![\"MsC2\"](\"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/files\/2013\/04\/MsC2.jpg\")
<\/a>Our leaf turned out to be from De vita contemplativa<\/i>, a fifth-century theological treatise by Julianus Pomerius. Determining the text of a particular leaf is often easy, requiring little more than Googling a short passage from the text in question. Identifying where and when it was made is the tricky part, but fortune was on our side: this particular manuscript was written on paper.<\/p>\nMedieval manuscripts were predominantly written on vellum (or parchment, but we\u2019ll overlook the distinction for now). Paper wasn\u2019t produced in Europe until the twelfth century, and its importation didn’t begin much earlier. What\u2019s more, to an inexpert eye such as mine, the script appeared Carolingian\u2014the standard book hand developed for the copying of texts during Charlemagne\u2019s reign. While Charlemagne died in 814, this book hand\u2014called Carolingian minuscule, or Caroline minuscule\u2014continued to be used throughout Christendom. But just as paper was growing more common in Europe, the Carolingian script was yielding to the Gothic hand that would soon dominate manuscript production. It seemed unlikely, then, to have a true Carolingian manuscript on paper.<\/p>\n
Near the end of the fourteenth century, however, Italian humanists revived Carolingian minuscule. Mistaking the Carolingian manuscripts for original Roman texts, these humanists began copying their favorite classical works in what they believed was their original form. This revived form of Carolingian minuscule has become known as humanistic script. It was commonly used throughout Italy (and later throughout Europe) until the printing of books largely obviated the need to copy them by hand.<\/p>\n
And just like that, we came to the likely conclusion that our manuscript was probably made in Italy during the 15th<\/sup> century. After consulting a couple of manuscript censuses, we learned that a 15th<\/sup>-century Italian copy\u2014on paper\u2014had once been in the private collection of Ernst Detterer, a Chicago typographer and later the inaugural custodian of the Newberry Library\u2019s John M. Wing Foundation. Given the scarcity of copies on paper, and our geographic proximity to Chicago, this all seemed rather coincidental.<\/p>\n With the help of colleagues at the Newberry Library and the University of Colorado, Boulder, we were able to confirm that our leaf did in fact come from that very same Detterer manuscript\u2014more information than we had ever hoped to uncover.<\/p>\n The underlying tragedy, of course, is that the other twenty-eight leaves are scattered across the country, if not the planet. Three, for example, reside at Boulder. It\u2019s a fate befallen many medieval manuscripts, which were commonly sold or otherwise distributed leaf by leaf at a time when the ethics of the practice were a bit murkier. When in Detterer\u2019s collection, the manuscript was unbound, which mustn\u2019t have helped to suppress the urge to separate the leaves. It\u2019s unlikely that all twenty-nine leaves will ever be reunited. The best we can do is to keep our little piece of it safe and secure, to document its history, and to share it with all of you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s kind of like History\u2019s Mysteries meets Antiques Roadshow. There\u2019s an item that\u2019s been lying in your collection for years, possibly decades, patiently awaiting investigation. What exactly is this thing? Then one day\u2014maybe on a quiet Friday afternoon\u2014you suddenly have the urge to dig into it. That\u2019s what happened here in Special Collections. A medievalContinue reading “Manuscript Mystery Solved”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"syndication":[435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6187,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions\/6187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n