"The Butcher's Bill": Using the Schoenberg Database to Reverse-Engineer Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books from Constituent Fragments

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Date

2016

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University of Pennsylvania Press

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Abstract

Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constant use and exposure to the elements or been deliberately cut up to be reused in other fashions or sold on the collectors’ market, the fragments produced by these destructive circumstances still have much to tell modern scholars about the medieval codices of which they were once a part. Through a series of six case studies focusing on a disparate array of fragments, this essay demonstrates how scholars can use the University of Pennsylvania’s Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts to help recover the hidden histories of fragmentary manuscripts.

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Manuscript studies, Fragmentology, Manuscript fragments, Digital humanities, Book history, Provenance research

Citation

Johnson, Eric J. and Scott Gwara. "'The Butcher’s Bill': Using the Schoenberg Database to Reverse-Engineer Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books from Constituent Fragments." Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, vol. 1 no. 2, 2016, p. 235-262. https://doi.org/10.1353/mns.2016.0015