medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Trying my very best to keep myself distracted from my troubles by starting as
many projects on as many disparate topics which i know nothing whatever about
and which i'll never be able to finish, i have a question or two i could use a
bit of help on, if anyone happens to be feeling generous.
the city library of Chartres suffered a direct hit by an Allied bomb
("collateral damage") in May, 1944, one of a little string of half a dozen or
so which marched in a nice path from the Haute Ville down to the lower rent
Faubourg Guillaume (where one happened to hit the house of the grandparents
and parents of a friend of mine).
952 or so manuscripts, of which c.600 were from the m.a., were either
destroyed or more or less badly damaged.
this catastroph has, as might be expected, put something of a crimp in the
progress of various sorts of subsequent Chartrain studies.
(there is an on-going project by the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des
texts to identify and "restore" the collection. see: Dominique POIREL, "Les
manuscrits sinistrés de la bibliotheque municipale de Chartres", _Gazette du
livre médiéval_, no. 18, 1991, pp. 30-2. --if anyone knows anything further
about this project, i'd be happy to hear of it, btw.)
among the mss destroyed was Chartres BM ms 29, a c.900 ms from the library of
the Benedictine house of St. Peter's of Chartres (itself reformed in 951 by
Abbot Vulfad of Fleury, later Bishop of Chartres) which contained this curious
drawing, apparently a self-portrait of the scribe who copied the manuscript :
http://www.ariadne.org/centrechartraine/mss/chartresmss/chartresms29-244v-rotbert.jpg
in the _Catalogue général des mss des bibliotheques publiques de France
(tome XI: Chartres, 1890), MM Omont, Molinier, etc. transcribe (p. 15) the
name on the book on the lectern as "Rothbertus", and this reading is confirmed
by the learned local scholar, Canon Yves Delaporte, in his catalogue of the
"Manuscrits enluminés de la Bibliothèque de Chartres" (in _Le Cinquantenaire
de la Société Archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir_, Chartres, [1906], II, p.184,
no. XXXI).
more recently, the Fleury connection with St. Peter's of Chartres prompted
Marco Mostert to include this ms in his formidable _The Library of Fleury: A
Provisional List of Manuscripts_ (Hilversum, 1989), as his "BF245" entry,
where he both publishes (after a previous publication) the drawing and offers
the transcription (without comment) : "Rotbertus".
Questio Uno : i read this name as "ROT-BERTVS", not "ROTHBERTUS", i.e., the
supposéd "H" is actually just a dash seperating the parts of the word, which
is split between the two "pages". Does anyone else agree ?
Questio Duo (and more important) : i know that scribal "signatures" of various
types --simple or complex, in colophons, at the beginnings or ends of mss,
whatever & wherever-- are very, very common, but what about *[self-]portraits*
of scribes ??
it has been suggested to me that there may be cases of true "author portraits"
which may have the characteristics of the scribe/illuminator, in a kind of
associative "self-portrait" of the latter, but, even if such examples could be
proven to exist, that is clearly not what we have here, even though the "form"
of the drawing is certainly based on the quite common "author portrait"
model.
whatever his name is, this guy is drawing *himself*, in the act of writing, is
he not ?
does anyone know of other --clear & demonstrable-- examples of such "scribal
self-portraits" ?
finally, the "previous publication" of this drawing which i mentioned earlier
is in : Langlois, "Scribes de Chartres", Revue Mabillon, I, 1905, p. 162.
Indiana U. doesn't have this particular issue of the periodical and i wonder
if there is anyone out there who has access to it who would volunteer to xerox
or (better) scan a copy of it for me ? (off-list responses would be best, i
suppose.)
many thanks to all in advance.
christopher
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