looking at Boethius

I failed to include any pretty pictures in my last post, so now I give you this:


It's a page opening from Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, printed in 1498 in Venice. Actually, that's a completely inadequate description of what we're looking at. And that's one of the reasons I like this image--there is a lot to see when you look at this book. For starters, there is the text in the large font, printed in several blocks over the two pages. That text is Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, written around AD 524 while Boethius is imprisoned and awaiting trial for treason, for which he was to be executed. It was a highly influential piece in the medieval and early modern worlds, one that was studied and passed on in manuscripts and, eventually, printed texts. (You can find an online edition and an English translation at the University of Virginia Library's Electronic Text Center.)

Evidence of the traditions of commentary on Boethius's text can be seen in how it is presented on the page. Surrounding the blocks of text from De consolatione philosophiae is commentary by an early fourteenth-century Welsh priest, Thomas Wallensis. The commentary is in the same style of type, but a smaller size, and not laid out with as much open space. To my eye, when I look at the page, the commentary is clearly commentary, a subsidiary text to the primary Boethius. You don't even need to know what you're looking at to get that dynamic.

Surrounding and interlined with the printed text is an extensive manuscript commentary by an early user of the book. There are notes written in the leading between the lines of Boethius's text, as well as in the inner, outer, top, and bottom margins of the pages. It's evidence of someone who not only looked at this book, but who read it closely and really used it. There's commentary on commentary here. Describing this as Boethius's Consolation does not do justice to what is happening on these pages, even if that is how it is catalogued.

Finally, one last great image. The same reader who provided the manuscript commentary above has left annotations throughout the book, including this wonderful picture of a hand pointing to exactly where we should be looking.


For your further looking pleasure, you can find zoomable images of both Boethius pages here (don't forget to set your browser to allow pop-ups), and the catalogue entry in Hamnet for the book here.

more on medieval books

Since in his most recent post, Got Medieval has included my brief thoughts on why books should be one of words when defining "The Middle Ages in Seven Words (or less)", I thought I would flesh out my earlier post a bit.

For me, there are two equally important parts in the question of whether books are medieval: what are books and what is medieval?

For most people, I'd hazard, "book" means something in print, made from moveable type or from the computer software equivalent thereof. It's something that is printed and exists in multiple printed copies. (I'd actually go further, and say that for most people, "book" means something that is made and sold by a publishing company, rather than a vanity press. If someone says, "I wrote a book!", I think we assume that it will be bought and sold, not that it's languishing in our bottom shelves or that we paid for the cost of its printing and distribution. There's another post lurking in our future about the practices of publication and what buying and selling means for books.)

In that sense, books are something that came about after 1455--that is, after Gutenberg printed his bible. We might think that that is a bit late for something defining the Middle Ages. But books should also be thought of in terms of their form. A book is a codex, organized by stiching together loose leaves (usually of parchment or paper) in a fixed order. We are so used to this format that it often passes unnoticed. But the transition from scroll to codex (a transition lasting centuries that was nearly complete by 400 AD) was a major technological shift, one that was at least as transformative as the transition (still not complete) from manuscript to print.

In other words, while we might associate manuscripts most strongly with the Middle Ages, many of those manuscripts are also books. In that sense, I would say that books are indeed medieval.

The other half of the question--what is medieval--is not easily answered (as made evident in the many responses that Got Medieval records). For many people today, "medieval" simply means something primitive and out of date and possibly violent. If you want to lazily dismiss something as ridiculously backwards, you could label it medieval. In contrast to this vision of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance is the beginning of all things civilized: perspective painting, print, anatomy, subjectivity, colonialism . . . This simplistic binary falls in line with the equally simplistic binary of manuscript equalling error-riddled and ancient and print equalling fixed, standardized, and modern.

To this, I would respond that print is not as stable as we typically assume, and that it was partricularly variable in its early years of printing. Nor should we assume that manuscripts are automatically riddled with mistakes. To link medieval only with manuscripts and Renaissance only with books reinforces that false divide in both binaries.

At some point in the future I'll do a post about early printed books and contemporaneous manuscripts so we can think about how very much printed books owe to manuscript books. For now, though, I'll just leave with the observation that if you google "medieval books" what you get in response are sites about medieval manuscript books. Some of them are very good. But that response overlooks the much more complicated relationship between books and manuscript and the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Not that I would ever suggest that Google misleads us--just check out Google Penance . . .

medieval books

Over on the wonderful blog Got Medieval is a discussion about what terms define the medieval period and about the slipperiness between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. What are the seven terms that define the Middle Ages? According to Got Medieval's students, "knights, things found on or around knights, and peasants" (my summary really doesn't do that classroom exercise justice; it's well worth reading). Got Medieval offers his own list, based on his tag cloud: "Beowulf, King Arthur, Marginalia, Manuscripts, the Bayeux Tapestry, Popes, and Latin."

A recurring feature on the blog is "Mmm... Marginalia", a highly entertaining look at medieval marginalia. I certainly wouldn't want to argue that marginalia or manuscripts should not be strongly associated with the medieval period. But what about books?

The first book printed with moveable type was Johannes Gutenberg's Bible, completed in 1455. Given the complexity of the task, it's likely that Gutenberg began experimenting with moveable type in the 1440s. Is that the Middle Ages or the Renaissance in Mainz?

I'm not quibbling with Got Medieval's list, or with the other lists that commentators devised (some of which do mention books on their list of defining traits of the period). But I do want to pause on that question of whether books are medieval. That split between medieval & manuscript versus renaissance & book reveals a great deal about how we conceptualize not only the two historical periods but also the traits of manuscripts and books.

More posts on that in the future. In the meantime, admire different copies of Gutenberg's Bible at the British Library, the Harry Ransom Center, Gottingen Library, and the Library of Congress.

UPDATE: Got Medieval fans: see my newest post updating this one!