lady Ewa Grzybowska Shire of Dragonfly Marsh Consortium of the Southern Marches Kingdom of Meridies * * * * * * Visit The Polish Peasant Home Page at http://www.datasys.net/polish * * * * * * ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jan 1980 01:27:51 -0500 From: Sally Burnell Subject: [scribes]: Post on MSS. images from Web sites To the good lady who posted all those Web sites - THANK YOU!!! Having just gotten a computer that is graphic enabled (I had an old 286 before that only allowed me a text-only browser and could only support a FreeNet for an e-mail server), at least now I can see stuff. One problem remains - seems that this 486 DX 66 cannot support a video card beyond 16 colors, severely limiting my ability to view MSS. images. For some reason I thought that a computer of this capacity could do so much more and now I find out that unless you have a Pentium, you are pretty well screwed graphically. Oh, well, live and learn. So at least I can sort of view those sites, at least until I can scrape up the money for an upgrade. I just finished building this computer last night after a year long struggle to get it put together, only to find that all along I ws barking up the wrong tree........no one told me that 486's can't do graphics very well. But thanks anyway.......looks like the next year or so will be spent trying to get this one to do graphics...........(sigh). Just when I thought I finally had something that would allow me to see MSS. sites............... Lady Saradwen Ariandalen frustrated learner of computer stuff who just wants a system that will do graphics........ ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V1 #30 ****************************