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The British Library is looking for help trying to solve an inscription on a medieval sword...

Trying to find Harold, reading the Magna Carta, and going 3D: Medieval News Roundup

This week we take a look at some stories about the search for King Harold (sigh), some interesting medieval archaeological discoveries, and the wolf curse...

The Pope Resigns, the British Library digitizing medieval manuscripts, and more Richard III

Beginning today, we will be changing how the Medieval News blog is presented. We hope to bring you a new post every day or two, which will cover what medieval and history news stories are out there, and some interesting things that were also found online. We hope you enjoy the links and videos!

Can the Pope Resign?

Pope Benedict XVI announced today that he will be resigning as the Pontiff effective February 28, 2013. Also known as Joseph Ratzinger, the 85-year old Pope has been suffering from poor health. Still, this is a very surprising announcement, with the last Pope to resign being Gregory XII in 1415. A few months ago, we posted about The Pope who Quit, by Jon M. Sweeney, which details the papal intrigues surrounding the resignation of Celestine V in 1294.

Lines of beauty: British Library’s medieval manuscripts go digital

The Financial Times has profiled the British Library's efforts at digitizing its 25,000 medieval manuscripts, and profiles six of these items. Claire Breay, head of medieval and earlier manuscripts at the British Library, explains “Anybody can enjoy them whether they are the leading academic on some aspect of that manuscript … or a schoolchild doing a project." Some beautiful images here.

How I mapped the “lost” forests of Huntingdonshire 

Jason Peters has been examining records related to royal forests in Huntingdonshire during the Middle Ages. Using local archives and geographic computer programs, he was able to locate various royal and private forests in the county. In fact, nearly all of the county was legally considered a forest.

Peters explains, “A Norman-Medieval forest was, in effect, a legally defined conservation area where no matter who was the landowner construction, resource exploitation, habitat degradation and hunting of game could not be undertaken without Crown approval. The Forest of County Huntingdon was an evolving, dynamic, socio-political phenomenon, not limited to woodland habitat but extending across pastures, Fenlands, arable, meadows and rivers.

“There is 800 years of history that hasn’t been understood. People could be living somewhere that was a forest. By mapping areas that we now know were woods, we can understand the ecology of the area, which could be very important when considering any future development.”

You can check out Jason Peters' website, Posthumous Plans: Mapping Lost Landscapes, which officially launches later this week.

Richard III: Exhibition draws in the crowds at Leicester's Guildhall 

 The City of Leicester is already showcasing the story of Richard III, and has a temporary exhibition about the discovery of the English King. Here is a video of how it looks:




Richard III Memes

Some pretty funny work being done with Richard III this week...

Top Tips for Visiting Medieval Cairo

Finally, I want to point you to a podcast I heard the other day: Elizabeth Eva Leach, Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, spoke as part of the Engage: Social Media Talks series, about Blogging and Tweeting. Professor Leach is a medievalist who has developed a very good website about her work, and also tweets from @eeleach. For those interested in using social media as part of their academic career, this is well worth a listen too!

Medieval Arabic manuscripts, East India Company papers, to go online

The British Library and Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development have unveiled an ambitious partnership to transform people’s understanding of the history of the Middle East, and the region’s relationship with Britain and the rest of the world.

The £8.7 million project was announced this morning at the British Library’s flagship building in St Pancras, London. Its plans will digitise more than 500,000 pages from the archives of the East India Company and India Office, in addition to 25,000 pages of medieval Arabic manuscripts – all of which will be made freely available online for the first time.

The digitisation will take place over the next three years at the British Library, in close cooperation with the new Qatar National Library, and much information will be available in both Arabic and English. Once live, the site will also offer users the opportunity to add their own Gulf-related stories and memories, enabling them to contribute to the online resource, whether by sharing images of mementoes and old photographs, or by recounting the stories their grandparents once told them. In this way, historical items from living memory will be added to the archive of items dating back several centuries.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

British Library purchases the St Cuthbert Gospel for £9 million

The British Library has announced that it has successfully acquired the St Cuthbert Gospel, a miraculously well-preserved 7th century manuscript that is the oldest European book to survive fully intact and therefore one of the world’s most important books.

The £9 million purchase price for the Gospel has been secured following the largest and most successful fundraising campaign in the British Library’s history.

