A completely revised Guide to the Collections has appeared on the Center’s website, superseding one based largely on the published edition of 2003 (now out of print). The Guide does not replace standard cataloging but supplements it, emphasizing topical access across the collections.

Changes in scholarship since the first edition of the Guide was published in 1990 are reflected in the new version. For example, there wasn’t a Gay and Lesbian chapter in the 1990 guide; one was added in 2003, and in 2010 it has expanded into a long section on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer (LGBTQ) studies. The history of the book was just finding its way as a discipline back in 1990 (when it…

The current (and final) installment of the Ransom Center’s series on Books of Hours surveys the 300-year reign of the Book of Hours as a medieval bestseller, from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the Age of Print to the Post-Reformation period.

Part I of the series describes the emergence of the Book of Hours as a distinctive class of text and provides an introduction to the subject. Part II discusses and illustrates the most common elements found inside a Book of Hours.

Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

Michael Laird, adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin and the proprietor of Michael Laird Rare Books, shares some recent discoveries he made about a Bible in the Ransom Center’s collection.

Scholarship begets scholarship; ergo bibliography, the study of books as physical objects, builds upon earlier discoveries, while seeking to answer questions about the transmission of texts, the provenance of books, and their bindings.

In fall of 2009, Ryan Hildebrand, head of book cataloging at the Ransom Center, wrote about an unusual nineteenth-century fore-edge painting that adorns a fifteenth-century book at the Ransom Center, namely a Latin Bible, printed in 1481 by Johann Amerbach, of Basel.¹

While the name of the fore-edge painter (John T. Beers), is known ², questions remain about the bookbinding itself, and of the manuscript fragment contained therein, specifically: When and where was the binding made? Can we identify the text of the manuscript fragment, and determine its date of origin?

It is an extraordinary fact that certain ornamental tools that were stamped on early bookbindings were unique to a particular workshop and thus can help to identify specific binderies—or even specific bookbinders. The study of early bookbindings has made significant progress during the last decade, particularly in Germany where vast databases of Gothic bookbinding tools now appear online³.

Careful study of the Ransom Center’s bookbinding reveals an actual name-stamp on the front and back covers. The binding is also adorned with ornamental stamps of birds, flowers, hearts, and Evangelist symbols. (View the above slideshow for more images of these stamps.)

After more than 500 years of use, many of these stamps are no longer easy to see. In special cases, a light pencil rubbing can reveal much more than meets the eye. It was determined that the Ransom Center’s binding is such a case, and Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian Richard Oram gave special permission for rubbings to be made in this instance. These rubbings were then compared with other rubbings that were taken from known binderies of the fifteenth-century.

The name on the binding of the Ransom Center’s 1481 Bible is Johannes Meigfoge. Meigfoge is known to have been active in Ellwangen, Germany, during the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century. Meigfoge’s workshop was first described by Ernst Kryss⁴, who failed to localize the bindery, but located 38 bindings by Meigfoge, including 35 books printed in the years 1475 through 1513, and 3 manuscripts. The location of Meigfoge’s workshop was convincingly assigned to Ellwangen (eastern Baden-Württemberg) by Heribert Hummel, in 1977.⁵

Inside the front and back boards of the present binding may be seen an extremely ancient fragment of manuscript that dates from the ninth-century.⁶ Whereas fragments from old manuscripts were commonly used as strengtheners by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century bookbinders, scholars rarely encounter manuscript material as old as this fragment. And so we can deduce that in the fifteenth-century, this small piece of parchment waste was used by Johannes Meigfoge to strengthen the inside of the spine, where it is still preserved therein.

Although the text of the fragment is hardly extensive, the Caroline minuscule handwriting is quite clear, and reads: In quam cumq[ue] domum intraveritis pri[mum dicite: pac huic domui. This text is from the New Testament, specifically Luke, chapter 10, verse 5:

“Into whatsoever house you enter, first say: ‘Peace be to this house.’”

Words of wisdom from a hitherto unknown ninth-century manuscript fragment—easily the oldest Biblical text at The University of Texas at Austin— afforded by the study of books as physical objects. With its nineteenth-century fore-edge painting, it is a remarkable fact that in one volume we are able to discover evidence of ca. 1000 years of book history.

