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?

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…

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…

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…

This summer school is for graduate (MA and PhD) students and researchers who have an interest in handwritten materials, editing, and the tradition of editing in the Muslim world. It offers theoretical lectures as well as hands-on practice with samples from the world-famous collections of the Leiden…

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Lecture, Worlds to Discover: Manuscripts from the Muslim World

While many European universities, Leiden included, have a proud tradition of research into Islamic studies, a topical and thematic focus on Shiʿi Islam in all its dispensation remains a desideratum.

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…

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…

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…

Dating back more than 400 years, Leiden University has the oldest continuous chair of Arabic outside the Arabic-speaking world. Today the MENA region is studied at Leiden from before the coming of Islam up to today from a wide array of disciplines. And Arabic is studied within the diverse linguistic,…

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…

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…

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

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:…

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…

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.

In his VIDI project “Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (2010-2015) Erik Kwakkel and his team studied how books and reading developed under influence of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, a period in which Europe went through a variety of cultural and intellectual…

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.