Manuscripts

Books written entirely by hand, and the objects that survived. Domesday, Magna Carta, the great codices, palimpsests where an earlier text was scraped off and read back centuries later, and the libraries and collectors who kept them intact.

Part of Books

83 moments in this segment.

  1. - E-codices csg-0728 004 max. The earliest manuscript catalogue of the monastery of St. Gall from the middle of the 9th century, followed by a collection of important law texts (capitularies of Ansegis, Lex Salica, Lex Ribuaria). (smu)
  2. - Domesday Croydon Cheam. The Domesday Book, the 1086 survey of England ordered by William the Conqueror.
  3. - Selseydomesday. The Domesday Book, the 1086 survey of England ordered by William the Conqueror.
  4. - Domesday zinco Somerset Glastonbury. The Domesday Book, the 1086 survey of England ordered by William the Conqueror.
  5. - Plate XXIV 2 Domesday Book Guilford 1086. Terra Regis. In Wochinges Hundredo. In Gildeford habet Rex Willelmus 75 hagas in quibus manent 175 homines. Tempore Regis Edwardi reddebat 18 libras et 3 denarios. Modo appreciatur 30 libris et tamen reddit 32 libras. De supradictis hagis habet Rannulfus clericus tres hagas ubi manent sex homines, et inde liabet isdem Rannulfus sacam et socam, nisi commune geldum in villa venerit, undo nullus cv
  6. - Magna Carta Exhibition. Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in 1215; several original engrossments and many later facsimiles survive.
  7. - Magna Carta Lincoln Castle 01. Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in 1215; several original engrossments and many later facsimiles survive.
  8. - Bifolia with Scenes from the Life of Christ. (Diocese of Hildesheim), Braunschweig(?), 13th century. tempera, and gold on vellum. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1230–1240. This is a reproduction of the object itself, not a modern photograph of a building.
  9. - AM 45 fol.-27-0010v. Page 10v of AM 45 fol. (Fríssbók, Codex Frisianus), showing part of Haralds saga hins hárfagra
  10. - Ellesmere Chaucer f. 115v. The Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, copied around 1400-1410 and now at the Huntington Library.
  11. - Ellesmere Chaucer f. 138r. The Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, copied around 1400-1410 and now at the Huntington Library.
  12. - Ellesmere Chaucer f. 133r (Physician's Tale). The Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, copied around 1400-1410 and now at the Huntington Library.
  13. - DroseraVoynichManuscriptF56r. A page from the Voynich manuscript, an early fifteenth-century codex in an undeciphered script.
  14. - Mappa Voynich Monti Sibillini. A page from the Voynich manuscript, an early fifteenth-century codex in an undeciphered script.
  15. - Voynich Manuscript (135). A page from the Voynich manuscript, an early fifteenth-century codex in an undeciphered script.
  16. - Codex Carafianus. Image of the Codex Carafianus as found in Quentin's book (raw JP2 version cropped). It is a 1583 edition of the w:Leuven Vulgate (Genesis ch. 23-24) corrected by the commission established by Sixtus V under the presidency of cardinal Carafa. Quentin writes that the original printed readings and notes in the margins of the Leuven Vulgate have been strikethrough. See the unmodified 1583 Leuven Vulga
  17. - Handwritten Guru Granth Sahib manuscript kept at Gurdwara Mattan Sahib in Martand, Kashmir, India 04. Handwritten Guru Granth Sahib manuscript kept at Gurdwara Mattan Sahib in Mattan (Martand), Kashmir, India. It is claimed that this particular manuscript dates back to the 17th century. It is known as the 'Sunehri' (golden) bir. [Note: "Bir" is a Punjabi word which means manuscript or codex]
  18. - "Azure Warbler" in Audubon's Birds of America. A plate from Audubon’s The Birds of America, the double-elephant folio issued 1827-1838.
  19. - 83 House Wren cropped-to-the-plate-only. A plate from Audubon’s The Birds of America, the double-elephant folio issued 1827-1838.
  20. - AudubonCarolinaParakeet2. A plate from Audubon’s The Birds of America, the double-elephant folio issued 1827-1838.
  21. - Dr Samuel Johnson reading the manuscript of Oliver Goldsmith Wellcome V0006841. Dr Samuel Johnson reading the manuscript of Oliver Goldsmith's 'The vicar of Wakefield', whilst a baliff waits with the landlady. Mezzotint by S. Bellin, 1845, after E.M. Ward. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Edward Matthew Ward; James Boswell; Oliver Goldsmith; Samuel Bellin; Samuel Johnson
  22. - Manuscripts saved from the looted National Library. Archive footage from May 2003 of the burnt Baghdad library and the people who carried material out to safety.
