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Date/Time
Date(s) - 17 Feb 2014
5:15 PM - 7:00 PM

Location
University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt Library

Category(ies) No Categories


Alex Devine will be speaking on “‘Biblia integra’/ ‘Biblia preciosa’: Mapping the post-medieval provenance and transmission of thirteenth-century bibles” — a talk featuring the Schoenberg Database of Medieval Manuscripts.
We will convene at our usual time and place: 5:15 in the Class of ’78 Pavilion, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections on the 6th floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.

Alex writes:
A greater number of Latin pandect (single-volume) bibles survive from the 13th century than any other kind of book. My project engages the post-medieval networks of sale and purchase, readership and ownership, acquisition and collection that have kept these ‘Paris’/ ‘pocket’ bibles circulating on the transatlantic rare book market for hundreds of years. In this Material Texts presentation I will trace the transformation of these medieval tools into antiquarian objects across the interconnected spaces of the library, the auction house, and the collector’s repository. In so doing, we will consider how the functions of these 13th-century Bibles as Scriptural texts, bibliographical tools, collectable objects, and  ‘medieval artifacts’ have overlapped and evolved during these books’ journeys across the centuries.
For a sneak peak of some of the manuscript materials I’ll be exploring with you, check out Penn’s own fantastic quartet of 13th-century Bibles in the Penn in Hand online catalog:

Ms. Codex 236: Bible-Missal [Biblia sacra manuscripta] (France?, ca. 1235-40 / 465 ll., 218 x 148mm).

Ms. Codex 724: Bible [Biblia] (Arras, France, ca. 1275-99 / 330 ll., 375 x 246 mm).

Ms. Codex 1065: Bible [Biblia sacra manuscripta] (England?, ca. 1240-50 / 356 ll., 178 x 117 mm).

Ms. Codex 1053: Bible [Biblia sacra] (England?, 13th century / 2 vols: 360+140 ll., 149 x 102 mm).

Bio:

Alex is currently a doctoral candidate in Penn’s English Department, heading towards a career in special collections librarianship. He is a graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh (MA, 2006) and York (MA, 2007) and was subsequently employed as the Graduate Trainee Librarian at The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (2008-9). His dissertation project at Penn focuses on thirteenth-century  pandect Bibles, their medieval uses, and their post-medieval (re)uses and transmission through networks of sale and collection. Alex also works in Penn’s new Special Collections Center and at The Rosenbach Library researching auction sales catalogs & the collectors of medieval mss. for The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, a digital resource for mapping the provenance and transmission of pre-1600 manuscripts over time across the world. He has also worked cataloging medieval manuscripts at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (2011) and studied paleography under Dr. Heather Wolfe at The Folger Institute in Washington, D.C. (Fall, 2010) and codicology at Rare Book School, UVA (2011). Since 2010 he has co-ordinated Penn’s Graduate Paleography Reading Group (schedule available on Group website, all welcome!)

All are welcome! Please forward this email widely to any who might be interested. Those who do not hold University of Pennsylvania ID cards should bring another form of photo identification in order to enter the library building.