The Professional Reader

The Book of Bishop St. Isidore, which is called The Greatest Good. Italy, 15th Century.

This manuscript of three books of St. Isidore of Seville’s De Summo Bono (“On the Greatest Good”), also known as his Etymologies, is a prime example of the “professional reader.” St. Isidore was born in the 6th century in Cartagena, Spain, though he eventually moved to Seville to serve as their bishop. As bishop, he was a prolific writer and theologian, producing around twenty-four texts. His Etymologies sought to gather together the origins of everything from words and grammar to laws, philosophy, and animals into a single encyclopedia that spanned twenty books. It quickly became one of the most popular instructional textbooks of the Middle Ages. 

The text is littered with “No” in the same handwriting as the core text— not a denial by the same scribe who wrote it, but rather an abbreviation of “nota,” or “nota bene,” a common phrase instructing the reader to “note well,” or pay attention to certain parts of the page or text. Our scribe, copying the manuscript sometime in the fifteenth century, has so enthusiastically lined nearly every sentence with a “nota” that they might have been the sort of instructor who claims that every part of the lesson is equally vital. For added emphasis, they’ve included an exceptionally detailed “manicule,” a small hand pointing to the most essential part of the page. Their manicule points to the sentence “Sicque hiis/hys uinculis homo implicatus. Quandam catena uiciorum tenetur as[tri]ctus. Ita ut ab ea nequa [quis?] euelli ualeat.” [fol 41]; “And thus man[kind] is entangled in these chains. The bound man is held by those shackles of sins.” 

Liber beati Ysidori episcopi qui appelatur sumum bonum [The Book of Bishop St. Isidore, which is called The Greatest Good]. Italy, ca. 1400-1500 CE. Call Number: MS C54. 

Treatise on the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, by an Unknown Author. Incomplete Fragment. 13th Century.

This manuscript explores the Virgin Mary’s titles, roles, and symbolism as the “Maris Stella,” or guiding Star of the Sea. This title for the Virgin Mary was popularized in the Middle Ages thanks to a hymn, Ave Maris Stella, “Hail, Star of the Sea.” In this treatise, the author explains why Mary was given such a title, connecting the symbolism of stars and navigation with Mary’s role in the Catholic faith.  

Here, our professional reader has highlighted phrases across the manuscript’s margins in a vibrant red. This technique of highlighting was known as “rubrication,” tied to the Latin term for red, “ruber” — and to our modern “rubric” as the heading on a document or the tool by which professors grade their students’ papers. As medieval scribes increasingly used red ink to mark the beginning of significant sections of texts, “rubrication” transformed from meaning exclusively something written in red ink to mean instructional guidance on reader religious texts, where the red ink was used to highlight what order a priest should read parts of religious Mass. Eventually it came to define the instructions for student assignments. 

The vivid red ink serves to visually distinguish different parts of the text to help the reader quickly navigate to the section they might want to read first: “Quomodo stelle inferi de sideribus;” (How stars is placed among the constellations) “… perpetates stelle adaptantur virgani marie;” “Quomodo virgo stella fuit ignee nate[?]; “Quomodo virgo  stella lucida est et clara;” (How the Virgin is a bright and shining star) “Quomodo virgo stella ex se radii emisit;” “Quomodo virgo stella lucet in nocte;” “Quomodo virgo stella navigantibus ostendit viam veniendi ad portum;” “quomodo virgo stella in alto sita est’” “Quomodo virgo stella cursum et ordinem servat;” “Quomodo perpetatem stella virgo debent esse sini,” and so on. 

They’ve drawn out summaries of each section’s subject and content. Medieval readers didn’t necessarily read linearly, starting at the beginning and reading through to the end. Instead, they might jump to and fro through the pages depending upon whether they wanted to find a particular passage to quote, or if they hoped to identify a line on which they might meditate and contemplate its meaning. This manuscript’s marginalia would help a reader skip right to the points that they deemed most important. 

