Andrea Winkler | Digitized Medieval Manuscripts in the Classroom: A Project in Progress | The History Teacher, 35.2

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts in the Classroom: A Project in Progress¹

Andrea Winkler
Whitman College

FOR MANY MEDIEVALISTS, the increase in digitized manuscripts has been a wonderful by-product of the Internet. Several ongoing projects provide scholars with access to an increasing number of useful manuscripts. Most of these projects are available on the Internet, and usually consist of library exhibits, excerpts from illuminated manuscripts, or, occasionally, complete manuscripts. ² Other projects, such as volumes of the Papal Registers, are accessible only on a CD-ROM set. ³ These manuscript sources are invaluable for scholars and provide a number of advantages. Digitized images increase access to certain manuscripts for both scholars and graduate students, and allow travel and research funding—if available—to be spent in other areas. Digitized images also allow researchers to see the archaeology of the manuscript page, such as layout, glosses, and marginalia, which will not appear in a typed transcription. Images are also far easier to read than microfilm, which is often grainy, reproduced in negative format, and has limited enlargement ability.

Despite their utility for scholars and graduate students, however, these images remain less accessible for undergraduate students, who usually lack the linguistic and paleographical skills to use such manuscripts. Hence, at the undergraduate level manuscript images on the Internet are often used in the classroom simply as bigger, better slides. Slides and static images of course are very useful. They can show students what a manuscript looks like, and show styles of illumination, marginalia, and glosses. The ability of digitization to increase access to manuscript pages and all their detail certainly gives both professor and students a wider variety of materials from which they can choose, particularly in places where there have traditionally been only a few slides available.

However, there are other ways to use manuscript images to allow undergraduates the chance to employ problem solving techniques to interact actively with these materials. In what follows, I will use my undergraduate survey course entitled "Medieval Europe" to suggest ways in which digitized manuscript research, not just individual manuscript images, can be brought into the classroom and can facilitate active, hands-on learning. In doing so, I will describe the prototype of a curriculum using a digitized manuscript corpora in a different way, one that allows undergraduates to understand and interact with a medieval manuscript, specifically a Book of Hours. The goal of this interaction is to encourage students to explore this aspect of the material culture of the late Middle Ages for themselves, rather than simply seeing yet more static images that must be explained by a professor.

Integrating Research Materials into the Classroom

The use of manuscripts in the undergraduate classroom naturally raises questions of an appropriate level of classroom material. Heretofore, the argument has been that undergraduates are not linguistically prepared to use medieval manuscripts in the classroom. However, the Internet has given cause to challenge that assumption. Already translated, several statistical collections of data have obvious uses for students. For example, students can study economic patterns or gender using David Herlihy's database on the Florentine Catasto of 1427. ⁴ Much of the Domesday Book has been translated and placed online in searchable format, which is useful for students of English social and economic history. ⁵ Beyond such statistical and demographic data, the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, the Online Medieval and Classical Library, and the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies all provide easily accessible full and excerpted translations of medieval texts, manorial court rolls, and charters. These are useful for students who want to study subjects ranging from economics and demographics to philosophical thought. ⁶ There are similar collections of materials for other disciplines, including modern European history and American history. ⁷ Although students in an undergraduate medieval survey course are highly unlikely to produce groundbreaking research, such database collections permit beginning students to conduct their own research without being hampered by their lack of linguistic skills or by the more restricted holdings of smaller undergraduate libraries. Similarly, the searchable texts allow students to read and compare a variety of texts, and to find texts that discuss particular issues. This reinforces, in part, the approach to teaching history undergraduates through the analysis of primary documents, which has been in place for over a decade. ⁸ It also represents a move away from the use of more traditional classroom lectures that reduce the student's participation and are less effective at stimulating higher-order thinking skills.

The question of using untranslated manuscript images in the classroom in an interactive or self-directed fashion, however, is somewhat more problematic. What classroom use can there be for manuscript images prepared for professionals when students cannot read or understand them? To answer this question, I would like now to discuss the creation and use of a hypertext Book of Hours, before I turn to other kinds of assignments that involve manuscript images and translations.

The Online Book of Hours

I became interested in creating a digitized manuscript site specifically responding to such scholarly and teaching needs in the process of teaching an undergraduate survey course on medieval Europe at Whitman College. ⁹ A regular component of this course is a trip to Penrose Library to see the College's one manuscript, an early fifteenth-century northern Italian Book of Hours. Students always react favorably to this visit, and often stay after class to ask questions about the manuscript. They see the smudges on the parchment caused by the oil on many hands, the places where the ink is worn from countless following fingers, the places where later looters have scraped off gold leaf and even torn out entire historiated initials ¹⁰ and they feel the weight of the manuscript in their hands. The reality of the manuscript, in its multiplicity of details, brings the past alive for the students in ways no slide or film can. Preservation requirements, however, limit the use students can make of the actual manuscript. It then occurred to me that numerous students could access a digitized version without damaging the original, and that this would also allow the added benefit of being able to provide a translation of the Latin text.

Books of Hours were the most widespread type of late medieval manuscripts, and literally thousands of them survive today. They were popular devotional texts in the late thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. They were intended for the laity, and took their name from the eight Canonical Hours at which the Divine Office of the Church was celebrated (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline). Books of Hours vary widely in quality, and range from the exquisitely illuminated Trés Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry, to minimally illuminated workshop-produced manuscripts. The contents of a given Book of Hours varied according to the needs and desires of the individual who commissioned the manuscript, or the workshop owner who produced it. Usually, however, such books contained: a fairly standard "Little Office of Our Lady" (Officium parvum beate Marie Virginis, a short service devoted to Mary), a Calendar of saints' days, Church festivals and anniversaries, the Penitential Psalms, a Litany of saints; the Office of the Dead, and Suffrages or prayers to saints. In addition to these central texts, a Book of Hours could contain such elements as two special prayers to the Virgin (Obsecro te and O Intemerata), passages from the four Gospels, shorter Offices such as the Hours of the Cross or the Holy Trinity, and the Psalter of St. Jerome, among others.

