Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2019

Abstract

The assignment of value to manuscripts on the basis of their antiquity—that is, the notion that books written at a greater distance from the present were therefore more deserving of attention—reflects a sensibility more commonly associated with early modern collectors than with medieval scribes. Malcolm Parkes, for example, though describing many instances of archaizing hands in medieval manuscripts, tends to see these as pragmatic efforts driven by “the need to copy replacement leaves,” a more practical aim than the Tudor valuing of medieval scripts, which “came to be perceived as emblematic of the past.”1 Within this framework, though generally accurate, it is hard to account for the scribe who wrote Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 861, one of the largest single-volume anthologies of the Latin writings of Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349).2

Identifier

10.1086/705376

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Publication Information

Speculum

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