#scrolls and manuscripts

[daxwormzz]

LA DANSE MACABRE!

(Verses from “The Last Steampunk Waltz”, by Ghostfire.)

[upennmanuscripts]

Ms. Roll 2010 is a scroll of Esther written in North Africa, perhaps from Tunisia, likely during between 1800 and 1850. This book is featured in the video loop for THE MOVEMENT OF BOOKS, an exhibit about all the ways that books move. You can watch the whole loop on YouTube!

Ms. Roll 2010 🔗:

The Movement of Books Video Loop 🔗:

The Movement of Books exhibit information 🔗:

[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

[cuties-in-codices]

an eagle going "WE WE WE"

Revelation 8:13: "As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth [...]"

illustration in the "ottheinrich bible", germany, illuminated in 1530 by matthias gerung

source: Munich, BSB, Cgm 8010(8, fol. 291r

[space-writes]

friday kiss tag

tagged by @the-inkwell-variable, thank you! (one of my favourite tags, honestly. i love making my dolls kiss) please enjoy this one from A Question of Trust:

[ID - a purple decorative divider]

“It arrived.” He turned to find Ashenivir in the doorway, staring at the bed with an odd expression on his face. “Shortly after you left this morning,” Rizeth said. Ashenivir trailed his fingers over the top rail of the footboard, tracing the carvings. He bit his lip. “It’s perfect,” he said quietly. “I…it’s a bed, Master.” “Very observant, apprentice.” A wide grin split Ashenivir’s face. “It’s our bed.” He flung his arms around Rizeth’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. Rizeth’s hand went to the small of his back, holding him closer—he could feel the smile in the lips moving softly beneath his, and returned it. A moment later he found himself pushed backwards; his legs hit the edge of the bed and then Ashenivir was pushing him down onto it, and he had a warm, lovely, already-breathless boy atop him. Well, now. That wouldn’t do at all.

[ID - a purple decorative divider]

no pressure tagging @revenancy @princessbonecrimes and @charlesjosephwrites

Obedience taglist: @foxboyclit @belovedviolence @thegreatobsesso (ask to be +/-)

[tuxedolascribalblogger]

[ribbittrobbit]

tagged by @yeehawpim first celebrity, outfit, quote, and aesthetic pic on Pinterest is your vibe!!

tagging: @orionsystem6 @theeloveofsolitude @meowth20 @hunch-bi-curio @scalpho + anyone who wants?? please feel no pressure i just tagged the first 5 moots i saw in my activity <3

[leviathanvon]

Now it's infallible. No, wait, now it's infallible.sorry, now it's infallible.

-

[wisdomfish]

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a fascinating witness to the authenticity of the Old Testament text. Prior to their discovery in 1947, the oldest complete Old Testament texts dated from around AD 900. The Dead Sea Scrolls date to around a century or so before the time of Christ and include many Old Testament manuscripts. The book of Isaiah was found amongst the scrolls and 'proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.'[18] ~ Mark Pickering, Peter Saunders 

[circuitmouse]

Jack Kerouac and the scroll of On the Road

[upennmanuscripts]

Ms. Indic 3 is an 18th century Horoscope scroll, written in Sanskrit and featuring 29 illustrations of gods, cosmic beings, planets and zodiacal signs. This book is featured in the video loop for THE MOVEMENT OF BOOKS, an exhibit about all the ways that books move. You can watch the whole loop on YouTube!

Ms. Indic 3 🔗:

The Movement of Books Video Loop 🔗:

The Movement of Books exhibit information 🔗:

[cuties-in-codices]

not to vagueblog but i'm lowkey pissed at this 40,000 followers medieval art instagram account posting some of my pics on their acc the exact same day i posted them on tumblr without any credits or anything. like obviously none of this is my art but like get your own material lol

[icarus-suraki]

I don't like wading into Ao3 debates, but I want to give my professional opinion on Ao3 with regard to archives vs. libraries.

I am a professional librarian (MSLS) and I have worked in both archives and public libraries and a lot of the confusion and concern I see surrounding Ao3 is a fundamental misunderstanding of How Archives Work.

An archive is a collection related to a subject. That subject is often a person but sometimes a field or concept or project. And the purpose of an archive is to keep everything. And I mean everything. I was going to say "short of biohazards" but since I know there's a sealed R. Crumb Devil Gal chocolate bar in the UNC Chapel Hill archives, we really do mean everything.

When a collection of materials--which are usually unique and original and can be photos, manuscripts, letters, recordings (audio and/or visual), notes and notebooks, objects, published books, whatever--on and/or from the subject arrive at the archive, they are examined, preserved for longevity, accessioned and cataloged (added to the archive's records), and added to the archive. You measure collections in linear feet. As in, once it's all preserved and boxed and secure, you note how many feet of shelf space it takes up. And some of y'all on Ao3 have a lot of linear feet to your name (and I'm proud of you).

This is an archive: it is designed to preserve the original materials related to a subject. That is its purpose. Archives are how we have the original scroll manuscript of On the Road, for example, or the Lomax recordings of American folksongs, or Tijuana Bibles, or James Joyce's loveletters to Nora.

Now you, a member of the public, can access some archives. Some are easier to access than others. The one I worked in was open to the public; good luck getting into the British Archives without a good reason.

So now apply this to Ao3--which is an archive both in name and in purpose. It is intended to preserve fan-created content long term. And this means everything, whether you personally like the materials or not. It is a repository for as much as possible.

And the "whether you personally like the materials or not" is important, hence why I mentioned Jim's loveletters and Tijuana Bibles in particular. (RIP Jim, you would have loved pegging.)

If it's made by fans and it exists, we should keep it to document the history and progression of fandom. That is the point. We have lost enough materials related to the subject of fans of media and we don't need to lose any more.

The fact of the matter is that Ao3 is only one facet of the OTW, which preserves other fan-related materials (convention booklets and zines, for example). Somehow Ao3, an archive on the subject of fanfiction, has been divorced from the rest of the project, mostly by way of "purity culture" and panic over "dangerous" fiction.

The fact that you can go through an archive and find interesting information is the other side of archives. No, they shouldn't be like the banker's box of old letters stuffed in my closet. Yes, they should be organized and as accessible as is appropriate for the state of the materials.

It's really, really cool to find stuff in an archive, I'm not even going to lie. I have done it before and I will do it again. And yet there are other items in an archive that I might not want or need or be interested in at all--but they're still there. That's the cataloging and accessioning: to keep up with what's there, to stay "on topic" with collecting, and to be able to find things in that archive. Bless the tag wranglers who are doing the cataloging at Ao3.

The pearl clutching seems to come from 1. the creation of "dangerous" fanworks and 2. public access to those "dangerous" fanworks. These are issues of "purity culture" and opinions on censorship and should not involve Ao3.

Ao3, under the umbrella of the OTW, is a documentation and preservation project first and foremost.

[tuxedolascribalblogger]

this just went out at østgarðr provincial court at pennsic :D