Because of their popularity, Books of Hours provide a unique window into the devotional and social world of the late Middle Ages. Although the nobility could use Books of Hours as status symbols, because of the richness of gold leaf and fine illumination, there is ample evidence from chronicles that members of the nobility actually read and used such books as devotional texts. Surviving wills and inventories from nobles and non-nobles alike show that Books of Hours were passed down from one family member to the next. Some of these wills carry language explicitly underscoring the devotional use made of a text or its religious importance to the individual testator. ¹¹ Many Books show signs of use, such as smudged leaves and images, torn pages, wax spots from candle drippings, and finger-marks along the edges of the parchment leaves. Other Books have personal records written into them, such as marriages, births, and deaths. They were thus put to much the same use as the family's Bible was put to once ownership of a family Bible became common. Even where no name can be found for a given Book's patron, such manuscripts, more than any others, speak to us of the reality of daily practices.

But why did I think it necessary to have yet another site dedicated to Books of Hours? In addition to the image collections referenced above, several superb Web sites currently available provide full or partial translations of individual manuscripts. The most famous is the Hypertext Book of Hours. ¹² This site not only provides a thorough, comprehensible overview to the Book of Hours, but also provides a complete text in both Latin and English, following the Primer of 1599. There are some other translations at the University of Illinois at Urbana's web site, which focuses on the Trés Riches Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry. ¹³ Similarly, the CHD Introduction and Tutorial: Books of Hours, a site in progress, provides texts, some translations, and variants of responses and arrangements. ¹⁴ The wealth of available material might seem to render yet another web site superfluous.

Missing from these sites, however, is the sense of how such a manuscript might have been used and understood by ordinary people. First, many of the sites which use images focus on the most beautiful, well-preserved books, such as the Trés Riches Heures, which were made for members of the nobility and therefore are not necessarily representative of "mass produced" Books of Hours intended for less wealthy users. Second, although these sites provide ample background material on why such books were created, read, and valued as part of elite culture, there is less emphasis on how such books were read or how they functioned in a less stylized social sphere.

By contrast, a site dedicated to a more ordinary Book of Hours can provide a somewhat better sense of how an ordinary medieval person might have used and understood the book in question on a page-by-page basis. For example, the site could show how individuals drew on their ingrained knowledge of their religious world, its symbolic conventions, and its multiple layers of meaning. This knowledge was not merely provided in sermons. It surrounded people's everyday experiences. Market days, fairs and festivals were linked to saints' days and hence to their histories and meanings. Religious themes, stories, and images were painted onto the walls, or depicted in the stained glass of churches, or carved into the stonework, which became "sermons in stone." ¹⁵ Religious belief and understanding was certainly not uniform throughout the Middle Ages, or even at any particular period. However they were interpreted, religious symbols and their multiple meanings permeated society to such an extent that a medieval reader looking at a Book of Hours would bring a set of this knowledge into his or her reading (or observation, for the non-literate) of the book's text and images. This would set up a dialogue between the reader's knowledge and the content of the book. This dialogue was crucial for a full understanding of how the text functioned within a given context. However, it is precisely this dialogue with the text that the modern student usually lacks. In creating a site containing digitized images of a more common Book of Hours manuscript, I addressed these concerns. I hoped to allow students access to scholarly opportunities for manuscript study of a product serving the daily needs of a wide group of people, and for them to do this within a framework of their own experience.

In consequence I used the manuscript Book of Hours available in my library, which is a mass-produced product of a Northern Italian scribe, and therefore is an ideal text to show students what ordinary people such as Margery Kempe, the brewster, might have owned. ¹⁶ In addition, the ability of hypertext to link information from diverse sources could be used to give students a sense of the context that a medieval person would have brought to the text. Thus for example, when I assembled the site prototype, I linked saints' names in the calendar to a short list giving essential information about each saint—dates of birth/death, if known, and the circumstances of his/her life and death. This brief list is intended to provide details that the average devout person would probably have known about the saint. ¹⁷ In turn, the brief list has a link to a larger page about the saint, usually from the Catholic Encyclopedia, for those students who wish to learn more and who wish to move closer to expert research on and reading of manuscripts. (The Catholic Encyclopedia is the largest, most complete, and most uniform source for general religious background extant at this time on the Web. I selected it because of its uniformity and detailed coverage.) Religious feasts in the Calendar are similarly linked. As I complete the site, I will provide links to such information for the suffrages and the litany as well, thereby moving the available information towards the theology in common daily use.

The Book of Hours in the Classroom

Setting up the information structure of the site has been the first necessity to fulfill the pedagogical goals I set for the use of medieval sites in the undergraduate classroom. Although still largely under construction, in many ways the site has already been of value in the classroom by providing a way for students, to assess on the basis of a corpus of standard knowledge, how texts functioned in late medieval society. I wanted to teach students to read medieval texts on their own terms. In addition, in breaking down what was notable and noteworthy about such a key historical artifact of the Middle Ages, I believe I am opening a window for them on how to think like a (medieval) historian, in several dimensions. ¹⁸

The context in which I have first used this manuscript was a discussion of literacy in late medieval Europe. As preparation for this discussion, students were asked to look at different manuscript images, including my site on the Book of Hours, and bring in a set of questions for the class. ¹⁹ These images generated several questions, among them the issue of how much ordinary people read and understood texts. With these questions in mind, the students accessed the Book of Hours site, and discussed structural elements of the text such as rubrication, letter size, illumination, and abbreviation. ²⁰ In the current online version, I added student observations and conclusions to each page of the text. Classes with access to online asynchronous bulletin board programs, such as WebCT, might be able to do this directly. ²¹ For example, students compared the first folios of the Book of Hours to copies of charters available through the Bodleian library. ²² Despite their lack of Latin, students noticed visual elements such as the larger, easier to understand text size of the Book of Hours, and its relative lack of abbreviations. They also noticed the different text sizes on a single folio, and, using the translation, saw that the smaller text corresponded to the responses that were made by the individual—a visual guide for those using the Book. The translation beside the digitized image also helped them become aware of how rubrication (the use of colored initial letters at the beginning of each sentence or section) functioned. They noticed that rubrication marked stages in the script—for example, the versicles and responses that people would say on folio 13v, and the beginning of a psalm on folio 14r. They also observed the marginalia of the opening page of Prime, as well as the marginalia found on other manuscripts, both devotional and educational, and compared them to the text content. ²³ They classified the types of marginalia that appeared on these pages (for example, fantastical, natural, sexual, or geometrical), and discussed how those images affected the body of the text (for example, whether they undermined it, amplified it, made fun of it, made a commentary upon it). The comparisons enabled the students to draw their own conclusions about the different forms of literacy in late medieval society as well as how texts functioned within that society.

