In recent years, more and more manuscripts, artworks and museum exhibits have been digitised and made available online. But what if you could use them to make your own virtual exhibitions? Images which have been uploaded in IIIF can be used and reworked into interesting things, and viewed alongside images from different institutions. This post on the British Library’s Digital Scholarship blog, written by Deirdre Sullivan together with Eyob Derillo, Sara Hale and myself, demonstrates how you can create your own online exhibitions of IIIF-enabled images, using a handy tool called Exhibit. Enjoy ..read more

I have written another blogpost for the Medieval Manuscripts blog of the British Library!  This one is on a manuscript, Harley MS 2928, which we catalogued for the Polonsky England and France 700-1200 project, which turned out to include a copy of a text which I know very well.  De laude psalmorum (‘In praise of the psalms’) is a guide to singing the psalms for the purposes of private prayer, in which the reader can pick and choose which to sing according to their own needs.  I’ve also explained why there is a connection to another manuscript catalogued for the project, Ælfwine ..read more

As promised in earlier posts, my monograph has now been published by De Gruyter/Medieval Institute Publications! Although it is based upon my 2011 doctoral thesis, it departs from it considerably in several places, reducing the attention given to the Carolingian period and adding two extra chapters.  Many of the subjects discussed in the book have already been featured in this blog. The Introduction lays out my subject of enquiry, including an exposition of the different levels in which prayer collections could be structured, as monks and nuns sought to create more and more complex progr ..read more

Four are the elements from which the rainbow takes its colours London, British Library Cotton MS Domitian A I, f. 28v Quadricolor enim est . ex omnibus elementis in se rapit species.  De celo enim trahit igneum colorem . de aquis purpureum . de aere album de terris collegit nigrum. For it [the rainbow] is of four colours, and takes its appearance from all of the elements into itself.  From the sky it draws the fiery colour, from the waters purple, from the air white, and from the earth it gathers black. Four are the woods from which Christ’s cross was built Four are the gospelists ..read more

‘Everyone must know their Lord’s Prayer and their creed.’ So wrote Ælfric of Eynsham in the early eleventh century. It may be for this reason, and also because churchpeople may in any case have wished to pray in their own language, that several copies of the Lord’s Prayer or Paternoster survive in Old English translation, along with sermons explaining its significance. Some texts, however, offer something in between. There are three versions of the prayer in alliterative Old English verse. One, in the Exeter Book, is a fairly close rendering of the prayer. The other two, in Cambridge, Corpus C ..read more

This is my 100th blogpost on For the Wynn! In celebration of this, I am going to share a full version of a fascinating little text which I mentioned briefly in this blogpost for the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts blog: a divinatory text by which you can discover a person’s fortune based on the position of their day of birth in the lunar calendar. It can be found amongst the other prognostic texts in Ælfwine’s Prayerbook, on ff. 7v-8r of London, British Library Cotton MS Titus D XXVI. Dates of birth can be looked up on this calendar: https://www.calendar-12.com/moon_phases/2019 – chan ..read more

Which day of the month is bad for starting a new project? How do you find possessions which have been stolen from you? What will your fortune be? Medieval people knew the answers to these questions! Find out in my new blogpost for the British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts blog. London, British Library Cotton MS Vitellius E XVIII, f. 9r ..read more

It’s the 29th of June, and today is the feast day of St Peter (and also of St Paul).  Peter is my favourite Bible person, because he’s a bit of an idiot quite a lot of the time, but he really wants to be good. Take, for example, the narrative of the Transfiguration of Christ.  In 2010, I was involved in the staging of a play of this with the Lords of Misrule theatre company in York.  Every four years, a selection of the 14th-century York Mystery Plays is performed at four locations in central York, aboard farm wagons similar to those which would have been used in the Middle Ages ..read more

Þas þing synt earfoðe on Englisc to secganne, se we wyllað þurh Cristes fultum hig onwreon, swa wel swa we betst magon, and þas meregrota þam beforan lecgan þe þisra gyman wyllað.  Þæs anes dæges wanung, hu he byð geworden binnan nigontyne wintrum we wyllað gecyðan. These things are difficult to say in English, but with Christ’s help we shall reveal them as well as we can, and lay the pearls before those who wish to pay heed to these things.  We will explain how the diminution of one day is accomplished over nineteen years. Text and translation from Baker and Lapidge, Byrhtferth’s E ..read more