Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

The margin is “in” nowadays not “out.” Our recent exhibition at Les Enluminures (The Margins of Medieval Art: Questioning the Center) got me thinking about the margins in other types of manuscripts, text manuscripts that are not especially illuminated.

The first time that one of my students had the opportunity to pick up a fifteenth-century breviary, he was so nervous he could hardly bring himself to touch it...

In uncertain times, a tool to predict the future could change your life, but such a device would surely be costly or physically unattainable. Yet, that tool might be right in the palm of your hand...

Short winter days are now upon us. Usually, we don’t consider the actual length of our day to be shortened, otherwise we could leave work at 3:00pm! There may be less daylight now, but the measure of the day does not change throughout the year. Why is this?

Of all the monastic orders founded during the Middle Age, none are as romantic as the Carthusians. The extreme austerity of their way of way life has always inspired awe. And their complete withdrawal from the world paradoxically has ensured our perennial fascination.

Nationalism vs. European unification; these have been pressing questions in Europe since the end of World War II, if not before. They are crucial questions now (and highly controversial ones), given the resurgence of nationalist movements across the world, whether one is contemplating Trump’s “America first,” Brexit, or Marine Le Pen. And these issues certainly have ramifications for medieval historians since contemporary political movements are looking back to the Middle Ages (or a fictionalized version of the medieval past) to support their agendas.

Late-July 2020 was a stressful time for many of us in higher education facing the start of a new semester in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ll admit to having been particularly anxious about it all. I’d never before taught in either hybrid or fully online environments, and like so many other instructors I found myself scrambling to come up with ways to help make my students’ “classroom” experience in the fall edifying, engaging, and entertaining.

I collect works by Dora Maar. She was the mistress of Picasso from 1936 to 1945. Before meeting Picasso, she was a surrealist photographer of considerable renown, but Picasso disdained photography as “not art,” and so in his formidable presence she turned to draftsmanship (her “dessins d’après les maîtres”) and eventually to painting. At this point you are wondering: What does this have to do with Joel ben Simeon?

I've said this before, but it is worth saying it again -- everyone at Les Enluminures believes that teaching with actual medieval manuscripts is a transformative experience–one we want to share with as many people as possible.

Like good parents, we love all our updates equally, but we are particularly excited about the 34 “new” manuscripts that were added to the text manuscripts site on October 1. Here are two of my favorites.