The single largest contribution to the campaign was a £4.5 million grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) together with major gifts from the Art Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation and the Foyle Foundation. In addition, the campaign received a number of significant donations from charitable trusts, foundations and major individual donors, along with gifts from members of the public.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

BBC show on The Private Lives Of The Medieval Kings to begin airing next week

In Illuminations: The Private Lives of the Medieval Kings BBC Four will tell the story of the Medieval monarchy as preserved through stunning illuminated manuscripts from the British Library’s Royal Manuscripts collection which contains some of the most priceless documents in the country’s history. Some of these manuscripts were commissioned by the Medieval Kings to burnish their legacies. Others were captured as war booty, and handed down from one dynasty to the next. Together they make up a fascinating record of the role of the king and the role of the country as it became a major power at the heart of Europe. This new 3×60 series presented by renowned art historian Dr Janina Ramirez, and produced by Oxford Film and Television will explore the extraordinary art and culture of the period.

Many important illuminated Royal manuscripts will be captured on film for the first time as part of the BBC’s ongoing collaboration with the British Library and in conjunction with the Library’s latest exhibition, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (www.bl.uk/royal). Dr Ramirez will decode and contextualise the manuscripts and in doing so will bring the monarchy of the Middle Ages back to life with the help of Library experts and series consultant Dr Scot McKendrick, Head of History and Classics at the British Library and lead curator of the exhibition. Many of these treasures have not been seen for hundreds of years so their secrets are fresh to the modern eye.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

The Brilliance of Medieval England

The historian David Horspool says that we are wrong to think of medieval England as backward. It produced art, architecture and books - on display in a new British Library exhibition - of staggering sophistication.

There's a story in Peter Ackroyd's latest book, a history of medieval England called Foundation, about what one Englishman did to his sister, deformed since birth. Robert de Bramwyk "plunged her into a cauldron of hot water; then he took her out and began stamping on her limbs in order to straighten them."

To Ackroyd, "The records of madness evince some of the general qualities of the medieval mind." But do they? Could the same be said of modern Britain, that the activities of, say, the criminally insane are indicative of the way we Brits behave in general?

Click here to read this article from The Huffington Post

Queen opens British Library manuscripts exhibition

The Queen has opened a British Library exhibition featuring manuscripts which belonged to medieval kings and queens. The Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination contains 154 items, including manuals on how to behave.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had a private viewing of five manuscripts on display at the London exhibition. They included monarchs' prayer books, a charter commemorating the start of monastic rule of St Benedict in 964 and books made for King Edward IV.

Click here to read this article from the BBC

Forget Blackadder, turnips and the Black Death: medieval England was extremely sophisticated

There's a tendency to think of the medieval English living an archaic, primitive, Blackadder sort of life: a lot of knobbly-faced peasants rotating crops, marrying at 12, before succumbing to their first bubons in the armpit at 15.
An exhibition opening at the British Library today, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, puts that right. Not only are the 154 gilded books on display extraordinarily beautiful – and in fresh, glittering condition – but they also show how sophisticated medieval England was. Pictured is Winchester's New Minster Charter, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, gilded a century before William the Conqueror turned up. The workmanship and the colour are extremely advanced.

Click here to read this article from the Daily Telegraph

Might be worth a look, Wills: The medieval manuscripts that told England's monarchs how to be a king

If the Duke of Cambridge is looking for a little guidance on how to behave once he inherits the throne, he should head straight to the British Library.

Offering advice on the art of kingship, a set of manuscripts dating back to the 9th century is set to go on display there as part of a new exhibition. The manuscripts cover all aspects of a monarch's life, including what to eat, when to sleep and the cure for an upset stomach - a hot maiden.

The new exhibition will include manuals on royal etiquette, known as 'mirrors for princes' which were developed during the medieval period to advise monarchs how to rule themselves and their kingdoms.

Click here to read this article from the Daily Mail

See also British Library hosts Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination

British Library launches new Medieval and Renaissance images app

In conjunction with their exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, the British Library has created a Royal Manuscripts app for Apple iPad and iPhone users, which features over 500 images from 58 manuscripts in their collection.

The app is available for download at a cost of just £1.49 for the iPhone and £2.99 for the iPad, until November 2011.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

British Library hosts Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination

Beginning on November 11th, the British Library will be hosting a new exhibition entitled Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination. It is the Library’s first major exhibition to bring together the its Royal collection, a treasure trove of illuminated manuscripts collected by the kings and queens of England between the 9th and 16th centuries.

