Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library Opens ‘In the Manuscript Margins’

The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library — part of Special Collections in the Saint Louis University Libraries — announces the opening of an exhibition of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, “In the Manuscript Margins: Notes and Decoration by Scribes, Illuminators, and Readers.”

This exhibition takes a look at manuscript margins and some of the marks — texts and images — that can be encountered there. The margins — defined as the blank space around or between text columns — are viewed as handy places to add accessory texts or decoration, and to provide space for scribes and readers to make corrections or notes. The traditional format of the manuscript page, with its widest margins at the outer and lower sides, was certainly devised with this in mind.

The exhibition cases present two different aspects of marginal additions. Case 1 is devoted to marks and text added by scribes and readers during the production or use of the manuscript. In a 13th-century English Bible (MS 56), for example, the margins bear corrections by the scribe, as well as notes made by a reader, proving that this Bible was studied closely.

Case 2 deals mainly with marginal decoration executed by illuminators, usually comprising painted or penworked borders alongside the text, which may be enriched with floral or zoomorphic motifs. A book of hours leaf (MS 35b verso) is decorated with a double vertical bar along the left side of the column, topped by a two-legged, winged dragon with a feathery hat.

Additionally, a legal document granting a piece of land to a monastery (MS 33) bears the armorial seal of the knight who donated the land.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and will be on display from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, through Jan. 31, 2017, in the Vatican Film Library of Pius XII Memorial Library (Room 105).

For further information, contact Susan L’Engle, assistant director of the Vatican Film Library, at 314-977-3084, lengles@slu.edu.

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