Spent today looking at #MedievalManuscripts in St John’s College (Cambridge) Library’s Rare Books Reading Room—a wonderful space (📷 1: St John’s Chapel). This manuscript (📷 2) belongs to a group I discussed in my uOttawa MA thesis (sup.: Andrew Taylor); how amazing to see it in person. #LegalHistory #HistoryOfLaw #Law #RareBooks #Manuscripts
@bookhistodons @medievodons
Photo of a detail of a leaf in a medieval manuscript: folio 53 recto in Cambridge, St John’s College, manuscript A.7. 21 lines of French copied in black ink, in a precise, spiky hand, with the first 14 lines indented to accommodate an enormous decorative initial ‘E’ for ‘Edward’ (for this is England’s King Edward II). The letter is rendered in blue and white atop a black-painted square densely packed with fine, scrolling filigree vines in gold. At centre, superimposed atop the letter, is a painting of a king, his long brown hair and beard just beginning to grey beneath his golden crown. Clad in a pink, ermine-trimmed cloak over a vermilion robe, he sits enthroned—golden sceptre in one hand, golden orb in the other—gazing at the adjacent text with an expression of deep suspicion. Can the scribes be trusted? Only time will tell.