Curated by Dr Scot McKendrick, Head of History and Classical Studies, British Library; Professor John Lowden, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and Dr Kathleen Doyle, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, British Library, the exhibition features stunning manuscripts that are among the most outstanding examples of royal decorative and figurative painting from this era surviving in Britain today, their colours often as vibrant as when they were first painted.

However, the manuscripts do much more than declare the artistry of their makers; the luxurious objects unlock the secrets of the private lives and public personae of the royals throughout the Middle Ages and provide the most vivid surviving source for understanding royal identity. As well as providing clear instruction on appropriate regal behaviour they also give a direct insight into royal moral codes and religious belief and shed light on the politics of the day.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

First Valentine: Lasting legacy of 500-year-old love

Love it or hate it, even the most hardened anti-Romeo will be hard pressed to avoid Valentine's Day this year. But as an exhibit at the British Library currently on show is testament to, there is a first for everything - even on Valentine's Day.

It is a letter, written from a young woman to her love, and is the first mention of the word Valentine in the English language. And, for the first time, the descendants of Margery Brews and her betrothed John Paston have been traced.

In 1477 Margery wrote a letter to her John pleading with him not to give her up, despite her parents' refusal to increase her dowry.

Addressing her "ryght welebeloued Voluntyne" (right well-beloved Valentine), she promised to be a good wife, adding: "Yf that ye loffe me as Itryste verely that ye do ye will not leffe me" (If you love me, I trust.. you will not leave me)

Click here to read this article from the BBC

British Library digitises Greek manuscripts

The British Library has digitised over a quarter of its Greek manuscripts (284 volumes) for the first time and made them freely available online at www.bl.uk/manuscripts thanks to a generous grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

The website provides researchers with access to high quality digital images of a major part of the British Library’s Greek manuscripts collection, supported by enhanced metadata which enables users to search using key words.

Scot McKendrick, Head of History and Classical Studies at the British Library, said, “This website offers everyone, wherever they may be in the world, the opportunity to engage for the first time with over 100,000 pages of newly digitised, unique manuscripts which provide direct insights into the rich written legacy of the Greeks of classical antiquity, Byzantine times, the Renaissance and beyond. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which funded this project, has generously agreed to fund a second phase and we look forward to presenting a further 250 manuscripts in full in 2012.”

Click here to read the article and video on Medievalists.net

Macclesfield Alphabet Book bought by British Library

A rare medieval alphabet book will remain in Great Britain, after the British Library announced that it had raised the £600,000 needed to purchase the manuscript.

According to the Guardian newspaper, the British Library was able to match the price the Getty Library in California had offered for the Macclesfield Alphabet Book. The British government had earlier blocked the export of the manuscript to allow the British Library the time needed to raise money for the purchase.



This extremely rare manuscript, produced at the end of the fifteenth century, is written on parchment and has 46 leaves. t is held within an early 18th-century English calf binding and has been in the library of the Earls of Macclesfield since around 1750, and until recently its existence was completely unknown.

The manuscript contains 14 different types of decorative alphabets. These include an alphabet of decorative initials with faces; foliate alphabets; a zoomorphic alphabet of initials, and alphabets in Gothic script. In addition there are large coloured anthropomorphic initials modelled after fifteenth-century woodcuts or engravings, as well as two sets of different types of borders, some of which are fully illuminated in colours and gold.

This manuscript is thought to have been used as a pattern book for an artist's workshop for the transmission of ideas to assistants, or as a 'sample' book to show to potential customers.

Only a handful of these books survive and as a result, the discovery of the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, filled with designs for different types of script, letters, initials, and borders is of outstanding significance and will contribute to a greater understanding of how these books were produced and used in the Middle Ages, as well as aid the study of material culture and art history.


The Macclesfield Alphabet Book sheds light on how such tomes were produced. They did not always rely on the creative expertise of the artist, since alphabets and illustrations similar to some of the Macclesfield examples have been found in earlier books and woodcuts.

Kathleen Doyle, curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library, described the acquisition as "tremendously exciting". "It is the most complete set of designs for manuscript decoration known to have survived from late-medieval Britain. The 'abcs' are wonderfully illustrated ‑ including letters formed using animals and people ‑ and I hope that those who go to see it on display at the British Library will be captivated by its inventiveness, and that researchers will begin an interesting debate on its origin, models, and function."

The manuscript will be available for the public to view in the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery by the end of the week.