Review by Eyal Poleg of Image, Knife, and Gluepot

Description

The Medieval Review - TMR 20.08.47 

Rudy, Kathryn M. Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print. Cambridge: Open Book, 2019. Pp. 356. £0. (digital, PDF) / £22.95 (pbk) / £59.95 (hbk). ISBN (digital, PDF): 978-1-78374-518-0 (https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0145).

 

   Reviewed by Eyal Poleg

        School of History, Queen Mary University of London

        [email protected] 

 

 

This is an extraordinary book about extraordinary books. Kate Rudy's recent study challenges the boundaries of academic books both in its format, a freely available e-book (as well as paperback and hardback versions) containing QR codes and a digital appendix, and in its contents, moving seamlessly between in-depth manuscript analysis, a "methodological self-portrait" (7), and an honest assessment of the ability to conduct research in the twenty-first century. The c.1500 composite Book of Hours at the centre of the study is equally avant-guard. Bridging the gap between print and manuscript, it is a unique witness to a period of transition, and, equally important, to the reception of early print among devotional communities. It was cut and dissembled, leading the author on a cross-country detective story to retrieve its components and reconstruct the original manuscript, as well as other similar books. This is narrated in a clear and engaging tone, and illustrated 137 colour images and 108 e-figures. The latter consists of thumbnails, a QR code and stable URL, and makes reading the printed book quite playful (though, ultimately, favours the digital version).

 

The book moves between three temporal plains. The first is the last decades of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth, a transformative era when craftsmen, as well as lay and religious communities, innovated their books, merging print and manuscript in new forms. The second is the nineteenth century, when curators, collectors and book sellers dismembered these books, separating print and manuscript, and rearranging their components based on new principles. The third plain is the author's present, as she moves between academic positions, hopping for short visits to manuscript and print collections, and gradually unfolds the complex and wonderful creations of a lay devote community c.1500. The book merges these plains into one whole, in which come together the modern researcher, the nineteen-century collector, and the medieval compiler. The author's research is paramount. Without the detailed reconstruction of fragments currently kept in separate collections, the original manuscript would have been all but invisible to modern scholars.

 

The first chapter, "Cut, Pasted, and Cut Again," comprises half of the entire book. It follows the author from her accidental encounter with a photograph of a printed roundel of St Barbara pasted into a manuscript page. This has led her, over the course of several years and numerous visits to the British Museum's Prints and Drawing Study Room, to the reconstruction of a unique late medieval manuscript. The original manuscript, compiled c.1500 in a community of Beghards (devote laymen associated with the Franciscan Order), contained "more early prints than any other surviving manuscript" (13), and serves as an important witness to the amalgamation of manuscript and print. This manuscript no longer exists. It was broken down in the nineteenth century, and much of the chapter is taken by the author's minute detective work, combining printed images (primarily at the British Museum) and the dismembered book, broken into two manuscripts at the British Library. This careful re-creation reveals how the Beghards employed dozens of printed images by several printers, woodcuts and engravings, some purchased already coloured, some cut and pasted, and others bound as single-leaves into the book. The compiler adapted the images to best fit his book: cutting and colouring, adding frames, and modifying their details to suit a new reality (as, for example, painting a basket over a wheel had transformed an image of Saint Catherine into one of St Lucia). The printed images were central to the compilation of the book, dictating the arrangement of its text and layout. In the nineteenth century the British Museum purchased the book for its printed components. It followed 'good practice' in removing them from the book and pasting them into mattes arranged by school, master or media. Over years of visits to the collections, the author carefully undid this modern intervention, revealing the unique and complex production of the medieval book. This is inevitably partial, as the whereabouts of some of the images remain unknown.

 

The reconstruction of the book was eased by the original foliation of the manuscript, an uncommon feature in medieval prayer books. In the second chapter, "A Novel Function for the Calendar in Add. Ms. 24332," this is linked to a unique calendar. Entries in the calendar extend beyond providing date and saint's name to supply folio numbers. This enabled readers to quickly retrieve prayers for a specific feast. It also saved labour and space. At times readers were directed to more generic prayers, applicable for certain types of saints: pair of saints, bishops, or group of saints. Such malleability of text reflects the works of early printers, who often printed images either of generic saints, or with interchangeable emblems, to befit the needs of diverse readers. The author traces similar books to a Franciscan milieu and compares it to a mid sixteenth-century prayerbook aimed at children or young adults. The author uses it to suggest the original manuscript was likewise aimed at young readers. However, evidence from other religious houses, in the Low Countries and beyond, suggests its use of the Vernacular, and explication of reading aids, could be ascribed to use outside the scholarly hubs of monasteries, friaries and universities, as devote men and women, as well as nuns and lay brothers, experimented in novel book technologies. The deep analysis of specific manuscripts is one of the book's evident strengths. At times, however, it does not fully support some of the wider conclusions. The view of the pre-1390 manuscript culture, for example, is slightly oversimplified, and some claims about the wider transition from manuscript to print would need further work and wider scope to sustain.

