This thesis on medieval sermon manuscripts aims to increase our understanding of the Franciscan Berthold von Regensburg, who is considered to be the most significant German preacher of the late Middle Ages. For this reason, I have selected twenty-one Latin and six German codices, dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. These codices have been analyzed to identify the writing material, internal structure and paratextual features. The underlying idea is that the codicological and paratextual organisation delivers insight not only into the date and provenance of the manuscripts, but also into their function and actual use. I set out, in my first chapter, with some general thoughts about the specific process of communication involved in sermon manuscripts. The focus of my second chapter is on the structural and guiding elements in manuscripts, such as indices, numbering systems and various types of rubrication. The third chapter is concerned with marginal annotations, which can refer to the content of the text, call for attention, or even aim to deter from reading or copying a particular passage. In chapter four, I discuss a number of current issues in codicology and the complexity of codicological structures, which leads me to the proposition of a new concept of ‘corresponding codicological units’. In the fifth chapter, I argue that the attribution of Berthold’s sermons to his name fades in the late-thirteenth century, in favour of the term Rusticanus, which fills the position of the author for the the most part of the fourteenth century. In my final chapter, I discuss different concepts of book ownership. By demonstrating the significance of material and structural features, I show the strength of a codicological approach in achieving a new, in-depth understanding of Berthold von Regensburg and medieval sermon culture in general.

This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on literary, art historical and textual sources to examine how the act of looking, images, and artistic and textual creation are both dramatized and problematized in the works of the Gawain-poet: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (with some discussion of St Erkenwald, a work often attributed to the same author). Analyzing in detail the texts and illustrations in the Gawain-manuscript (British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.x), the thesis argues that the poet weaves together classical and biblical narratives, along with exegetical and iconographic traditions, in shaping his distinctive reflections on the use and making of images, body and performance, in response to late fourteenth-century religious controversies. The thesis starts by tracing a network of ideas about gaze, sin, body and text through late-medieval biblical and mythographical texts and images. Working text-by-text through the poet’s oeuvre, it then discusses the use of Ovidian materials and the motif of metamorphosis in his complex meditation on ethical and specifically gendered practices of reading, writing and looking. It concludes by assessing the poet’s idea of poetic creation and his own role as a creative artist. In doing so, it suggests that the poet’s self-conscious artistry works together with a consistent emphasis on humility in human’s relations with the divine. The thesis contributes to a growing scholarly interest in the Gawain-illustrations, and a developing focus on visuality in studies of late-medieval devotional and literary works. By linking the analysis of classical/biblical intertexts, visual traditions and the manuscript’s own illustrated texts, it suggests a fresh area of study for the Gawain-poet and his milieux.

Thesis (B. Letters)--Oxford University, 1901. / "Partial list of books and articles used in preparation of notes": p. 22-25.

Otto Ege cut apart hundreds of medieval manuscripts during the first half of the twentieth century, claiming to do so to provide wider access to them. His destruction resulted in the loss of provenance, material history, and context of these manuscripts. Moreover, he made mistakes when identifying and dating the manuscript leaves he cut, and the loss of the bindings and front matter of the manuscripts makes it difficult to correct these. Much of the research concerning Ege focuses on his identity as a biblioclast, yet even scholars who denounce his book-cutting admit he allowed for places and people to have access to these manuscripts that otherwise would not. In this thesis, I examine how place impacted not only Ege’s motivations to distribute medieval manuscript leaves, but how place further impacts the accessibility of these leaves to people of lower socio-economic status. By mapping the locations of Ege’s Fifty Original Leaves of Medieval Manuscripts portfolios against the percentage of the population with college degrees, I make the argument that Ege’s portfolios are not as accessible to underrepresented populations as they could be, because most of these portfolios are located at university special collections and archives. I draw on social and geographic theory to show that non-college educated people are less likely to visit a college campus than those who attended college. I then explore current scholarship in archives and special collections to show the importance of public outreach programs and how bridging the gap between university archives and special collections and public libraries or other community institutions can make Ege’s portfolios more accessible to a broader audience. I conclude that while Ege did irreparable damage to the historical value of these medieval manuscript leaves, they do indeed still have value in their ability to allow more people to learn from and appreciate them. Ege’s vision of democratizing medieval book history may not have been perfect, but with the damage done, we can move in a more positive direction so as not to waste the potential benefits of these portfolios.

This thesis explores the diverse range of textual and visual architectural representations in twelfth-century didactic texts. It argues that these representations are not arbitrarily chosen frameworks for holding data; instead, architecture can perform a certain pedagogical role. In this role architectural representations mediate between imperceptible abstract concepts in the text and the tangible world of the reader. By focusing on the relationship between text and image this thesis argues that the two play a meaningful part in conveying intangible elements of the world to the reader. The thesis creates an alternative to the historiography on architecture and its representations by redirecting focus from the development of technical drawings and onto the intellectual context of the drawings, and ultimately questions why architecture, in particular, appears so frequently in didactic manuscripts of the period. The argument is framed by two points. First, it recognises the manifold ways in which architectural representations appear by focusing on three particular examples: quadrivial texts, Richard of Saint Victor's In visionem Ezechielis, and Honorius Augustodunensis' Gemma animae. These texts provide case studies to argue the primary point of thesis, namely, that architectural representations were used to provide tangible or kinaesthetic models to aid readers' understanding of difficult material. Second, the language and structure of the three studies reflect a dimensional framework that was used to articulate particular aspects of the drawings. The dimensional aspects of the drawings appear in texts as references to length, width, height, and the typological qualities of architecture. Overall the thesis has two important implications. First by recognising the important relationship between text and image it is possible to draw out the pedagogical aims and processes present in some twelfth-century didactic works. Second, common examples of architectural representations, such as Gospel canon tables, are recognised as part of a broader spectrum of heuristic images and diagrams.

