Posts Tagged ‘Visiting scholar’

22
Mar

Encountering Trinity’s Medieval Books

   Posted by: rring    in Uncategorized

[Posted by Scott Gwara, English department, University of South Carolina]

Part 1: a medieval kalendar (that’s no mis-spelling)

I have been spending the past few years traveling all over the US reading medieval manuscripts.  I estimate that I have seen and handled 2500 of them so far, in perhaps 70 collections.  I have a few research goals—probably too many—but chief among them is an inchoate, mammoth project, A History of Medieval Manuscripts in North America.  That’s what brought me to Boston recently.  I spent most of my time at Harvard, but I enjoyed a stop at Trinity (and Smith). You have fabulous manuscripts.  I wanted to offer a little irregular series of notes on them.  This collection represents a special treasure in the Watkinson Library, fascinating, valuable, and immensely useful for teaching History of the Book.  My advice: take Professor Elukin’s book history course this Fall!  How many times will you get to handle and study YOUR medieval treasures?  You will never regret this decision: the experience will stay with you for a lifetime.

Having spent four solid days in the Houghton Library at Harvard, I was ready for the adventure of a smaller library.  Harvard’s Richardson Collection is simply stunning but it is fairly well mined.  You’re not going to find many surprises there, though I was honestly blown away by the intelligent way the collection was assembled: pure Harvard.  William King Richardson came from Boston money, attended Harvard (class of 1880) and took a second BA at Oxford, graduating in 1883.  He wanted to a PhD in Classics at Harvard, but you have to belong to the indigent classes to become a teacher, and Will was clearly unfit, despite a double first at Oxford (thanks to his Harvard preparation).  The family money was well spent on 54 manuscripts and thousands of early printed books (over 100 incunables) and fine bindings.  The manuscripts are nearly all complete texts, with fine bindings, wide white margins, and lovely illumination.  They include a Wycliffite Bible in Middle English, a “heretical” bible with a furtive reputation.  The last one that sold a year ago went for $2 million.  Impressive to me was MS Richardson 16, an Italian manuscript on the art of war, Tacitus’ De instruendis aciebus.  Great illuminations in gold and colors showing how to arrange phalanxes.  Unfortunately, none of the online images shows these amazing diagrams.

By contrast, Trinity is just the place to find an overlooked treasure … like MS 8, an exquisite Paris Book of Hours.  A Book of Hours is a prayer book.  It’s called a Book of Hours because the key text is the “Hours of the Virgin,” basically a selection of Psalms (usually three of them) and related utterances recited at eight “hours” of the day.  The eight hours are Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.  Sometimes a Book of Hours is called a Horae. The Latin word for hour is hora, a first-declension (feminine) noun with an –ae plural.  So, Horae = “Hours” or “Book of Hours.”  I know it sounds weird, especially to a Latinist.  But it is a horae, pronounced hor-eye.

Let me share a few things with you about this amazing manuscript in the short time I have.

The first thing I saw upon opening the book was a Paris kalendar (spelled with a k-), which is (typically, for a Paris kalendar) completely FULL of names.  All feasts in a medieval kalendar are in the genitive case.  They say, “of St. Thomas” rather than “St. Thomas” because the word “feast” is implied: “feast … of St. Thomas.”  Have a look at the list of feasts: can you see how they alternate red and blue, with an occasional gold entry?

Most kalendars are graded: more important saints have feasts in different colors.  Some can be quadruple-graded, four colors indicating a subtle importance for certain special feast days.  Now, don’t be fooled: you can’t just count the colors (blue, red, gold) and say, “this is triple-graded.”  Execute this test first.  Look at Christmas, indicated here by the four gold lines on the left (try not to be distracted by the gorgeous illumination of St. John on the right):

So … Christmas is gold (not easily readable because the gold is still as bright as the day it was applied).  Christmas is a major feast, so gold is, in this instance, the highest grade.  Therefore, any feast in gold receives extra attention in the liturgy.  (NB: sometimes gold is not the highest grade.)  Now examine how the colors are ordered.  Are they grouped randomly or do they vary red-blue-red-blue-red-blue, and so on?

Clearly, a kalendar doesn’t usually alternate important with less-important saints.  This layout is decorative.  Ergo, this calendar, for all its splendid pomp, is double-graded.  If you want to check for a further Paris connection, look for St. Geneviève, patron saint of Paris (d. 512).  Her Feast falls on 3 January.  I don’t have a picture of this, but I’m willing to bet it’s in gold.

A few more details about kalendars in Books of Hours.  Have a look at this kalendar from a fragmentary Trinity manuscript:

Question: how is it graded, and what color is the highest grade? Look at Christmas:

Okay, it’s a bit dirty and stained, but you can see these feasts are RED: Nativity, St. Stephen Protomartyr, St. John the Apostle, and Holy Innocents.  Correct answer is “double-graded.”

