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

Even the smallest fragment with minimal decoration can reveal much about its purpose and value. There are challenges to be sure: the script, the techniques, the language, and the culture can serve as barriers to understanding. This is especially true for manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but the variety, the ingenuity, and the human nature of this productivity are also readily apparent. This catalogue and the accompanying exhibition invite viewers to look closely at a group of objects from Boston-area special collections and to observe and to interact with them.

The first part of this volume, Manuscripts from Church & Cloister, comprising manuscripts displayed at Houghton Library, focuses on the church’s critical role as both producer and consumer of manuscripts essential to its operation. Until the development and spread of printing in the second half of the fifteenth century books were made by hand and usually one at a time. As unique objects they reflect where and how they were made and how they were intended to be used.

As Christianity spread and the church expanded and changed, so did its requirements for manuscripts. As Barbara A. Shailor notes in her essay, “The Monastic Scriptorium,” “for much of the Middle Ages beginning in Late Antiquity, the centers of book production were located in monastic scriptoria.” The entries in this section of the catalogue demonstrate the considerable regional variation in this early period.

In his essay, Jeffrey F. Hamburger invites readers to contemplate concepts of authorship and readership. Not until the advent of printing could the concept of intellectual property arise. Within a culture producing individual books, Hamburger says, “the concept of copyright, let alone plagiarism, also made no sense. A work that was not excerpted or copied had no afterlife.” The implications for how authors are portrayed and how their work is arranged on the page are the focus of the entries in this section.

As Lisa Fagin Davis observes in her essay, “monks were educated, regulated, and governed by various kinds of texts and documents that worked together to serve the communal and individual goals of living a good life.” “Guides to Good Living” discusses manuscripts that provide moral and spiritual education. Also included are manuscripts that concern administrative functions and that reflect the diversity of church hierarchy.

The final chapter of part I explores manuscripts necessary for the performance of the liturgy of the church. In “Songs of Praise” are some of the mostly elaborately decorated volumes; they were clearly designed for ostentatious public consumption. Their beauty was seen to reflect the glory of God, something for which the liturgy provided plenty of opportunity. As Consuelo W. Dutschke explains, “the medieval liturgical day revolved around eight services called ‘offices’ and the daily Mass. While Mass was the dramatic centerpiece of the cycle, with the giving and receiving of communion at its heart, the rhythm of the day was set by the eight offices.”