  23. - The Archimedes Palimpsest. Will Noel, Roger Easton and Michael Toth on recovering erased Archimedes text from beneath a medieval prayer book.
  24. - A Domesday commissioner explains the survey. Costumed reconstruction of the 1086 commissioners' brief: no pig, plough or villager to go uncounted.
  25. - Archimedes on the web. Follow-up talk on publishing the recovered palimpsest data openly online.
  26. - The structure of a medieval manuscript. Getty Museum explains quires, bifolia and how a codex is physically assembled.
  27. - Desilking A Christmas Carol. Morgan Library conservators remove an old silk repair from Dickens's manuscript of A Christmas Carol.
  28. - Scraps of treasure. Cambridge University Library on why fragmentary manuscripts matter as evidence.
  29. - The Hengwrt Chaucer: the earliest Canterbury Tales. The National Library of Wales on its Hengwrt manuscript, the earliest surviving copy of the Canterbury Tales, probably written within a few years of Chaucer's death in 1400.
  30. - Reading the Hengwrt manuscript of Chaucer. Lecture on the contents and ordering of the earliest Canterbury Tales manuscript and what it tells us about how Chaucer left the work unfinished.
  31. - Conserving a Byzantine manuscript. A restoration team documents their treatment of a Greek Byzantine manuscript from disbinding to resewing.
  32. - The four surviving original Magna Carta manuscripts. The British Library brings together the four surviving 1215 exemplars for the first time.
  33. - King John and the making of Magna Carta. Professors David Carpenter and Nicholas Vincent on the baronial revolt and the 1215 negotiation that produced the charter.
  34. - What Magna Carta actually is. British Library animation, narrated by Terry Jones, on the 1215 charter: what it said, how quickly it was annulled, and how four original sealed copies survived to become a founding document of constitutional law.
  35. - Digita Vaticana: putting the manuscripts online. Short film on the Vatican Library's programme to digitise its manuscript holdings and the technical work involved.
  36. - Restoring Baghdad's damaged manuscripts. Report on the conservation and digitisation project working through what survived of Iraq's written record.
  37. - New discoveries about the surviving Magna Carta copies. Nicholas Vincent's Library of Congress lecture on tracing the surviving 13th-century copies of the charter and how one reached Washington.
  38. - Monastic worlds in special collections. University of Missouri Libraries shows monastic manuscripts held in its special collections.
  39. - Multispectral imaging of Greek manuscripts. British Library on the imaging techniques that read damaged and overwritten parchment.
  40. - Alchemy and colour in medieval manuscripts. The Getty on pigments manufactured by alchemical processes, and what modern chemistry reveals about them.
  41. - A walking tour of the medieval book trade in Paris. Christopher de Hamel and Sandra Hindman walk the streets where medieval Paris made and sold manuscripts.
  42. - The world's most mysterious book. Short animated introduction to the Voynich Manuscript and the succession of cryptographers who have failed to read it.
  43. - Multispectral imaging of Codex Zacynthius. Cambridge University Library images a Greek New Testament palimpsest to recover the erased undertext.
  44. - Making manuscripts: paint. Patricia Lovett explains egg tempera and how medieval pigments were bound for the page.
  45. - Making manuscripts: vellum. British Library short with calligrapher Patricia Lovett on the animal-skin support scribes used before paper.
  46. - Handling Domesday Book. The National Archives on the physical object, two volumes, Great and Little Domesday, and how it is conserved and displayed.
  47. - Audubon's Birds of America and the double elephant folio. Sotheby's on the 1827-38 work printed at nearly a metre tall with 435 hand-coloured plates. Around 120 complete sets survive and it repeatedly sets records as the most expensive printed book.
  48. - Manuscript mise-en-page. A Bibliographical Society seminar on the internal design of the manuscript page: pricking, ruling, columns and hierarchy.
  49. - Biblioteca Malatestiana Antica Codice Aperto Ravvicinato. A library. Modern photograph of the building or interior as it stands today.
  50. - Biblioteca Malatestiana Antica Codice Aperto e Finestre. A library. Modern photograph of the building or interior as it stands today.
  51. - Limp vellum binding, medieval style. A long-form demonstration of limp vellum binding, the flexible parchment-covered structure widely used before hard boards became standard.
  52. - A new edition of the Codex Leicester. Martin Kemp and Domenico Laurenza on Leonardo's notebook of water, geology and the Moon, written in mirror script, later bought by Bill Gates in 1994.
  53. - From tablet to codex. State Library Victoria's Dr Anna Welch traces how the physical form of the book changed across three millennia.