However, THIS kalendar has some skipped dates.  It’s not entirely full.  We can often discover where a fragmentary Book of Hours comes from by looking at the unusual saints venerated on specific dates.  You see, many saints were pretty local.  St Peter would be venerated throughout Europe, but St. Osmund is uniquely English, and pretty much associated with York.  The place to go for the information is the online Grotefend:

http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/gaeste/grotefend/grotefend.htm

Just look at all the saints listed in this resource.  If we ever wanted to narrow down our search for a specific saint, this is the starting point.  It’s easy and fun.  Isn’t this manuscript fragment simply amazing?  All Trinity owns is the kalendar and a few text leaves, but they’re so useful and make a wonderful exercise for localizing saints.  So that’s all for now on kalendars.

Next installment: illuminations from MS 8.  You’ll want to see these.  They are unbelievably beautiful.  For now, however, I will simply leave you with a taste of the sublime … Gabriel at the Annunciation unfurls a scroll with the words “Ave gratia plena,” while God the Father (got cut off at top) sends down the Holy Spirit (a dove) at the Incarnation.  This is one of the most beautiful illuminations I have ever seen.

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10
Nov

The first textbook for colonial American children

   Posted by: rring    in Uncategorized

[Posted by Michael Day]

As an independent researcher, writer and historian not affiliated with Trinity, I really appreciate the opportunity of using the Watkinson. My special area of interest is early 19th century education, and particularly the culture of the one-room schoolhouse. Exploring the collection of education materials originally developed by Henry Barnard has been a wonderful experience for me and tremendously helpful. Barnard (1811-1900), was a Hartford native, a prolific writer and an internationally recognized advocate for improvement of the public schools. He recognized the importance of looking to the past as a way of documenting our progress, and in this spirit developed an outstanding collection of early American schoolbooks, a collection now housed in the Watkinson Library. One special treasure that I’ve found is a 1737 edition of The New England Primer. The book is tiny; barely the size of my hand. It’s battered and missing several pages, but its significance is immense. This is one of the earliest known copies of what is arguably one of the most important books in American history. The New England Primer, in countless editions, dominated American education throughout the 18th century, and its influence remained strong until well after the Civil War. Several other 18th and early 19th century editions are included in the Library’s holdings. Looking at these The New England Primers today, we can appreciate, just as Henry Barnard intended, how far education has come since those early days.

[Curator’s note]

With the book is an envelope, bearing the following note: “The oldest Primer in Papa’s collection 1737 with photographic title-page put in by Paul Ford May 1897”

The note was undoubtedly written by one of Henry Barnard’s five children, and “Paul Ford” must have been Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902), an historian and novelist (and a fascinating figure in his own right), who published many works on early America, including The New-England primer; a history of its origin and development; with a reprint of the unique copy of the earliest known edition and many facsimile illustrations and reproductions (1897).  The earliest known copy, dated 1727 and in very poor condition (these were literally read to death), is at the New York Public Library.

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11
Oct

Recruiting with Grog; or, swilling into service.

   Posted by: rring    in Uncategorized

[Posted by Dan Milner, University of Birmingham (England); recent link:  http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2011/04/smithsonian-folkways-releases-civil-war-naval-songs/]

Stan Hugill was the last seaman known to have sung sea shanties aboard a British merchant ship.  Hugill was also a prolific maritime painter and author of books on sea songs.  In Sailortown (1967), he mentions a New York shanghier who operated a combination hostelry-cum-grogshop named Larry Maher.

About 10 years ago, I found a Civil War period broadside sheet titled “Larry Maher’s Big 5-Gallon Jar” printed by H. De Marsan at 54 Chatham Street. New York, and I made mention of the piece in “Irish Maritime Songs from New York’s 19th Century Music Emporiums,” a presentation I made at the 2006 Mystic Seaport Music of the Sea Symposium.  It is quite evocative, as shown in this passage:

Come, all you jolly sailors bold, that lives both near and far; / I’ll sing you a short ditty concerning Larry Maher: / He keeps a slop-up boarding house, and sells rot-gut to the tars, / And the scourge of New-York City is… his big five-gallon jar.

So, if you want chain-lightning, step into Larry Maher, / And he’ll serve you with abundance from his big five-gallon jar.

When first I came to New-York, I came here on a spree, / And hearing tell of Larry’s place, I went the sights to see: / Some drunken shells in the corner lay more swilling at the bar, / And Larry was supplying them from his big five-gallon jar.

Now, one glass of Larry’s beverage will make your heart to ache, / And, when you get keeled over, your cash he’ll surely take; / But when you wake next morning, you’ll be far outside the bar, / Removed away to Liverpool by… gallus Larry Maher.

Two years later, I found an entry in a Manhattan city directory, “Maher Lawrence, liquors” beginning in 1857.  But the name of the song’s composer eluded me until August 2010 when I set my eyes on a second “Larry Maher” ballad sheet at the Watkinson Library, printed by J. Wrigley of “27 Chatham Street (opposite City Hall Park) New York.”  James Wrigley and Henry De Marsan were competitors and both were located at the addresses printed on their broadsides between 1861 and 1864.  The texts vary slightly, but the Watkinson broadside has one additional piece of information.  It specified the lyricist as G.W. Watson.

As I begin writing my Ph.D. dissertation on Irish life in New York City, the Wrigley broadside is a most welcome find.  Thanks to you, Peter Knapp and your colleagues for the helpful hospitality shown during my visit.

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