And at the bottom of the page, a later reader has helpfully provided a mnemonic device for remembering each similarity between Mary and stars, with the note that “Stella e[st]” (A Star is...) and a line connecting to “ignea” (fire), “lucida” (shining, clear), “emit radid[iu]s” (emits rays), “luc[e]m in nocte” (light in the night), “naviga[n]tib[us] via[m] o[ste]ndit” (guides the way for sailors), “sita in alto” (placed on high/in the heavens), “r[e]cipit luc[em] a soli” (receives light from the Sun), and “cursum servat” (protects the course/path). 

Treatise on the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, by an Unknown Author. Incomplete Fragment. 13th Century. Call Number: MS 9B:2.

Bible, Book of Matthew 6. 10th-12th Century.

Before the twelfth century, medieval scribes were still exploring ways to arrange the page visually. Scribes hadn’t yet settled into the strict hierarchy of size, style, and format that would be adopted later to carefully guide the reader’s understanding and interpretation. This particular fragment shows the scribe included not only marginalia (the words on the fringes of the page) but also “interlinear” annotations, notes and words squeezed between the wide, open spaces of the main text. These single-word annotations are called “glosses,” born from the Latin glossa/glosa, meaning an obsolete or foreign word. Glosses originated as notes to help explain outdated or unused words, where the scribe would supply a synonym in the margins. In time, “Glossary” has come to mean a list of terms together with their definitions, often included in the back of a book or text. 

Interlinear glosses never entirely fell out of use. But they became less prevalent in the later Middle Ages thanks to the adoption of a handwriting style known as “Gothic” script, which favored cramped, dense text that left little room for notes between lines. This fragment uses a late rendition of the “Carolingian” script, born in the age of Charlemagne in the 9th century and known for its spacious, even letter shapes. It left ample room for notes between lines, albeit in a painstakingly delicate hand that now benefits from a magnifying glass. 

In this fragment’s marginalia and interlinear glosses, the scribe offers explanations for the Book of Matthew’s discussion of hypocrites who perform good acts and piety for public approval, rather than personal virtue. For the line “Amen Dico [vobis] reperceperunt mer-cedem suam” (a misspelling of “receperunt”) (Amen. I tell you, they have received their reward), in the very first and second lines on the left-hand side of the page, the scribe has provided a handful of minute annotations in the margins. On the outer margin, they note that, “receperunt mercedem ado cordis in pectore” (They have received their reward, I say: punishment of the lie of the heart in one’s chest). The scribe thus elaborates for the reader that the “reward” for internal falsehoods described in the text is actually punishment.  

Bible, Book of Matthew 6. Incomplete Fragment. 10th-12th Century. Call Number: MS 9A:13.

Justinian I’s Body of Civil Law. 14th Century.

This leaf once belonged to a fourteenth-century copy of the Digesta, a legal code compiled by the emperor Justinian I of Byzantium in the 6th century.  The leaf displays the pinnacle of medieval manuscript ordinatio, the effort to organize the page to be visually appealing and ordered according to an implicit hierarchy of importance, with the core text in the center. The text is a tidy Gothic textura, a style of script named for how its upright lines resembled the weave of textile cloth. Textura was often reserved for higher-quality manuscripts because of the time and effort necessary to maintain its neat, orderly perfection. (A rather infamous side effect, unfortunately, is that the lines become difficult to distinguish, especially between M’s, N’s, I’s, and U’s — try your hand at reading the text in red!). Then, in a tidy frame around this core text, the scribe has arranged the commentary to explain and elaborate in a formal conversation with the core text.  

The scribe aimed to make the page appear as visually cohesive and ordered as possible, with mirrored columns of both core text and commentary. They left blank spaces below the red ink that were likely intended to be later filled by an artist with an elaborate illuminated initial that would start the first letter of the sentence that followed. This dry legal text and its commentary were not entirely a solemn affair, however, as the scribe managed to slip in a sly, silly caricature of a face to the very edge of the border of the commentary — can you find it? 

To this elegantly balanced commentary, however, a later scribe has supplied further marginalia, breaking the perfect mirror of text by cramming their own explanations above, below, and between the texts, into every spare space of margin available.  

Corpus juris civilis. Digesta. Digestum vetus. Prooemium, leaf 1. Call Number: MS J6:3:A3.