Tucked away in one of the locked bays in the Wren Library is Trin MS B.5.3, a huge and "exceptionally splendid"* 13th century manuscript produced at the Benedictine abbey in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. The St. Albans scriptorium was a hub of illuminated manuscript production, perhaps best known for the St. Albans Psalter and for Matthew Paris, a monk, …
Month: February 2015
A Love Letter
Manuscript R.4.20 comprises two texts bound together: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes. Hidden between these two texts, someone has made use of the blank folios for handwriting practice and there are pen trials in the margins. The lines chosen appear to be from a love letter: Alas swet …
Hamsa i Jami
Hamsa i Jami ('Five Poems by Jami'). Persian, transcribed by Abdullah ul Hardy, 1531. Trin MS R.13.8 Abdul-Rahman Jami (1414-1492), known simply as Jami, was one of Iran's most prolific and best known poets of the 15th century. His works feature scholarship, theology and religious allegory in the Sufi tradition, a form of Islamic mysticism that valued …
Labours of the Month: February
After the feasting and relaxing by the fire in January and another cold, dark month stretching before us, February may call for more indoor pursuits. Indeed, in one common scheme for the labours of the months, February's labour is to sit by the fire, as the gentleman in B.11.4 is doing above. On the manuscript page below, the …