The use of digitized medieval manuscript images in the classroom could also be used to illustrate other issues, such as everyday life and religious experience. For example, numerous manuscript images showing scenes from daily life already exist on the Web, ranging from marginalia on the borders of agricultural manuscripts to the elaborate scenes in the Calendar of the Trés Riches Heures. In an exercise similar to the discussion of page layout and text referenced above, students can use manuscript images as another source of information about the text itself. For example, in the Whitman Book of Hours, there are whimsical drawings on the initial pages of several of the Hours. Students will be asked to examine the text and to compare it to the drawings in order to explore the relationship between text and image in the late Middle Ages. Although the point of this exercise appears to be a minor issue, in actuality it gives students yet another way to access the differences between medieval ideas and their own, and to learn about medieval standards of "realistic" representation. Furthermore, the relationship between text and image resonates with one of the most influential semiotic debates of the central Middle Ages, over the relationship between image, or sign, and reality, or signified. ²⁴ However, it also speaks to an ongoing discussion among medievalists about the uses, spread, and effects of literacy. ²⁵

Here, we reach the question of how students' new focus and comprehension can be backed up by appropriate work activities and production. As an example, I will use an exercise from my medieval history class to show how manuscript research could be incorporated into a class assignment. Although the following exercise is focused on medieval history, it could easily be adapted to work with material in other areas of history. Currently, students in my course write two or three critical papers during the semester. These "position papers" begin with a contentious issue, and ask students to take a position on that issue and to support their stance with primary sources. ²⁶ The final topic stresses this learning—to learn perspective—because it asks students to discuss how the historian should write about late medieval religion and concepts of sanctity (including reports of miracles). Most students find that in order to answer this question they have to understand why and how religious issues operated in the daily lives of individuals, and how ideas of sanctity changed over time. As a preliminary exercise to help students understand these changes, I plan to use the digitized Book of Hours, and in particular the Calendar and the Litany in more formal ways to illuminate the new goals that a topical approach to a medieval "survey" will require. In one assignment, I will group the saints by period, and will ask students to choose at least one saint from each period. The goals of this exercise will be to give students an awareness of how cultural concepts of sanctity have changed over time. They will explore what sanctity means within a given cultural context: how sanctity is expressed, identified, and practiced, even who is most likely to become a saint. All of this has varied from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages. ²⁷ To focus their understanding, students will be asked to produce two sorts of documents. The first will be a simple bulleted list of each saint's life, which will have the dual purpose of allowing students to make comparisons between different saints and will form or add to the text for the Web page on that saint as a kind of analytic meta-commentary. It seems to me that any WebCT or Blackboard bulletin board could also embrace this sort of list without additional effort on a faculty member's part. It is a task that will enhance students' ability to think historically in terms of process.

The second assignment I have in mind will ask students to write a position paper drawing examples from their own specific research into scholarship on sanctity. The paper will use the same topic given in Appendix D. Student research into the changes and nature of sanctity, based on original manuscript work, will allow students to assess the secondary source information produced by professional historians with a greater degree of understanding and critical background, along with the ability to see how historical realities are constructed in scholarly debates. Furthermore, as the meta-focus of this assignment is to encourage students to think independently and to construct their own defensible historical arguments, this research in turn will strengthen their own ability to fulfill these goals of seeing what it might mean to engage in scholarly research and argument. ²⁸

The specific structure of my Book of Hours site will facilitate this analysis by helping students become aware of the layers of understanding a medieval person would have brought to the text. By using these and other indicators, students will be able to use a manuscript not only to research the uses of books in the late Middle Ages, but also to gain a better sense of the Middle Ages as a lived culture. However, I would like to reiterate that although my examples have focused on a sub-disciplinary-specific issue, I feel that the suggestions I have offered by example here are germane to a wider audience, particularly to those historians who work in languages unknown to the majority of their students. There are numerous images on and off the Web that would permit students to complete such an exercise as part of a larger project growing out of a single classroom unit. ²⁹ Similar projects could be created in other disciplines using images drawn from the National Women's History Project, the National Archives and Records Administration, the American Memory Project, or the Ad*Access Project. ³⁰

A final note concerns students at institutions without widespread Internet access. Students at Whitman College are provided with Internet connections in their dorm rooms, as well as access to two computer labs and a multimedia center. Many instructors elsewhere, however, cannot count on students having easy—or any—Web access. Instructors must prepare differently in such cases. Several of my suggestions simply require that the students see an image in class and discuss it. In that case, the instructor could print out copies of a particular image, divide students into small groups, and have them share images. I have set up other exercises for students to explore a topic on an individual basis. Instructors might choose not to create such projects, but instead use images on an in-class basis. If a longer or an independent project is desired, there are various means to give students information without requiring that every one have Web access. For example, if students have access to computers but not the Web, instructors can create CD-ROMs or (for smaller projects) a set of diskettes that students can borrow to complete their assignments. These can be made available at the reserves desk at the library or on a more informal basis directly from the instructor. If the computer lab allows instructors to reserve blocks of time, then a class-access period could be arranged. If computer access as a whole is problematic, then instructors can print out images and information and have them copied into course packets or placed on reserve at the library. Although a digitally-wired classroom and ease of student Web access are ideal, instructors can use digitized images in a number of ways suitable for the needs of their students.

Conclusion

Far from being inaccessible and arcane artifacts, my experience confirms that certain medieval manuscripts can be of value in the undergraduate classroom. They can foster independent research and give students the opportunity to conduct their own research into numerous topics ranging from literacy to everyday life. This can be particularly important for classes that do not follow the standard chronological "survey" approach to the Middle Ages. The special value of digitized manuscripts is the ease of access they provide. Most importantly, however, the digital format of manuscripts such as the Book of Hours provides students with an increased sense of how a medieval person would have read and used a manuscript, and hence gives students a clearer window into the meaning of life in the middle ages.

Appendix A
Cited Websites

Because of the scope and dynamic nature of the Internet, no one guide can cover everything. The following list is not intended to be complete, but, rather, to provide the interested reader with a list of all web sites cited in this article, as a starting point for his or her own interests. I have grouped related sites together.

Medieval Manuscript Exhibits and Text Archives

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, "The Age of King Charles V (1338-1380)." [http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/accueil.htm]. This contains almost 1000 illuminations and separate text pages from the fourteenth century.

