#sarah s.

[uwmspeccoll]

Manuscript Monday

Today we will be exploring our facsimile of an Exultet Roll, a southern Italian manuscript originally produced around 950 CE. This is a long scroll (24 feet long, unrolled) containing the text and chant notation for the Exultet, or Exsultet, which is a chant performed at the Easter Vigil mass, usually by a deacon before the congregation. It celebrates the night of the resurrection of Jesus, and is performed in praise of the Paschal candle, which is lit at every mass during the liturgical year. This candle slowly melts down until it is almost completely depleted, and then it is replaced at the Easter Vigil each year.

Although today it is usually chanted in the vernacular language of the Church being attended, this chant is referred to as the Exultet due to the first Latin word of the chant, which begins 'Exultet iam angelica turba coelorum' ('Let the angelic host of heaven exult').

Personally, one of my favorite parts of the Exultet chant is the portion known as the 'Praise of the Bees', which is said to be a reference to Virgil's writings in the Aeneid. This portion of the chant praises the work of the bees done to create the wax with which the Paschal Candle is made:

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants' hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church. But now we know the praises of this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God's honor, a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light, for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.

The codex -- books bound on one side as we know them today -- had long replaced the scroll by the time this manuscript was produced. So, why is this manuscript in the form of a scroll, rather than a codex? The reason is due to its ceremonial use at the Vigil mass. As the deacon chanted the Exultet, he would actually let the scroll unroll over the front of the ambo, so that members of the congregation could see the illuminations on the manuscript. Because of this use during the mass, these scrolls also have a peculiar feature: the text is written in an opposite orientation to the illuminations. This allowed the deacon to recite the chant accurately while the images were also oriented correctly for the attendees of the mass.

Use of Exultet scrolls during the Easter Vigil is unique to Southern Italian Catholic churches around Benevento and Montecassino and began being produced in the 10th century. All extant Exultet Rolls today were made between the 10th and 13th century.

Our facsimile is a reproducton of the Vatican Library's Codex Vaticanus Latinus 9820 and was published in Graz by the Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt in 1975. There are currently no complete images of the Scroll online, but the Vatican Library does have a digitized document explaining the condition of the scroll when it arrived there around 1200 CE.

View more manuscript posts.

View more Manuscript Monday posts.

– Sarah S., Former Special Collections Graduate Intern

[elijahdmgz]

Haven't shared art here in months so have my latest work as a test with my friend Sarah's original characters!!

[be-an-echo]

✨ girl dad Joel ✨

made for @kokureno

[fitz]

"You're just going to screw me like everyone else in my life. I know you will." "No, no, because I'm all you've got."

[milktea-grn]

everything eats and is eaten (time is fed)

[paracosmicessence]

bitches be making punnett squares to come up with ideas for more sonadow fankids

[bluartist]

[vertigoartgore]

Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor vs the Terminator (the T-800 model). Art by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira).

[azrielsfavoriteshadow]

Jane Austen would ship Elucien and that’s a fact.

[doortotomorrow]

"I'm Reese, Sergeant Techcom, DN38416...assigned to protect you." - Kyle Reese

[uwmspeccoll]

Manuscript Monday

Shown here are pages from our facsimile of one of the most popular texts of the Middle Ages, Speculum Humanae Salvationis (The Mirror of Human Salvation). The text was written to expound upon the medieval idea of Biblical typology, or the ways in which the Old Testament of the Christian Bible foreshadows its New Testament. This type of book is part of the genre of speculum literature, which was made to record encyclopedic knowledge of a subject within a single book. The popularity of the Speculum led to it being copied many times, and hundreds of copies in several languages remain extant today from the medieval period.

Our facsimile, published in 1973 by the Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt in Graz, Austria in an edition of 72 copies, is from a 14th-cenury Latin manuscript housed in the Benedictine Kremsmünster Abbey Library in Germany, and catalogued as Codex Cremifanensis 243. It is one of the oldest copies of the Speculum.

The pages of the Speculum hold three Old Testament stories corresponding to one New Testament story, along with an astonishing 192 illuminations. While its subject matter is Biblical, we can see the everyday objects and clothing worn in the 14th century, since Biblical characters were dressed in contemporaneous clothing and architecture in the background is from the same period. This gives us an interesting insight into 14th century medieval culture by showing us the objects and places that surrounded these people in everyday life. Throughout the illuminations, some of the faces are smudged out with black ink; this shows viewers that these are the villains in the stories, though I have to say that in most cases, (especially where our poor friend is being sawed in half) it is pretty obvious.

View more manuscript posts.

View more Manuscript Monday posts.

– Sarah S., Former Special Collections Graduate Intern

[sapphicola]

Is there a term for opposites attract but with two people with similar energy who hate each other bc that’s what I think these two would have

[actressposts]

Sarah Silverman

[petiteclover]

Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in “The Terminator” 1984. (X)

[keelifallen]

They are so problematic fr

[butdaddyilovehimmm]

Patrick: "Liechtenstein funnily enough became Gabriel and I's word for-" Sarah: "Your safety word?"

- Sidebar, S1 E8 Identity Crisis