Odd hands in medieval manuscripts
How do you draw attention to a line in a book you want to remember?
Underline it?
Stick a ‘post it’ note by it?
Nothing so mundane for the medieval reader. Have a look at this –
Now you have to admit that those are seriously weird hands.
The interesting thing is that they are inked onto the page, which means that the person who commissioned the book must have specifically asked the scribe to draw attention to these lines. They come, if you are interested, from a manuscript containing a 14th-century copy of the Old French Reynard the Fox, Paris, BnF, Fr. MS 12584.
And here’s another glorious hand marking a whole passage, this time marked by the reader…
Photo: Bancroft Library, BANC MS UCB 085
…in another 14th-century book with Cicero’s Paradoxa stoicorum, which you can see at the Digital Scriptorium.
More fun than highlighter pens, wouldn’t you say?!