Brigham Young University, "Dscriptorium." [http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium]. This site contains both selected images and full manuscript images.

Library of Congress, "Monarchs and Monasteries: Knowledge and Power in Medieval France." [http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0003.html].

Oxford University Bodleian Library, "Browse Images of Medieval Manuscripts." [http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse.htm]. The site contains complete manuscript texts as well as single-leaf images of manuscripts from Western Europe from the eighth through the nineteenth centuries.

University of California, Berkeley. "Digital Scriptorium." [http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Scriptorium/]. Digital Scriptorium is an image database dedicated to providing samples of dated medieval and renaissance manuscripts. The site does not contain the entire text of a manuscript; instead, it shows every different hand, artist, script, and binding—tools aimed at the codocologist or paleographer trying to date a manuscript.

Sites Focused on Paleography and Books of Hours

Blanchard, Laura, and Schriber, Carolyn. "A Hypertext Book of Hours." [http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/religion/hagiography/hours/hrstoc.htm]. ORB, founded by medievalist Lynn Nelson and currently run by Laura Blanchard and Carolyn Schriber, contains texts, images, and a wide variety of supplemental teaching materials. It also contains a full translation of the core texts of a Book of Hours, based on the 1599 Primer.

Central European University, Budapest. "Medieval Manuscript Manual." [http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/mmm/index.html]. Run by members of the Department of Medieval Studies, the Medieval Manuscript Manual contains materials for helping beginners work with manuscripts. Its literature notes that one of its goals is the "composition of appropriate multi-media applications to serve a wider international public."

Drisdahl, Erik. "Illuminated Manuscripts Tutorial." [http://www.chd.dk/tutor/index.html]. Erik Drisdah's site is sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts in Denmark. This site provides the most complete collection of information on all facets of Books of Hours, including prayer variants and location tests.

Muir, Bernard. "Ductus." [http://www.medieval.unimelb.edu.au/:]. Ductus is an online paleography course supervised by Bernard Muir of the University of Melbourne. It should be noted that many course sites, including Ductus, require the user to purchase software and other course materials.

University of Illinois at Urbana. "Les Très Riches Heures du Moyen Age: A Virtual Archive of Medieval Books of Hours." [http://www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/hoursdb/default.asp]. Although this site has not been changed since 1996, it not only contains useful images and text, but also documentation of the digitization process and technical conventions and specifications. The manuals produced at the University of Illinois, available at this site, are extremely useful for any teacher, librarian, or archivist thinking of creating his or her own site.

Winkler, Andrea. "Whitman College Book of Hours Main Page." [http://people.whitman.edu/~winkleal/images/BOHMain.html]. The Whitman College Book of Hours. As of spring, 2001 the site remains largely incomplete. The first three months of the Calendar are complete, although the saints' names have not all been linked to informational pages. The first Hour, Matins, is almost finished, and several of the historiated initials of the other Hours are accessible.

Online Databases and Text Archives

Duke University. "Ad*Access Project." [http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/]. Contains images of advertising in America for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Georgetown University. "The Labyrinth." [http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html]. Contains texts, images, pedagogical materials, and other information for medieval studies.

Halsall, Paul. "Internet Medieval Sourcebook." [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook3.html]. Invaluable for teaching, the site contains numerous sources in translation, both full texts and excerpts. There is also an Ancient History Sourcebook, an Islamic Sourcebook, and a modern History Sourcebook, among others. Obviously, texts vary in period, coverage, and completeness; unlike either the Catasto or the Domesday Book sites, these texts aim not for full coverage of a precise subject, but wide coverage of a wide subject. Translation styles and quality depend on the extent of copyright. Many materials use older, non-copyrighted translations, which can occasionally hamper students because of their use of archaic language. Other texts were translated specifically for the sourcebook in question.

International Institute of Social History. [http://www.iisg.nl/]. contains text and statistics for Russian, Netherlands, and English history. It also has data on prices and wages for the past two centuries as an aid to economic historians.

Library of Congress. "American Memory Project." [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amhome.html]. Contains a vast amount of material on American history, from personal memoirs to economic data.

Molho, Anthony, and Litchfield, R. Burr. "The Florentine Catasto." [http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/overview.html]. Located at Brown University, the database is based on that used by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and David Herlihy, for the book Census and Property Survey of Florentine Dominicans in the Province of Tuscany, 1427-1480 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

National Archives and Records Administration. [http://www.nara.gov/]. Statistical material and texts relating to American history.

National Women's History Project, "Home." [http://www.nwhp.org]. Texts and statistics on the history of women in America.

Northeastern History Center. "World History Center Home." [http://www.whc.neu.edu]. Contains images and texts relevant to a world history course.

Phillimore & Co., "History From the Sources Series: The Domesday Book." [http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk]. Contains translated information from the survey conducted in 1086 by agents of William "The Conqueror". At this time, not all the counties are accessible on line, but as this site develops, it will be invaluable for medievalists and economic historians.

Scaife, Ross. "Diotima." [http://www.stoa.org/diotima/]. Texts on women in the ancient world.

University of California at Berkeley, "Online Medieval and Classical Library." [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/].

University of Michigan with Cornell University, "Making of America." [http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/]. Text and memoir archive for American history.

Secondary Materials

UCLA National Center for History in the Schools. "The Standards Project for History in the Schools." [http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/].

Wyman, Kathryn, "Using Computer Technology to Teach Medieval Text." [http://www.unc.edu/student/orgs/cam/techtoteach]. Carolina Association for Medieval Studies.

Appendix B
Book of Hours Research: An Analytic Exercise

Objective: The object of this short (3-4pp.) typed and double-spaced paper is for you to follow a trail of clues to discover everything you can about a book written in a language other than your own, and to present your conclusions about the book's origin, the ways it might have been used, and the types of people who might have owned such a book. You might want to address the rough (England, France, Italy) probable geographical area in which the manuscript was prepared; whether the book was mass-produced or whether it was created for a specific individual; the social group to which the owner might have belonged; and some sense of how the book was used on a daily basis and over time.

How Do I Do That? I Don't Know Latin! You don't have to. I do not expect you to be a trained paleographer, or to reach more than probable conclusions. However, there are a number of things that you can look at that will help you write a short paper that answers the broad topics above, even though you don't know Latin. Below are some suggested tests for you to perform to help you construct answers to the above questions. Almost all of them make use of a handy website, http://www.chd.dk/tutor/index.html. You may also use the resources available on Blackboard (the Introductions from John Harthan's The Book of Hours and from Roger Wieck's Time Sanctified). **There are further links to useful sites on both the CHD Tutorial site and on Blackboard.