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¹HRC Incun 1481 B471a

²Jeff Weber, Fore-Edge Paintings of John T. Beer (Los Angeles: J. Weber Rare Books, 2005)

³The Einbanddatenbank of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (accessed 8/8/2010)

⁴Ernst Kyriss, Verzierte gotische Einbande im alten deutschen Sprachgebiet (Stuttgart: Max Hettler, 1953), Tafelband I, no. 53. Ilse Schunke, Die Schwenke-Sammlung gotisher Stempel- und Eingbanddurchreibungen (Berlin, 1996) II, p. 257, offers no evidence for the assignment of this workshop to “Tubingen.”

⁵Heribert Hummel, “Johannes Meigfoge, ein Ellwanger Buchbinder des 15. Jahrhunderts” (in: Ellwanger Jahrbuch Bd. 27, 1977/78, pp. 187–194).

⁶Compare the ninth-century Latin Bible fragment at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley: f2MS A2M2 800:3, reproduced by Digital Scriptorium. (accessed 8/8/2010). The Bancroft fragment is thought to be German (as here?)

Among the Ransom Center’s greatest treasures is the Gutenberg Bible, one of only five complete copies in the United States and only 21 complete copies in the world. The Ransom Center digitized the entire copy of its Gutenberg Bible in 2002, resulting in 1,300 images that reveal the text, large illuminations, and handwritten annotations. These images can be viewed online in the Gutenberg Bible web exhibition. The exhibition also includes information about Johann Gutenberg, the popularization of printing, the appearance of the Bible, and more.

Books of Hours were medieval prayer books designed for laymen. Part I of this series outlined the historical context for the emergence of the Book of Hours as a distinctive class of text and provides an introduction to the subject. The current installment takes a look inside a Book of Hours and illustrates some of the more common elements of these books with images drawn from the Ransom Center’s collections.

Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

The Ransom Center has launched an online database for its medieval and early modern manuscripts collection. The database includes more than 7,000 digital images and can be accessed via the Ransom Center’s website.

The medieval and early modern manuscripts collection contains 215 items dating from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. It comprises items from various collections, including those of George Atherton Aitken, W. H. Crain, Carlton Lake, Edward A. Parsons, Sir Thomas Phillipps, Walter Emile Van Wijk, Evelyn Waugh, John Henry Wrenn and others.

The Ransom Center is in the process of digitizing all of the collection items, which will be added to the database as they are completed. At present, digital images are available for 27 of the items for a current total of 7,288 pages.

The database contains item-level descriptions for all 215 items, and the collection is searchable by keyword and any combination of the following categories: name, country of origin, century, language, format (such as charters or diaries), subject, and physical features (such as musical notation or wax seals).

Pestilence, famine, war, and death: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were close companions to life in the fourteenth century. The Church was compromised by political corruption and worldliness, and the pope resided not in Rome but at Avignon, where he remained a virtual pawn to the king of France. During this calamitous phase of European history, a devotional text called the Book of Hours emerged as a medieval bestseller. Ten of these volumes reside in the Harry Ransom Center collections. Learn more about Books of Hours in the first of a three-part series on Books of Hours.

Artist José Guadalupe Posada’s graphic legacy is as recognizable today as it was in turn-of-the-century Mexico, and his distinctive skeleton print calaveras have become synonymous with the traditional Day of the Dead celebration, which is November 1.

In Jesse Cordes Selbin’s article, “José Guadalupe Posada: Printmaker to the Mexican People,” learn more about the man who ushered in Mexico’s golden age of printmaking and inspired the work of fellow artists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.

Hector Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portugese at The University of Texas at Austin, gives an overview of the traditions behind the Day of the Dead:

There were nine levels in the Mesoamerican afterlife. Tlalocan was a paradise reserved for those who died of…

Last year the Ransom Center received as a gift a bible printed in 1481, in Basel by Johan de Amerbach, that was adorned with a 19th century fore-edge painting by bibliophile John T. Beer. The scene is described in a checklist of Beer’s fore-edge paintings simply as “A scene on the Nile,” and the image is sufficiently vague to merit such a title.

What biblical paintings might have inspired the painting? Some have suggested Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Joseph and his brothers; and the Holy Family leaving Egypt. Can any of these suggestions be substantiated based on the details present in the painting? Take a close look and leave a comment with your thoughts.

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