Although the works of Christine de Pizan have been of interest to scholars for some time, technological advances and initiatives to make digital copies of manuscripts available online have only recently enabled close comparisons between the visual programmes of her works to be made. This thesis demonstrates that detail usually considered secondary or 'paratextual' in Christine's manuscripts actually formed a carefully-constructed part of the work itself that Christine explicitly asks her audience to read. Through 'reading' the text and image simultaneously, the visual programme proves to comprise additional layers of meaning that were woven into her didactic works. These meanings can serve to supplement the educational and moral aims of the works, or, conversely, can be inconsistent with the message conveyed in the text, leading the reader-viewer to contemplate further on the matters presented and form their own opinions on them. Sometimes, meaning is created by intervisual connections with pre-existing iconography, such that viewers may be creating associations between the miniatures seen in Christine's manuscripts and other imagery, leading them to make certain associations - this is notably the case in author-portraits of Christine. As manuscripts prepared under the author's supervision came to be copied, changes were made to the iconographic programmes, testifying to and enabling different types of readings to take place. The findings of this thesis have implications for editorial practices of medieval works in general, as these tend to circulate in editions without the visual programme, providing modern readers with only a partial view of the complete work.

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This thesis looks at the court of Anjou-Provence’s book production, under the guidance of King René d’Anjou, during the decades of the 1440’s and ‘50s. It examines four literary works of which three were authored by the prince, namely, "Le Livre des tournois," "Le Mortifiement de vaine plaisance" and "Le Livre du Cœur d’amour épris," and an anonymous translation into French of Boccaccio’s "Teseida delle Nozze d’Emilia", entitled "Le Livre de Thezeo." In this thesis, I argue that these four works, although they emerge as separate events, connect ideologically and iconographically, highlighting a set of ideas that redefines nobility for the French Early Renaissance. Applying a complex combination of approaches, my theoretical framework combines translation, emotions and worldmaking theories. My model reveals King René’s vision of gendered roles and his refined sense of true nobility that make his court’s cultural identity stand out among that of comparable French courts of the day. It also outlines René’s close working relationship with his illustrator Barthélemy d’Eyck. The structure based on the four case studies outlines aspects of the debates on love and courtly culture that developed at René’s court. Chapter One discusses the distinctiveness of the Angevin-Provençal court’s reception of Italian and antique cultures and its importance as a continuum from the Latin translations in the Parisian humanist circles in the 1400s. Chapter Two examines "La Théséïde," the only fully illustrated manuscript of the translation into French of Boccaccio’s "Teseida delle Nozze d’Emilia," analysing the central focus on Emilia as the “Dame Amaczon.” Pursuing the work’s re-envisioning of gendered roles through emotional communities, Chapter Three explores the transformation of two warriors into “nobles chevaliers” in anticipation of René’s standardisation of noble knightly values in his "Livre des tournois." In view of the prince’s age when he started his literary career, Chapter Four questions the role that religion played in his vision of masculinity and unveils the portrait of the contemplative knight in René’s "Mortifiement de vaine plaisance." The heart-centred narrative connects with the quest of the secular heart in his "Livre du Cœur d’amour épris" in Chapter Five. It reveals the knight Cuer’s re-envisioned quest through imaginary lands and its unexpected conclusion as King René’s notion of true nobility refined by spiritual love, for men and women of the Early Renaissance. In the conclusion, the cross-study of these four books highlights their symbiotic working dynamic, and the talent of Barthélemy d’Eyck, that brought together the impressive Angevin-Provençal cultural production emerging within King René’s close circles, on the eve of the French Renaissance. / Graduate

The aim of this diploma thesis is to describe the library of Augustinan canons in Roudnice nad Labem (Raudnitz in German) and assess its place in late medieval culture in Bohemia. The first chapter surveys the history of the monastery. It was founded by the bishop of Prague, Jan IV. from Dražice, in 1333. The monastery flourished and was supported by the highest ecclesiastical officials, but it was destroyed in 1421 during the Hussite wars; the canons escaped to Germany (Erfurt) and to Poland (Wroclaw, Żagań/Sagan). There is substantial evidence on the history of the monastery in Roudnice; several important documents of the monastery have survived, especially monastic statutes, the necrologium of the monastery and also its cartulary. Then the monastic library is explored. In addition to the manuscripts themselves, there are notes on the books in the necrologium of the monastery and several other indirect sources. Unfortunately it is impossible to reconstruct the entire content of the library of the Augustian canons in Roudnice; nevertheless, over one hundred manuscripts that used to be kept in the library have been identified. These manuscripts are today deposited mainly in the Library of the National Museum and in the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague. The library of the monastery...

In Czech historiography Queen Kunhuta has been quite neglected. Her figure has not been investigated in monographs or specific studies. She can be somehow included within the group of defamed queens, which is especially rich in the Middle Ages. This negative image of the queen finds its origin in medieval chronicles, which blamed Kunhuta for her love affair with Záviš of Falkenštejn, who was accused of being one of the promoters of the defeat of Otakar II. Kunhuta's negative portrayal has been very stable and despite its rehabilitation in the most recent studies, it probably influenced scholars' disinterest in the part she performed as a political agent. The documentary material preserved shows that her active role in Bohemian society of the thirteenth century deserves more attention. She was involved in various administrative and political tasks. The first chapter of the thesis should provide an approach to the study of the queen, which mediates between a partial point of view and Kunhuta's multi-faceted image. It should introduce a figure to whom is linked a letter collection, which represents the main theme of the present dissertation (i.e. the letter collection of master Bohuslav, probably a chaplain and notary of the queen). The analysis and the critical edition of the source can be found in...