1. Manuscript Structure

Measure the book. How big is it? How wide? What kind of cover does it have—and does that cover look like an original cover? Do you see any signs that the book's pages might have been bigger at some time?

Identify the parts of the book (Calendar, Hours of the Virgin, Litany, etc.). Use the CHD Tutorial or the Blackboard links for a list of the most popular elements. If you can figure out some of the non-standard parts, great! If not, go ahead and put "unknown section."

List the parts of the book. For each part, list the beginning and ending pages / folios. Just to be accurate, pages are not numbered the way they are in a modern book, with the front of the page having one number and its back having the next sequential number. Instead, each page has a single number. You differentiate between front and back by noting "recto" (front) or "verso" (back). Therefore, page (folio) 39's front is "39r" and its back is "39v".

Take note of any pages where the handwriting seems to change. Does this change correspond to the beginning of a new section? That might mean the folios were added later. Also, note where there are several blank folios between sections. Not everything after a blank section might be original.

2. Location (Provenance)/Date

Identify the book's general place of origin by determining the "use" of the manuscript. The term "use" does not mean, "Who cared?" Instead, the "use" refers to one of the three major types of liturgical order—Rome, Paris, Sarum (English). Happily for the codicologer, these correspond roughly to broad geographical areas: Italy, France, and England. See the CHD Tutorial for a simple way of determining the use of this manuscript to find out whether it is likely to be from one of these three countries.

Look at the saints' names in the Calendar. Using the standard lists provided by the CHD Tutorial, see if you can identify any that were venerated in a local area, or whether the list is very generic. **You may also use a book of saints, such as David Farmer's, or the Catholic Encyclopedia. You will find these in the library; the Catholic Encyclopedia is also online. **See Blackboard for the URL.

—If you are really keen on finding the possible earliest date of the manuscript, look at the dates of the saints. Are there any saints, festivals, or holidays that did not exist before a particular date? If so, then you know that the book was written after that period. Mostly you will find in this book standard and older saints...but you never know. I have not looked at all the saints yet, so you might discover something.

—For the truly thorough, look at the saints invoked in the litany. Again, you do not need Latin—just home in on the names.

3. Use and Users

Compare the book and its images to others available in the library and online—**see available URLs on Blackboard. You do not have to look at many. How does this book compare in quality? Is it as expensive as the images you see in books like the Tres Riches Heures? Does it have the same quality illumination, use of gold leaf, and border decoration? Is it a basic book?

Look at the surviving images. **On the CHD Tutorial and in Harthan (Blackboard) you will find a list of the major illumination sequences. Does this book appear to conform to that list? If so, what does that tell you about the book? If not, what might that suggest?

Look at the pages. When you look at the illuminations, quality, etc., do they give you any clues about the social status or gender of the person who first purchased the book?

Look at the text—not to read it, of course, but just to assess the script, the layout, the letter size, and the illumination/rubrication—those pretty blue and red capitals. Do these elements say anything about the book's intended use? Do you think the book as it stands was a finished product? Why or why not? If not, why was it left unfinished or added to? Does this suggest anything about the intended users of the book? What do the elements of the text and their layout suggest about the devotional expectations and practices of the compiler of the book? Are there any indications that the user might have employed the book in a form other than what was intended?

Each of these tests will give you some data to write about in your paper. For several of them you might want to form tables or lists. Performing most or all of these tests and answering these questions should give you more than enough material to fill 3-4 pages. I understand that you are beginning this study as total novices. What I am grading is not how 100% accurate you are—that would require you to have more experience than you currently have—but on how well you can explore the book and draw reasoned conclusions from the evidence available to you.

**There is a full list of books, websites, and other resources on Blackboard, as well as suggestions for other avenues you might want to explore in your copious free time—particularly for those students who do know some Latin. In addition, as always, if you are stuck, frustrated, or are having difficulties for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Appendix C
Position Paper Information

Length and Purpose

All papers should be 750-1000 words long, and are due at the beginning of the class session for which they are assigned. You will be expected to come to class prepared to discuss the topic of the day whether or not you have written a position paper.

In general, you should: A) Establish the issues/question to be resolved, B) take a position, and C) explain to your readers why you have taken that position, supporting your ideas with ample reference to specific detail. Because these papers are relatively short, every word should count. You don't need to be flowery or literary, but you do need to be very efficient as you construct your argument. You may exceed the word limit within reason if you feel compelled to do so, but it is unlikely that you will be able to write a successful paper that is shorter than 750 words. All papers should show close attention to documentation, spelling, proofreading, and grammar.

These papers are not research papers. I am interested in what you can do with the evidence, not what other scholars have done. I expect you to make full use of the primary sources you have read, even if we have not discussed them directly in class. Evidence from primary sources will make a stronger support for your argument than will evidence drawn from secondary sources. (One exception: many of the Greek and Roman historians, like Herodotus, Callimachus, Arrian, etc., are strictly accounted as secondary sources, for they wrote at distances of several centuries from their subjects. However, for the purposes of position papers, I will count them as primary sources, for often you will find that their conceptions of historical writing were very different from those of modern authors.)

Are you looking for a rigid format?

No. On the other hand, I do expect a solid introduction containing a clearly-stated thesis (argument, point) and a good conclusion that sums up that argument. As with the paper as a whole, these can and should be brief and to the point. If you are having a hard time stating your point, remember that a simple statement saying, "I will argue that...(Julius Caesar was not an effective leader because..., historians should treat medieval mystics as Freudian mental cases because...) may not be elegant, but it is direct. Moreover, such a statement makes it is extremely difficult to weasel out of writing a clear thesis. Of course, you don't have to phrase your thesis that way, either. If you quote from a primary source, make sure you cite that source. In general, in all history courses you should use either Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual or Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers as a guide to proper citation. In these papers, if you refer to a passage that comes from one of the books assigned for this course you may cite it simply as (Lewis, 114). If, on the other hand, you need to cite a quotation or idea that you have discovered in another book or article, you should use the full form of citation described in Hacker or Turabian. WARNING: YOU SHOULD ALSO CITE A SOURCE IF YOU REFER TO IT INDIRECTLY. For example, if you say something like, "Augustus believed...", you'd better be able to show me a source documenting that belief, or else hang out your psychic's shingle. If you are uncertain about proper citation, please show me your draft and ASK. I will be happy to help you.

