Structuring the medieval page | Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book

The video series ‘Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book’ features book historian Irene O’Daly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this second episode, she discusses the structure of the medieval page. In modern printed books, chapters begin on a new page and paragraphs are usually indented. Not so in the layout of a medieval codex, where text is structured by colour and decoration, not by space. Painted or decorated initials – sometimes in combination with a full-page miniature – mark the beginning of a new text section (SCA 1). A scribe can even write texts in different colours when presenting concurrent narratives spread over two pages (SCA 14). Explore these manuscripts (held by Leiden University Libraries) yourself: SCA 1: :1805678 SCA 14: :1678556 This video is created for ‘The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages’ project