medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I haven't really been paying attention, but was there any real reason
why Salisbury was ruled out?
John Briggs
On 28/04/2010 17:25, Christopher Crockett wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> sorry to be so long getting back to this topic and the kind responses from the
> list.
>
> i asked (slightly re-written):
>
>>> does anyone know of documented examples of scriptoria attached to
> continental cathedral chapters producing *whole books* (pontificals, ordinals
> and suchlike service books, or anything else, but not just charters) before
> the 13th c.?
>
>>> or, even after that time?
>
>>> England, with its curious, peculiar and kinky institution of monastic
> cathedrals, would not be relevant for comparison (it seems to me, but i'm
> willing to be corrected if it's absolutely necessary).
>
> From: Rochelle Altman<[log in to unmask]>
>
>> St. Gall? Monastery + cathedral -- course it had AS links.
>
> thanks, Rochelle, but John's existential question about there even being "a
> cathedral, and hence a cathedral chapter, at Sankt Gallen before the
> nineteenth century" aside, i'm afraid that i would have to exclude St. Gall on
> the same basis as the English monastic chapters.
>
> as Jon Cannon says:
>
>> perhaps responders could in all cases confirm the nature of the chapter
> involved at the time referred to? Christopher's comment about weird England is
> right and would, I think, apply anywhere where the cathedral community was
> monastic.
>
>
> From: Greta G Austin<[log in to unmask]>
>
>> The scriptoria of the cathedral chapters of Worms and Freising, in the late
> tenth and early eleventh centuries, produced entire books, in the area of
> canon law in particular.
>
> why (just?) Worms and Freising?
>
> what was the nature of their chapters?
>
> why the specialization in canon law?
>
> in other words, were these some sort of special (albeit not unique) cases?
>
> From: John Dillon<[log in to unmask]>
>
>> A couple of fairly well studied examples from secular cathedrals
>
> o.k., secular cathedrals.
>
>> are Verona from the sixth century to the ninth and Albi from the seventh
> century to the twelfth. The data come from codices with subscriptions
> identifying the scribe as e.g. lector in a cathedral, deacon, or archdeacon;
> from later codices that have copied such a subscription; and from contemporary
> codices analyzed paleographically as having been written by a known episcopal
> scribe.
>
> o.k., that's two.
>
> four, counting Greta's two Imperial examples.
>
>> See also Thomas H. Connolly and Jeanne Krochalis, "The Archdeacon Sicardus,
> a Twelfth-Century Scribe of Albi ", _Manuscripta_ 24 (1980), 106-13.
>
> thanks, but not immediately available to me.
>
> anything else known about this fellow?
>
> a monastic background? (unlikely, since the direction of career flow was
> usually the reverse.)
>
>> M. B. Parkes has some other examples in his _Their Hands Before our Eyes: A
> Closer Look at Scribes_ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 11.
>
>> Another possible instance is Vercelli, where however the existence of an
> episcopal scriptorium is iffy for late antiquity and not clear even for the
> episcopate of Atto in the tenth century (the student scribes of his canon
> collection _Anselmo dedicata_ may have been working under monastic
> supervision).
>
>
> my objection here (in addition to "iffyness," which is hardly objectionable,
> in middlevil studies) is that i take late antiquity to be too
> fluid/unstable/inconsistent from place to place.
>
>
> so, five possibilities --out of, what, hundreds?
>
>
> a bit of background: my assumption is that a scriptorium capable of producing
> whole books is a quite different kind of institution from one which is only
> concerned with (occasional) charter production.
>
> the latter is the work of, say, a bishop's chaplain (as i have seen in the
> "signatures" of some of the Chartres charters) --or, as the number of charters
> required increased in the later 12th c., the institution of a "officialis"
> (=Official Notary?) of the Chapter, who issued charters under his own name and
> above his own seal.
>
> whereas the latter --a book-producing scriptorium-- was a rather formidable
> piece of infrastructure, requiring a permanent locale, and a professional
> "staff" of highly trained/skilled guys *dedicated* to continual long-term,
> daily effort (as well as the ancillary crafts of parchment production,
> bookbinding, etc.)
>
>
> and my feeling is that, certainly with some exceptions, the demand for books
> by a cathedral chapter was simply not sufficient to warrant the creation of
> such an elaborate institution as a full-fledged scriptorium.
>
> the chapter would --and could-- avail themselves of the (surely) pre-existing
> local Benedictine house or, perhaps, a collegial of canons regular.
>
> at Chartres, these would have been the abbey of St. Peter
> ("St-Pere-en-Vallé") and/or the collegial of St. John ("St-Jean-en-Vallé"),
> the latter existing from the early 11th c. but reformed by Bishop Ivo c.
> 1100.
>
> the service books needed by the cathedral would have been produced in the
> scriptoria of the first of these from the earliest times and, perhaps, by the
> latter after Ivo's regularization of it.
>
>
> anyway, that's how i figure it --and i would welcome any corrections or
> comments on the subject.
>
> my thanks to Rochelle, Greta, John and Jon for sharing their thoughts and
> expertise.
>
> c
>
> **********************************************************************
> To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
> to: [log in to unmask]
> To send a message to the list, address it to:
> [log in to unmask]
> To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
> to: [log in to unmask]
> In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
> [log in to unmask]
> For further information, visit our web site:
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
>
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|