  54. - Chains and curses: medieval book security. How libraries protected books before cheap copies existed, from chained shelves to written curses against thieves.
  55. - Imaging science and the medieval manuscript. A Harvard science talk on what spectral imaging reveals about manuscripts: erased text, pigments and the history of a page's reuse.
  56. - Conserving Akbar's Baharistan manuscript. Bodleian conservators treat a luxury Mughal manuscript made for the emperor Akbar.
  57. - The Voynich Manuscript, discussed at the Beinecke. Beinecke curators and linguists on MS 408, carbon-dated to the early 15th century, written in an undeciphered script with unidentifiable plants, and on why no proposed solution has held.
  58. - The Sinai Palimpsests Project. Recovering erased texts from palimpsests at Saint Catherine's Monastery using multispectral imaging.
  59. - Making a medieval book by hand: folding and sewing. Four Keys Book Arts begins a full medieval binding: folding pages, endpapers, piercing and sewing.
  60. - Structuring the medieval page. How pricking, ruling and the writing grid determined the layout of the medieval manuscript page.
  61. - Bindings of the medieval manuscript book. Book historian Irene O'Daly explains how medieval bindings were constructed and what survives of them.
  62. - Making a medieval book by hand: paring and covering. Four Keys Book Arts pares leather and covers the wooden boards of a medieval-style binding.
  63. - Domesday Book: England surveyed in a single year. The National Archives on the 1086 survey ordered by William the Conqueror, covering more than 13,000 places, written in abbreviated Latin, and used as a legal reference for centuries afterwards.
  64. - Medieval manuscript fragments. Lisa Fagin Davis on the scattered leaves of broken-up medieval books and how scholars reunite them.
  65. - Manuscript and rare book treasures in Canberra. National Library of Australia shows early manuscripts and rare printed books from its collection.
  66. - A medieval book from start to finish. Four Keys Book Arts condenses sixty hours of binding work into one continuous walkthrough.
  67. - How old books were made. A hands-on look inside a bindery at the structures and tools behind hand-made books.
  68. - Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen - Gewölbekeller-Codex-Modell-09721. Ein Codex besteht aus Papyrus-, Pergament, oder Papierblättern zwischen zwei Holz deckeln. Diese werden gefaltet und zu Lagen zusammengestellt. Dann liniert und beschrieben. Die Lagen werden auf Kordeln, oder Leder bünde geheftet, die in die Holzdeckel verankert werden. Zu dieser Heftung zählen auch die Fitzb Modern photograph of the subject as it appears today.
  69. - Deathless fragments. Curator Eric J. Johnson tours an Ohio State exhibition of medieval manuscript fragments.
  70. - The Queen of France's prayer book. The Morgan Library examines a royal devotional manuscript and the questions about its making.
  71. - What is a codex?. Getty short defining the codex, prompted by the digital edition of the twelve-book Florentine Codex.
  72. - Inside the British Library's manuscript collections. Dr Andrea Clarke, lead curator of medieval and early modern manuscripts, tours the collection.
  73. - The Merlin fragment rediscovered at Cambridge. Cambridge University Library on a medieval French Merlin manuscript found reused as a binding, then virtually unrolled.
  74. - The Irish manuscripts at St Gallen. National Museum of Ireland on scientific analysis of the Irish gospel books held at the Swiss abbey, carried there by early medieval Irish monks.
  75. - The only surviving manuscript in Jane Austen's hand. The Morgan Library presents an Austen manuscript and what it shows about her working methods.
  76. - Where and when was the Voynich Manuscript written?. A handwriting-based analysis presented at Voynich Manuscript Day 2025, arguing from the hands rather than the imagery.
  77. - The Ethiopic Book of Enoch. A Library of Congress lecture on the textual history of a book preserved in Ethiopic manuscripts.
  78. - Coffee with a codex: a Voynich facsimile. Curator-led session handling a facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript page by page, discussing quire structure, ink and the limits of what codicology can settle.
  79. - Traditional care practices for books. A 2025 Care and Conservation of Manuscripts seminar paper connecting local custodial knowledge to global conservation practice.
  80. - The one page of the Voynich we can read. Voynich Talk examines folio 116v, the section written in recognisable script, and why it is still hard.
  81. - Champa manuscript, opening leaves. A Champa manuscript describes the early eighteenth-century social culture of the Champa community.
  82. - Champa manuscript, later leaves. A Champa manuscript describes the early eighteenth-century social culture of the Champa community.
  83. - A lost page of the Archimedes Palimpsest resurfaces. RFI report on a long-missing leaf of the palimpsest identified in a fine arts museum.
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