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Beyond Words / Table of Contents

Manuscripts Boston Collections

Preface & Acknowledgments An exhibition that focuses attention on an enormous …

Manuscripts Boston Collections

Foreword The illuminated manuscript collections housed in the Boston …

Illumination Boston Collections

Illuminating the Charles: Collecting Manuscripts in Boston The wealth of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and …

I. Harvard University, Houghton Library: Manuscripts from Church & Cloister

Chained Books Illumination

I.1. The Monastic Scriptorium Before the introduction of movable type for printing …

Manuscripts Chained Books

I.3. Guides for Good Living Monastic life was both communal and solitary, with …

Manuscripts Book-binding

I.2. Authors & Readers Authorship and copyright are concepts too often taken …

Manuscripts Illumination

I.4. Songs of Praise Essential to the outfitting of any church, liturgical …

II. Boston College, McMullen Museum of Art: Manuscripts for Pleasure & Piety

Manuscripts Illumination

II.1. Making & Meaning Manuscripts, by definition, are handmade objects.

Illumination Book-binding

II.2. Holy Writ Christianity is a religion of the book, and …

Manuscripts Illumination

II.3. Before the Book of Hours: The Psalter & Other Prayer Books No type of book speaks to the proliferation …

Illumination Book-binding

II.4. Minding Time: Books of Hours There are more books of hours in the …

Manuscripts Book-binding

II.5. Love & Death: The Art of Devotion Devotional imagery presents a paradox. In theory, as …

Illumination Book-binding

II.6. Public Worship In contrast to the quieter tone of the …

Chained Books Illumination

II.7. The Rise of the Professions: Medicine & Law Today we generally define “profession” as a field …

Manuscripts Book-binding

II.8. Secular Pleasures: Edification & Entertainment A passage in Chretien de Troyes’s romance, Yvain; …

III.Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Italian Renaissance

Manuscripts Illumination

III.1. The Florentine Humanist Book At the dawn of the fifteenth century, a …

Chained Books Illumination

III.2. Italian Princely Libraries The Florentine humanist book fired the imaginations of …

Manuscripts Illumination

III.3. Manuscripts of the Classics In the Middle Ages, literacy entailed becoming litteratus, …

Manuscripts Book-binding

III.4. Humanist Texts Turning to “humanist texts” implies forsaking the “medieval.”

Manuscripts Book-binding

III.5. Renaissance Liturgical Books Despite a popularly held notion that the Italian …

Illumination Book-binding

III.7. Book Decoration & the Advent of Printing All books created in Europe until around 1450 …

Manuscripts Illumination

III.6. Italian Books of Hours Until very recently books of hours were considered …