How did the medieval manuscript develop as a physical object during the Twelfth Century Renaissance and what do these changes tell us about the intellectual culture of the period?

This project investigates the professionalisation of university libraries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the lens of the medieval manuscript holdings. Taking Leiden University Library as a starting point, it sheds light on the changing practices surrounding the conservation,…

During this course, specialists from Leiden University and beyond will provide instruction on issues of editing, paleography and conservation of oriental manuscripts. They will also speak about philology, literacy and orality and the transmission of knowledge in the Islamic manuscript culture, presenting…

Combining cutting-edge quantitative approaches with more traditional book history approaches, this new book offers the first history of medieval manuscript destruction in England from the medieval period to the present.

This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele’s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

Time, Agency and Memory in Ancient Mexico.

This book explores the production and use of medieval manuscripts that contain classical Latin texts. Six experts in the field address a range of topics related to these manuscripts, including how classical texts were disseminated throughout medieval society, how readers used and interacted with specific…

This dissertation is an analysis of spelling variation in Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, two early texts of The Canterbury Tales.

Mr. J. Sun defended his thesis on 21 March 2018.

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

The present monograph, spanning a wide range of world and local literatures represents a high academic standard of both literary criticism and philological analysis. By demonstrating her expertise as an Africanist conversant with the Arabic canon, Raia reveals how the narrative of Joseph has been re-narrated…

Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations brings together a wide range of modern approaches to the study of pre-colonial and early colonial Mesoamerican manuscripts. This includes innovative studies of materiality through the application of non-invasive spectroscopy and…

Recently, Evert Jan van Leeuwen was able to identify an “unknown” manuscript leaf in the William Godwin Papers of the Abinger Collection at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), while sitting at his desk in Van Eyckhof 4 (Leiden).

What can a doodle tell us about the person who drew it? Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch book historian at Leiden University who searches for the secret meanings of doodles and scribbles in medieval manuscripts. He talks to BBC World Service about his passion for books.

Cat Paw Tweet Goes Viral

This week sees the first edition of the textbook Mouse&Manuscript published online. Mouse&Manuscript is a collection of interactive lessons on codicology and oriental manuscripts. Its aim is to stimulate teaching on codicology in and outside of the classroom, and to contribute to the disclosure of Leiden…

This article is aimed to shed light on the Swahili-‘Ajam ī manuscripts, focusing on the major Swahili classical genre: the

The La Galigo manuscript at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been digitized. The manuscript, which was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ Register, is now freely available online and can be used for teaching and research. La Galigo is the world's longest epic, written in the Buginese…

This symposium (May 22) will explore topics such as the loss of and damage done to medieval manuscripts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through an interdisciplinary set of papers. Speakers will highlight projects aimed at identifying and rehabilitating damaged manuscripts and archives, and…

Do you frequently search the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) for western medieval manuscripts? Then you must have noticed important changes lately. Some 1800 summary catalogue records in Dutch were replaced by more elaborate descriptions in English. Furthermore, the catalogue interface…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire four remarkable medical manuscripts partly thanks to support from the Friends of Leiden University Libraries, the Pieter van Foreest Stichting and the Van de Sande Fonds. All four are largely written in Dutch and can be dated between 1595 and…

Recently, some changes have been made to the catalog of Leiden University Library, making more than 1000 digitized codices more accessible than before. The 'Inventory of Western Medieval Manuscripts Held by Leiden University Libraries,' created by manuscript curator André Bouwman, is also now available:…

Over 600 manuscripts and early prints have been made digitally available by Leiden University Libraries (UBL) via the Europeana platform. In the project 'The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ (ARMA), seven European heritage institutions added 30,000 digitised medieval items to Europeana’s database…

From 2 to 4 September 2024, the University of Fribourg organizes a three-day graduate course on multilingual manuscripts in the middle ages. Apply before: April 8, 2024.

Mariken Teeuwen started at the Institute for History as a professor by special appointment of Script Culture of the Middle Ages on 1 March. ‘I’m looking forward to doing research together with students.’