How many position papers must I write?

If you are in History 101A (Western Civ), you may choose to omit one of the topics if you prefer. Alternatively, you may write on all of the topics and choose to count your three best grades.

If you are in History 273 (Medieval Europe), you must do both papers.

But I'm not interested in all the topics!

For those who would like to pursue a topic of special interest (armies, cooking, slavery, city planning, medicine, daily life, engineering, etc.): you may arrange to do a 3-4 page paper as an alternative to one of the position papers. If you choose this option, you must A) get my permission no later than XXXXX; and B) come to all the discussions prepared to discuss the topic assigned for that day.

Appendix D
Position Paper Topics

1. Due XXXXXXX: You may write on either of the following topics:

1. Who do you think had the better argument in the Investiture Controversy, and why? Was the strength of the argument helpful in the outcome of the controversy? In your answer you should use the letters from Gregory VII and Henry IV and the Dictatus Papae. If you want to use other documents, you may find more on the Internet Medieval Sourcebook or ask me.

2. How would you characterize the idea of "Feudalism" in the ninth through the eleventh centuries, and why? Did it help create order out of chaos, or did it cause legal, judicial, and social confusion? The reading for this paper is both secondary and primary. Primary sources include the Fief Ceremonies, the story of Hugh of Lusignan, and the various documents relating to the Viking and Magyar invasions. Secondary sources include the readings that I have posted to Blackboard. If you want to use other documents, you may find more on the Internet Medieval Sourcebook or ask me.

2. Due XXXXXXXX:

How as historians ought we to handle documents such as saints' lives? On the one hand, they portray events that we would consider misunderstandings of medicine or of the physical world, but on the other hand they do not come from overly credulous people. Furthermore, saints' lives are often formulaic in structure. So what is your position on these texts—how do we handle them and why? Primary readings include a number of saints' lives that you have read throughout the course. I have listed a number for you under this day's assignment, but you may read as much or as little as you feel you need to construct a valid, well supported argument. There is also secondary reading on Blackboard.

Appendix E

HISTORY 273
Medieval Europe
Fall Semester 2000
Andrea Winkler

Exams and Requirements:

Discussion 15%

Poster/Other Presentation: 10%

Position Papers (2) 40%

Mid-Term 15%

Final 20%

Required Reading:

Edward Peters. Europe and the Middle Ages, 3rd Edition (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1997).

Bouchard, Constance Brittain. Strong of Body, Brave & Noble: Chivalry & Society in Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

Sharan Newman, Strong as Death. (Optional, but accurate and a really good read.)

*Readings at the Library or on Blackboard: You will find full text of the articles labeled "BB" on my course site on Blackboard: [http://blackboard.whitman.edu]. On both Blackboard and my Web site [http://people.whitman.edu/~winkleal/] you will find an online version of this syllabus—complete with direct links to the Medieval Sourcebook readings. I have also posted full course information, including review sheets, position paper handouts and topics, and poster presentation suggestions and information. If you wish to go directly to the medieval sourcebook, the address is: [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1.html].

ASSIGNMENT LIST AND REQUIRED READING

This is a tentative syllabus, and may be revised during the semester. Whether or not we are matching the topics listed below with their dates, you should complete each day's reading by class time unless I tell you otherwise.

1. August 31: Introduction / The Roman World

Peters, Ch. 1 (Optional)

The Transformation of the Classical World and Early Medieval Europe

2. September 5: An Age of Anxiety

Peters, Ch. 2, 6

BB: Peter Brown, "The Crisis of the Towns."

MS: Eusebius: Conversion of Constantine

MS: Diocletian's Edict of Persecution

3. September 7: The Growth of Christian Authority

MS: Gelasius: On the Two Powers

MS: Leo I: On the Petrine Doctrine

4. September 12: Germanic "Invasion"

Peters, Ch. 3

BB: Chris Wickham, "The Fall of Rome Will Not Take Place"

MS: Tactitus: "Germania" (excerpts)

MS: Letters of Sidonius

DISCUSSION

5. September 14: Byzantium and Islam

Peters, Ch. 4-5

MS: Procopius: On Justinian, On the Racing Factions

MS: The Qu'ran, Surahs 1 and 47

MS: The Islamic Conquest of Spain

*MS: Legends of St. James (Optional)

6. September 19: The Franks: Clovis and Sons

Peters, Ch. 7-8 (to p. 143) (Optional)

BB: Walter Goffart: The Barbarians in Late Antiquity and How They Were Accommodated in the West

MS: Gregory of Tours: The Conversion of Clovis

MS: Formulas Concerning Ordeals

MS: The Rule of St. Benedict (Shorter excerpts)

7. September 21: The Carolingians: Charlemagne

Peters, Ch. 8 (pp. 143-158)

MS: Annals of Lorsch: The Pope Makes Pepin King

MS: Einhard: Life of Charlemagne

MS: General Capitulary of the Missi

Fragmentation and Cohesion

8. September 26: From West Francia to France: 814-1150

Peters, Ch. 15, 290-302

Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave & Noble..., 1-66

MS: St. Louis, Advice to His Son

MS: Agreement between Count William V of Aquitaine and Hugh IV of Lusignan

MS: Fief Ceremonies

9. September 28: From East Francia to Germany: 814-1150

MS: Salimbene: Chronicle: On Frederick II

MS: The Annals of Xanten

MS: The Life of Liutberga

10. October 3: The Investiture Controversy

Peters, Ch. 12

Bouchard, pp. 145-171

MS: Gregory VII: Dictatus Papae

MS: Lay Investitures Forbidden

MS: Henry IV: Letter to Gregory VII

MS: Deposition of Henry IV

11. October 5: Anglo-Saxons and Normans

Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave & Noble..., 67-102.

MS: The Anglo Saxon Chronicle: Assessment of William I

MS: The Domesday Book, 1086

MS: The Battle of Hastings, 1066

12. October 10: Royal Power and Its Limitations: England

Peters, Ch. 15, p. 250-282

MS: Peter of Blois: William Rufus and Henry I

MS: Henry II: The Constitutions of Clarendon

13. October 12: DEBATE: "Feudal" Society: Breakdown or Reorganization?

Peters, Ch. 11 (Optional)

BB: Thomas Bisson, "The Feudal Revolution," in Past and Present n. 142 (1994).