 

The third chapter, "The Beghards in the Sixteenth Century," engages less with the Beghard community as a whole, but rather explores another "chopped" manuscript, ascribed, through the author's careful analysis, to the Maastricht Beghards. Compiled c.1525, its examination supports a fascinating comparison between the two books, unearthing the significant transformations which took place over the first decades of the sixteenth century. While printed images from across the period were deployed in the latter book, its design reveals how the c.1500 experimental fusion of the two media had matured into a more uniform production process. Images which had been bought pre-painted, were now coloured in-house to ensure a uniform colouring scheme. The contents of the two books also suggest a decline in the importance of indulgences and a rise in Rosary devotions.

 

"Manuscripts with Prints," the final chapter (which also serves as a coda to the book), comprises a whistle-stop tour of other Dutch late medieval and early modern books which combine manuscript and print. We follow the author across Europe, trawling through collections for hybrid books. This revealed an array of fascinating books, each could easily furnish a chapter on its own accord (and indeed, some featured in the author's other publications). The books range from lavish and better-known books such as the Hours of Charles d'Angoulême, to a virtual pilgrimage guide of Dominican nuns. The chapter also explores the works of the prolific Israhel van Meckenem, whose printed images appear in manuscripts across the period. Through the prism of print and manuscript, this study reveals how his work has helped shape the way manuscripts were made. He created instant initials and miniatures to be deployed in handwritten devotional books; these were printed in sheets combining several roundels side-by-side, alongside Israhel's signature. The author suggests these sheets could have also functioned whole as collectors' items, cherished in the late fifteenth century as they were in the nineteenth. Their iconography suggests an additional use as devotional objects. The chapter ends in a short conclusion, which addresses the way we adapt to new technologies. This applies to the advent of print in the later Middle Ages, as to the author's own experience, with the rise of digital technologies revolutionising manuscript studies in the early twenty-first century. The latter transformation is evident in the book's digital appendix, an elaborate excel document made by the author in her reconstruction of the c.1500 Beghards' Book of Hours, which details each page, its text, image, and known whereabouts.

 

This is only one way of viewing this book. It is also a personal account, in which the art historian becomes a continuation of her object of research. It is a story of an obsession, which brought the author time and again, with little money (a prominent theme in the book) and in addition to her academic requirements, to study these manuscripts. Unlike other scholarly books, or academic discourse as a whole, the author is candid about the limitations of her research, the prolonged process, and the obstacles encountered. It is refreshing, and very edifying, to learn of the dead ends and the difficulties. At times the subjectivity of the researcher merges wonderfully with her topic of research, as, for example, in a narration of the author's visit, post major surgery, to examine a manuscript whose iconography and contents lead her to ascribe it to a late medieval convent whose sisters staffed the local hospital. In the fourth chapter the locations where manuscripts are investigated give rise to autobiographical recollections about street performances or remote collections. The author often identifies and laments the obstacles to research--the price of images, the salaries of cultural workers, or the incompatibility of research funding with the actual research. These are often made as an aside, and one would wish them to take a more prominent role (the cost of images, for example, was expanded by the author in a short piece in the Times Higher Education, August 29, 2019). These discussions are crucial facets of our work, and ones which need to be addressed if we truly wish to make our disciplines truly inclusive.

 

The author's discoveries would make this work of great interest to late medieval and early modern art historians, to book historians, both of manuscript and early print, and to those interested in religious history and the history of reading. While its tone and images enhance its appeal to undergraduates and non-academics, this is hindered by a lack of translations for some sources (German is translated, French is not, and Dutch at times) and complex terminology. Personally, I would ascribe this book to all my graduate students who work on manuscripts, prints or objects. In its in-depth research and honest discussions, the book introduces book- or object-centred research. It relates how important it is to look beyond the object itself, and explore institutions, conservation and cataloguing practices, and unfolds the value of liaising with curators and conservators. The author's creation of the database exemplifies how widely available technologies can support primary research. Furthermore, the need to visit and re-visit collections (a tendency which I also share with the author) is well presented, as is the long and often nebulous process of discovery. Lastly, the mental strain, and the investment of time and money necessary for conducting research, are matters we should be discussing honestly and openly with our students and our colleagues.​