Reconnecting with my inner medievalist
The most beautiful thing I’ve seen this week: this page from the Stockholm Codex Aureus. We looked at a slide of it in History of the Book last night. You can’t quite tell from the image, but the vellum it’s written on is dyed purple. Aren’t the letters just amazing?
(We looked at slides of pages from the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, too. I’ve never been much of a medievalist, but it’s entirely possible I could change my mind.)
Oh, yes, especially the way that they alternate between being gold letters and being letters on a gold background. Wow.
That’s why I stayed in grad school. The paleography of medieval Latin AND medieval music notation makes me feel smart. Even I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about. It’s all about feeling smart, right?!…