The physical features of twelfth-century manuscripts from the Flemish abbey of Ter Duinen – such as script, page layout, and reading aids – show how their readers organized, interpreted, and transmitted knowledge.

The catalogue includes some of the most famous early medieval manuscripts, decorated with luxury materials and exceptionally beautiful script, ornament and illustrations.

The aim of this research is to investigate the informative potential of drawings and decorations in Italian secular cantata manuscripts from the seventeenth century.

The School of Celtic Studies (DIAS) is organizing a conference on medieval multilingual manuscripts. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars working on medieval bilingual or multilingual sources from a variety of linguistic backgrounds, geographical areas, and literary genres. It will…

Due to the unrest in the Middle East, many ancient Syrian manuscripts are no longer available or have even been destroyed. Professor of Old Testament Bas ter Haar Romeny received 77 microfilms of Syrian manuscripts, enabling him and his PhD students to research these ‘lost’ manuscripts.

In August 2019, LUCIS will again organise a summer school on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world. Are you interested in handwritten materials? Then keep reading!

Radboud University Nijmegen is advertising a position for a Postdoctoral Researcher in Medieval Manuscript Studies (0.8 FTE) to be part of the research team of the ERC-funded project "Patristic Sermons in the Middle Ages. The Dissemination, Manipulation, and Interpretation of Late-Antique Sermons in…

The publication by the group of Catherijne Knibbe was awarded the 2016 AAPS Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award.

On December 3, Erik Kwakkel (University of British Columbia) will give a lecture in the University Library Leiden, titled “Writing on the Wall: Medieval Advertisement Sheets in Perspective.” Professional scribes in the Middle Ages produced advertisement sheets with which they presented themselves to…

Professional scribes in the Middle Ages produced advertisement sheets with which they presented themselves to potential clients. In this lecture Erik Kwakkel will show known and new examples of such advertisement sheets and interpret their importance for our understanding of the culture of writing in…

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

Manuscripts that look like a comic book, that's how you could describe the manuscripts of the Dongba people from China. The manuscripts are one of the last examples of a so-called pictographic script that can only be interpreted by Dongba priests, shamans, who have knowledge of the ancient Dongba cu…

The most important group of medieval manuscripts from the Special Collections of the University Libraries of Leiden (UBL), the Codices Vossiani Latini, is now available in open access via the Digital Collections. The 324 Latin manuscripts copied in medieval Europe, along with 48 post-medieval manuscripts,…

This two-day international conference organised by the 'Innovating Knowledge' Project aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to premodern manuscripts and manuscript texts.

It is time for the fifth lecture in the series Manuscript Mondays. We shall have two speakers. Jesse Keskiaho (University of Helsinki, Finland) will start with a talk about the soul. In the second talk Evina Steinova will tell us more about the medieval encyclopaedia. The talks will be followed by a…

Water damage, old restorations and copper corrosion in some illustrations. De Materia Medica has been through a lot over the centuries. The manuscript dates from 1083 AD and is one of the oldest illustrated Arabic manuscripts in the world. Due to intensive use, De Materia Medica was no longer in good…

Apply now for the fourth LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 23 August until Friday 2 September 2022 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 27 June 2022.

Apply now for the LUCIS Summer School on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim world, which will take place from Tuesday 15 August until Friday 25 August 2017 in Leiden. The deadline for applications is Friday 16 June 2017.

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) invites applications for a PhD position within the project ‘Libraries as Links in Learning: Making the Meaning of Manuscripts’ (1.0 fte, 4 years). The PhD candidate will track changing professional and scholarly practices and attitudes towards…

On Thursday 21 November 2024 Jake Benson successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, Prof.dr. Sarah Cramsey convened a book manuscript event at the beach of Wassenaar near Leiden to discuss her new book 'Caring through Catastrophe: Jewish Children and their Caretakers during the Holocaust' which is under contract with Indiana University Press.

Now that it is becoming increasingly easy to digitise texts, it seems almost obvious to do that with everything that has ever been written. University lecturer Verena Meyer thinks that is too simplistic. ‘We need to look more closely at the political and cultural effects of digitisation.’