Much of what is known about the past often rests upon the chance survival of objects and texts. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the fragments of medieval manuscripts re-used as bookbindings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such fragments provide a tantalizing, yet often problematic glimpse into the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages. Exploring the opportunities and difficulties such documents provide, this volume concentrates on the c. 50,000 fragments of medieval Latin manuscripts stored in archives across the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. This large collection of fragments (mostly from liturgical works) provides rich evidence about European Latin book culture, both in general and in specific relation to the far north of Europe, one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. As the essays in this volume reveal, individual and groups of fragments can play a key role in increasing and advancing knowledge about the acquisition and production of medieval books, and in helping to distinguish locally made books from imported ones. Taking an imaginative approach to the source material, the volume goes beyond a strictly medieval context to integrate early modern perspectives that help illuminate the pattern of survival and loss of Latin manuscripts through post-Reformation practices concerning reuse of parchment. In so doing it demonstrates how the use of what might at first appear to be unpromising source material can offer unexpected and rewarding insights into diverse areas of European history and the history of the medieval book.

Much of what is known about the past often rests upon the chance survival of objects and texts. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the fragments of medieval manuscripts re-used as bookbindings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such fragments provide a tantalizing, yet often problematic glimpse into the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages. Exploring the opportunities and difficulties such documents provide, this volume concentrates on the c. 50,000 fragments of medieval Latin manuscripts stored in archives across the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. This large collection of fragments (mostly from liturgical works) provides rich evidence about European Latin book culture, both in general and in specific relation to the far north of Europe, one of the last areas of Europe to be converted to Christianity. As the essays in this volume reveal, individual and groups of fragments can play a key role in increasing and advancing knowledge about the acquisition and production of medieval books, and in helping to distinguish locally made books from imported ones. Taking an imaginative approach to the source material, the volume goes beyond a strictly medieval context to integrate early modern perspectives that help illuminate the pattern of survival and loss of Latin manuscripts through post-Reformation practices concerning reuse of parchment. In so doing it demonstrates how the use of what might at first appear to be unpromising source material can offer unexpected and rewarding insights into diverse areas of European history and the history of the medieval book.

Essays looking at the process of teaching and learning to write in the middle ages, with evidence drawn from across Europe. The capacity to read and write are different abilities, yet while studies of medieval readers and reading have proliferated in recent years, there has so far been little examination of how people learnt to write in the middle ages- an aspect of literacy which this volume aims to address. The papers published here discuss evidence adduced from the "a sgraffio" writing of Ancient Rome, through the attempts of scribes to model their handwriting after that ofthe master-scribe in a disciplined scriptorium, to the repeated copying of set phrases in a Florentine merchant's day book. They show how a careful study of handwriting witnesses the reception of the twenty-three letter Latin alphabet in different countries of medieval Europe, and its necessary adaptation to represent vernacular sounds. Monastic customaries provide evidence of teaching and learning in early scriptoria, while an investigation of the grammarians is a reminder that for the medieval scholar learning to write did not mean simply mastering the skill of holding a quill and forming one's letters properly, but also mastering a correct understanding of grammar and punctuation. Other essays consider the European reception of the so-called Arabic numbers, provide an edition of a fifteenth-century tract on how to use abbreviations correctly, and illustrate how images of writing on wax tablets and learning in school can throw light on medieval practice. The volume concludes with a paper on the ways in which a sixteenth-century amateur theologican deployed Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. P.R. Robinson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Contributors: Paolo Fioretti, David Ganz, Martin Steinman, Patrizia Carmassi, Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Annina Seiler, Alessandro Zironi, Jerzy Kaliszuk, Aslaug Ommundsen, Erik Niblaeus, Gudvardur Mar Gunnlaugsson, Cristina Mantegna, Irene Ceccherini, Jesus Alturo, Carmen del Camino Martinez, Maria do Rosario Barbosa Morujao, Charles Burnett, Olaf Pluta, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Alison Stones, Berthold Kress