BB: Debate: The Feudal Revolution, Part I & II

POSITION PAPER DUE

14. October 17: The Commercial Revolution and the Rise of Towns

Peters, Ch. 10

MS: Guibert of Nogent: The Communal Revolt in Laon

MS: Tables of European Population

MS: Grant of a Guild to the Cordwainers

15. October 19: MID-TERM EXAM

The Central Middle Ages

16. October 24: The "Evangelical Awakening"

Peters, Ch. 13

BB: Marie-Dominique Chenu, "The Evangelical Awakening."

MS: Thomas of Celano: Frst and Second Lives of St. Francis

MS: Anselm: Proof of the Existence of God

MS: Letter of Heloise

17. October 26: The Crusades and Medieval Warfare

Peters, Ch. 14, pp. 261-270

MS: Urban II: Speech at Clermont: 5 Versions

MS: The Siege and Capture of Jerusalem: Collected Accounts

18. October 31: Tolerance and Intolerance: Heresy and Anti-Semitism

BB: R. I. Moore: Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c. 1000-c.1150

MS: The Life of William of Norwich

MS: Gilbert Crispin: Disputation

MS: Ephraim of Bonn: On the York Massacre of 1189-90

DISCUSSION

19. November 2: Philosophical Exploration and the Rise of the University

Peters, Ch. 16

MS: Jacques de Vitry: Life of the Students of Paris

MS: Aquinas on Law

20. November 7: Literature and Architecture

Bouchard, Strong of Body, 103-144.

MS: The Archpoet: the Confessions of Golias

MS: Andreas Capellanus: The Art of Courtly Love

MS: Troubador Songs

21. November 9: DEBATE: Saints and Historians

BB: Caroline Walker Bynum, "Men's Use of Female Symbols." The SECOND PART of this article can be found at:

BB: Weinstein and Bell, "The Historian and the Hagiographer"

BB: Raymond Van Dam, "Bodily Miracles." The other three parts are at: Van Dam Part Two; Van Dam Part Three, Vandam Part Four

MS: Gregory of Tours: Eight Books of Miracles

MS: Stephen of Bourbon: Exempla

MS: Bede: The Life of Gregory the Great

MS: Julian of Norwich: Shewings

MS: Margery Kempe: The Birth of Her First Child and Her First Vision

POSITION PAPER DUE ***Remember, you may select from the primary sources

The Later Middle Ages

22. November 14: The Emergence of the Medieval State: Later Monarchy

Peters: Ch. 19

MS: Magna Carta, 1215

MS: Roger of Wendover: Runneymede, 1215

23. November 16: Boniface VIII and the Growth of Papal Monarchy

Peters, Ch. 18

MS: Boniface VIII: Clericos Laicos

MS: Manifesto of the Revolting Cardinals

NOVEMBER 18-27 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAYS: NO CLASS!

24. November 28: ***POSTER PRESENTATION DUE***

25. November 30: The Black Death

Peters, Ch. 17

MS: Boccaccio: Decameron: Introduction, On the Black Death

MS: Johannes of Trowkelowe: Annales: On the Famine of 1315

26. December 5: The Hundred Years' War

MS: Jean Friossart: Battles of Crecy 1346, of Poitiers 1356

MS: Jean Friossart: The Jacquerie

MS: The Trial of Joan of Arc

27. December 7: Wrap-up / Review / Evaluation

Notes

¹ I would like to thank the colleagues who have read all or portions of this paper and provided useful feedback: Lynn Sharp and Henry Yaple at Whitman College; Marianne Kamp of the University of Wyoming; Katherine Arens and Martha Newman at The University of Texas, and Mary Chipley, Austin Community College.

² Bibliothèque Nationale de France, "The Age of King Charles V (1338-1380)." [http://www.bnf.fr/enluminures/accueil.htm]; Brigham Young University, "Dscriptorium." [http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/dscriptorium]; Library of Congress, "Monarchs and Monasteries: Knowledge and Power in Medieval France." [http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0003.html]; Oxford University Bodleian Library, "Browse Images of Medieval Manuscripts." [http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse.htm]; University of California, Berkeley. "Digital Scriptorium." [http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Scriptorium/].

³ I Registri Vaticani da Giovanni VIII a Bonifacio VIII, Reg. Vat. 1-136. Sergio Pagano, Prefect. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Città del Vaticano, 2000.

⁴ Anthony Molho and R. Burr Litchfield, "The Florentine Catasto." [http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/overview.html]. Also see Larry J. Eisley, "The Enhanced Lecture: A Bridge to Interactive Teaching," in Dennis A. Trinkle, Ed., Writing, Teaching, and Researching History in the Electronic Age. Historians and Computers (M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

^5.Phillimore Co., History From the Sources Series, "The Domesday Book," [http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk]

⁶ Paul Halsall, "The Internet Medieval Sourcebook. [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook3.html]. University of California at Berkeley, "Online Medieval and Classical Library." [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/]. Laura Blanchard and Carolyn Schreiber, ORB. "Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies." [http://orb.rhodes.edu]. Georgetown University, "The Labyrinth." [http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html].

⁷ International Institute of Social History. [http://www.iisg.nl/]; Library of Congress. "American Memory Project." [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amhome.html]; Northeastern History Center. "World History Center Home." [http://www.whc.neu.edu]; National Archives and Records Administration. [http://www.nara.gov/]; Duke University. "Ad*Access Project." [http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/]; University of Michigan with Cornell University, "Making of America." [http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/]; National Women's History Project, "Home." [http://www.nwhp.org]; and Ross Scaife, "Diotima." [http://www.stoa.org/diotima/].

⁸ UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools, "Standards Project for History in the Schools." [http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/]. For the purposes of this article, the Project's most important contribution has been its focus on greater topical inclusivity and on critical thinking at grade, junior, and high school levels. The creators of the Standards argue that students' historical understanding is incomplete unless they can read critically primary source material, and use that material, in conjunction with their knowledge of facts and dates, to build their own historical arguments. Students should also be able to understand the interpretive nature of history. Although the Standards are aimed at students in grades K through 12, they prepare students for the university-level type of interactive manuscript exercises I am suggesting here. These exercises could easily be adapted for use at different pre-college levels. Also see Dennis A. Trinkle's thought-provoking collection, Writing, Teaching, and Researching History (op. cit.) for a series of thoughtful essays on the ways in which the use of computers changes not only what we can do in the classroom, but how we think about the educational process.

