Halporn, 'Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts:  A Guide to Technical Terms', Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 9505
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmmr/bmmr-9505-halporn-understanding

@@@@95.5.5, Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts

Michelle P. Brown.  <i>Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts:  A Guide to
Technical Terms</i>.  Malibu:  The J. Paul Getty Museum in association
with the British Library, 1994.  ISBN 0-89236-217-0 (pb.).  $10.95. 
	Reviewed by James W. Halporn, Indiana University/Harvard University
	
    This handbook, illustrated with 56 color and 31 black-and-white
illustrations, is much more than the title of the book suggests.  The
author, a curator in the manuscript department of the British Library, has
produced a thorough glossary of the terms that anyone who works with
medieval books will find valuable.  Excellent reproductions from MSS in
the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library are used to make the
definitions offered even more clear and understandable. 

    The subjects covered include "the contexts of production and the
people involved...; the physical processes and techniques employed
(codicology); the types of text encountered...; and the terminology
applied to the elements, styles, and forms of illumination" (5).  Under
production, the glossary offers terms like "scribe," "scriptorium,"
"stationer"; the types of texts run from liturgical books and related
works (e.g., Books of Hours), to literary, legal, and scientific texts. It
deals with works created in the West from late antiquity until the
establishment of printing, with the majority of the illustrations
referring to Latin codices. 

    Two valuable sections precede the alphabetical list of terms.  First,
illustrations of the external and internal binding structure of the
medieval book, show the various elements of the book covers with their
technical names.  This is followed by an example from a Book of Hours
showing the elements of illumination and terms used in discussing the
illuminated page. 

    Some of the definitions are brief (e.g., "Attribute"), others (e.g.,
"Bestiary" and "Calendar") run to several pages.  In all cases
cross-references are clearly marked by setting the item in capitals. 
General terms, like "Byzantine" and "Carolingian," are also considered. 

    The portable format (128 pages, 23.3 X 15.5 cm.) will make it a
valuable book for consultation by museum-goers (for whom it was originally
intended), students, and scholars interested in manuscript production.  It
will also prove a useful supplement to the author's recent palaeographical
handbook, <i>A Guide to Western Manuscripts from Antiquity to 1600</i>
Toronto, 1990.[[1]]

                           Note 

[[1]].  I offer here a few suggestions for correction and 
amplification.    

    In the "Selected Bibliography" for "Barras, E." read "Baras, E."  
This item is now in a second edition of 1981.  Under "Needham, P." for 
<i>Five</i> read <i>Twelve</i>.   
    In the illustration to "Carolingian" (35) note that the script is 
not Caroline minuscule, but half-uncial, commonly used for prefaces in 
these Tours Bibles.  
    Although there is an entry for "Diurnal" (50), there is no 
corresponding entry for "Nocturnale."  
    The definition of "Evangelary/Evangelistary" (54) does not 
sufficiently distinguish between these two types of books.  According 
to Virgil Fiala and Wolfgang Irtenkauf, "Versuch einer liturgischen 
Nomenklatur," <i>Zur Katalogisierung mittelalterlicher und neurer 
Handschriften</i>, Frankfurt, 1963, 109, the Evangelistary contains 
the Gospel pericopes fully written out and is to be distinguished from 
the Evangelary (or Gospel Book) which contains the four Gospels in 
continuous order.