The lectures published in this volume were discussed during the workshop “Codex und Material – Jenseits von Text und Bild,” which took place in October 2015 at the Herzog August Bibliothek. Already in their introduction, the editors—who are also authors of two scholarly essays contained therein—succeed in giving contours to medieval books’ diverse materiality at a high level of reflection. Starting from various individual observations, they clarify the complexity of their design, with its impressive aesthetics, symbolism, and haptics. They discuss current research questions in medieval studies, including the history of possession and use and the reconstruction and interpretation of collection contexts.
The international and interdisciplinary group of authors examines individual book types and the variability of their external appearances. The spectrum ranges from simple utility manuscripts, to scrolls, to splendid bindings at a high level of artistic design. Among the elements examined are forms of layout and the structuring of text content. A sustainable use of materials, from today's perspective, can be seen in the binding design or composition of small-format and thus handy utility volumes. Parchment, paper, or textiles were removed from their original purpose during bookbinding and reused in other contexts. Thus, parts of parchment manuscripts, whose contents were considered obsolete after following church reforms, could be given other functions. A few years ago, restorers discovered that nuns had used fragmented strips of parchment to reinforce the seams when making ornaments of medieval Christ figures. Textile and textuality combined to form a new unity, but as individual components they also continue in their individual effects. This insight is summed up perfectly in the photo selected by the editors for the cover of the book presented here.
The use of valuable color pigments, golden inks, or more inexpensive derivatives to develop a book's splendor offer opportunities for expert analysis and technological investigations that broaden the object of research even further. From a cultural-historical perspective, optically enhanced splendid specimens indicate important functions in the course of the religious service. Intensities of individual use of devotional books can be determined using clever trace analysis, which aims at wear and tear through the comprehension of pages or the kissing of images of saints. Saliva residue on fingers and lips led to darkened areas in the books, which document a focus on certain contents when viewed in real time using modern technical procedures.
When dealing with historical books, the relation between texts and images in the reception process is a frequently discussed question, which is addressed here with interesting and varied observations. Existing texts could subsequently be supplemented with pictures because believers pasted original pilgrim signs into books as material objects of their religious practice. In addition, the convention of relating them as painted “props of devotion” (271) to textual content can be established. The skillfully interrelated themes in this book are rounded off further by the optical opening of described pages into a three-dimensional reality through correspondingly structured illuminations. This can be documented through illustrations designed by experienced artists in Italy.
All illustrations in the essays presented here are in black and white for reasons of cost. One part of the panel contains a representative selection of noteworthy details in color. Nevertheless, when browsing through a publication on the materiality of medieval books, it is permissible to imagine the visual appeal that consistently colored illustrations would have had. A multi-page index of all the manuscripts mentioned in the articles from internationally renowned libraries documents the breadth of the database used here. Anyone interested in the materiality of the medieval book and questions from the field of book archaeology should take a closer look at this volume.