⁹ My thanks go to the director of Penrose Library, Mr. Henry Yaple, and to our archivist, Mr. Larry Dodds, who have gone out of their way to facilitate this project, and who moreover have spent time with my classes answering questions about this manuscript as well as the library's increasing collection of incunabula.

¹⁰ For the non-medievalist, an historiated initial is the first letter of a sentence, larger than the surrounding text, that contain small pictures inside the letter shapes. Other initials may be decorated, and be filled with foliage or other embellishment. A miniature is a separate illustration with its own border. For these and other specialized terms, see Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms. California: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 1994.

¹¹ C. Wordsworth and H. Littlehales, The Early Service-Books of the Church (London, 1904), ch. 9.

¹² Laura Blanchard and Carolyn Schreiber, "The Primer of 1599." [http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/religion/hagiography/hours/hrstoc.htm]

¹³ University of Indiana. [http://www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/hoursdb/default.asp]. Other resources include Sean Townsend, Cressida Chappell, and Oscar Struijvé, Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents; Arts and Humanities Data Service (Oxbow Books, 1999). This useful handbook briefly discusses major aspects of structuring, creating, and maintaining historical databases. The Arts and Humanities Data Service has several other useful publications in such areas as the creation and documentation of electronic texts, the creation of digital resources in the performing and visual arts, and the use of digitization in archaeology and photography. A somewhat older but still useful book is Janice L. Reiff, Structuring the Past: The Use of Computers in History, American Historical Association, 1991. This text discusses most aspects of the use of computers in historical research and in maintaining collections of information. Although some of the types of software and technologies recommended are now, ten years later, out of date, the overall principles raised by Reiff's text remain valuable, as are most of the recommended strategies. See also Kathryn Wymer, "Using Computer Technology to Teach Medieval Texts." [http://www.unc.edu/student/orgs/cams/techtoteach]

¹⁴ Erik Drigsdahl, Institute for the Study of Illuminated Mss. in Denmark, "Book of Hours Tutorial." [http://www.chd.dk/tutor/index.html].

¹⁵ David Macaulay, "Cathedral." Unicorn Projects Inc., PBS Home Video, 1995; 1985.

¹⁶ Andrea Winkler, "Whitman College Book of Hours." [http://people.whitman.edu/~winkleal/images/BOHMain.html]. As of spring, 2001 the site remains largely incomplete. The first three months of the Calendar are complete, although the saints' names have not all been linked to informational pages. The first Hour, Matins, is almost finished, and several of the historiated initials of the other Hours are accessible.

¹⁷ With, of course, the exception of dates.

¹⁸ A goal set by UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools.

¹⁹ See Appendix B for project instructions and guidelines.

²⁰ The students did not, of course, know standard terminology for research into illuminated manuscript work. I supplied terms as appropriate, and also provided a handout listing some of the most important terms and concepts.

²¹ For future use I plan to place these observations on separate pages so that students can observe each page and come to their own conclusions before seeing what other people have made of the text.

²² See above for link to the Bodleian Library. The students used the text of Matins, folios 13r through 15v (Winkler, "Whitman College..." [http://people.whitman.edu/~winkleal/images/matins1.htm]and ff.

²³ Winkler, [http://people.whitman.edu/~winkleal/images/prime1.htm]

²⁴ See Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, "Medieval Identity: A Sign and a Concept," in American Historical Review 105:5 (December 2000), 1489-1533.

²⁵ The literature on this subject is vast. For some basic approaches to literacy, see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983) and Listening For the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore, 1990). As part of this debate, see also M. T. Clanchy's From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307, second edition (Oxford, 1993). For literacy among the Carolingians, see McKitterick, Rosamund. 1989. The Carolingians and the Written Word. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Other studies include Suzanne Fleishman, "History and Fiction in the Middle Ages," in History and Theory 22, no. 3 (1983): 278-310; Neil Hathaway, "Compilatio: From Plagiarism to Compiling," in Viator 20:1989, 19-44; Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994); and David C. Greetham, The Margins of the Text. (Ann Arbor: 1996). University of Michigan Press.

²⁶ I am indebted for this exercise and its instruction sheet to my colleague, Dr. Suzanne Martin, who regularly uses this technique in her Ancient World classes. Information and sample questions are in Appendixes C and D.

²⁷ See Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago, 1982).

²⁸ For advanced students, the entire site could be used to allow students to explore the question of popular literacy, and to engage their own ideas about what it means to be literate—a concept often taken for granted and misunderstood in everyday modern life. Students will be asked to examine the manuscript closely in order to figure out how it was used. Potential topics for them to explore would include the location of the book's production, the probable social origin of the users, and the potential patronage of the book's creators. In constructing this assignment, I will direct students to the CHD tutorial on Book of Hours analysis, which provides students with simple tests, which can help determine answers to these topics. For example, students can begin narrowing down the origin of the book by looking at the form of liturgy, or what is termed the "use." There were several "uses" extant during the Middle Ages corresponding to production centers and roughly to local practices: Paris, Rome, Sarum. Because the Latin phrase that indicates the type of use is short, and the location within the text predictable, even students without Latin can decipher the use of a particular manuscript. Similarly, comparison of the names of saints to lists on the CHD site and to reference books on saints can allow students to find more information about both the book's provenance and patronage. A book containing a calendar with only general, widely-venerated saints will be more likely to be a workshop production, whereas a calendar containing saints' names worshipped only in a particular region will indicate the provenance of the book more directly. Such a book is also more likely to have been made for use by members of a specific population or for a particular individual's use.

²⁹ The Hours of the Master of Mary of Burgundy contain an entire hunting sequence in which the actors are not human, but animal. Although students will not have a line-by-line translation available to them as they will with the Whitman Book of Hours, there is enough similarity between these two texts that for the purposes of this exercise students will be able to map one translation onto both Books.

³⁰ National Women's History Project, "Home." [http://www.nwhp.org]; National Archives and Records Administration, "Home." [http://www.nara.gov]; Library of Congress, "American Memory Project." [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/amhome.html]; and Duke University, "Ad*Access Project." [http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/].

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts in the Classroom: A Project in Progress1

Andrea Winkler Whitman College