Divina Commedia

Clemens, R. and T. Graham, “Introduction to Manuscript Studies” (London: Cornell University Press, 2007).

Sarolea, Charles, “Preface,” Iconografia Dantesca: The Pictorial Representations in Dante’s Divine Comedy (London: H. Grevel, 1899).

L. Volkmann, Iconografia Dantesca: The Pictorial Representations in Dante’s Divine Comedy (London: H. Grevel, 1899), pp. 46-64.

Quinones, Ricardo, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dante-Alighieri/The-Divine-Comedy

Dante Encyclopedia, ed. by Richard Lansing, (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2000), pp. 198-201.

http://socialcompare.com/en/tools/compare-sizes

https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item100467.html

The binding of this manuscript is composed of gold-tooled red leather over wooden boards. In the book, the process of binding that included wooden boards was that the quires would first be sewn, one by one, onto several sewing supports (thongs or cords). The ends of the sewing supports would go into the wooden boards that served as the front and back covers. Finally, the boards would be covered with skin. In this case, it is red leather. Next, the quires would be attached to the sewing supports by suspending the supports vertically on a frame. This manuscript probably had more supports since it was bound later on. Then, the process of sewing the quires on, one by one, would begin.

In the late Middle Ages, it was common for the skins to be brightly colored. It is also characteristic of medieval bindings that the edges of the boards are even with the edges of the leaves. It appears this is the case for this manuscript as well. This manuscript binding was tooled with gold, a process called blind-tooling. This is the process in which a simple pattern is worked into the leather with a hot metal tool. This binding also has “gilt edges,” which are of the highest quality.

Although the binding of this manuscript is characteristic of medieval bindings, it was not completed in the Middle Ages. The medieval period, or the Middle Ages, dates roughly between the years of 476 and 1453 AD. However, this binding is dated post-1600. Therefore, it must have been rebound.

Diagrams

There are two diagrams that appear in this manuscript that are important to understanding The Divine Comedy. One is a diagram of the sphere of Hell, and the other is a diagram of the sphere of Heaven. Both appear in red ink and occupy their own individual pages. The diagram of Hell appears on the page before Inferno, and the diagram of Heaven appears on the page before Paradiso; each diagram depicts the various “spheres,” or layers, that make up each realm. They each serve as a map, or a visual aid, for Dante’s readers to use while navigating through the realms along with him. The first image is the diagram of Hell, which consists of eight concentric circles, each noted by “circulus.” In the poem, there are eight circles of Hell. The second image is the diagram of Heaven, of which there are nine concentric circles representing nine Heavens. The eighth heaven consists of the stars, which are illustrated around the circle. The larger star shapes that appear on the page represent the planets and the Sun.

These diagrams provide insight into the minds of medieval people and how they thought about the physical aspects of Heaven and Hell. However, the manuscript does not include a diagram of Purgatory. Instead, the illustrations from Purgatorio help us understand a medieval perception of Purgatory.

Illustrations

This manuscript contains a lot of illustrations; 261 miniatures to be exact. These appear in line with the text and aim to depict scenes from the text. According to Charles Sarolea, “Most of the artists who tried to follow the Comedy failed” (Preface ix). Although the artist of this manuscript is unknown, Ludwig Volkmann asserts that the miniaturist’s “execution is not very great”(47). Even so, the illustrations that appear throughout definitely contribute to the reader’s understanding of what is going on in the main text, especially being someone who does not know how to read Italian or Latin.

Below is a comparison of two illustrations from two different manuscripts depicting Dante and Beatrice with the eagle of Justice.

As you can tell, the illustration found in my Egerton manuscript is significantly less detailed in terms of human bodies, clothing, the frame of the image, and the eagle. The shape that is supposed to be an eagle does not necessarily look like an eagle but more like a random collage of human faces. In addition, the illustration is very flat compared to the other one, which has an element of depth that makes both the figures of Dante and Beatrice as well as the eagle look like they are coming out of the page. In addition, the lines on the first image are not as distinct as the lines in the second image, which also contributes to the flatness of the image.

The blog post on the British Library website that includes a short introduction and some information about the manuscript I used for comparison, Yates Thompson MS 36, can be found here: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/03/to-hell-and-back-dante-and-the-divine-comedy.html

All of the glossing that occurs in this manuscript is in Latin. It appears throughout the entire book up until f. 146v in Paradiso. The glossing that occurs in this manuscript is primarily lexical glossing in the form of Concordance, which uses paraph marks (as seen below) and is organized in alphabetical order (also seen below). Concordance was useful for people living in religious communities who were actively studying the Bible or a particular topic, however, this sort of gloss is useful for this manuscript because it includes so many references to religious beliefs about the afterlife. This type of gloss is also syntactical because it uses letters to indicate the order in which they should be read.

There are both short and longer glosses throughout the manuscript. Each stanza of poetry in the image below has been glossed, matching the commentary in the margins. The glossing appears on both sides of the text on this page and in many others, sometimes taking over the entire page.

The illumination work done in this manuscript are attributed to the Master of the Antiphonar of Padua. Illuminations are in gold and appear throughout the entirety of the manuscript. There is illumination in decorated letters, illustrations, and sometimes the text itself. This indicates that this manuscript must have been relatively expensive, in addition to the other components we have discussed. For example, a significant amount of gold leaf must have been used to illuminate the backgrounds of many illustrations in addition to chunks of text.

In the illustration above, the illumination appears in gold behind Dante and Virgil. This contrasts the black background that appears behind the This is an example of the kind of illumination that is characteristic of this manuscript. It often serves as the background in many illustrations.

In addition, since this poem incorporates religion, gold illumination frequently depicts things that are deemed holy. For example, gold illumination is used for halos that appear on angels.

In the image that appears below, the staircase leading up to the seventh Heaven is illuminated in gold. This is meant to be represent a holy staircase, so the illuminated really brings it to the attention of the reader. In addition, there is an elaborate, grid-patterned background that is lined with gold illumination. The design inside consists of red and blue flowers. Please note that when artists illustrated a manuscript, the illumination would come before pigments.

Gold was also used to write some of the main text (pictured below). This differs from the black ink that was used for a majority of the text throughout.

Gothic Book Hand

This manuscript is written in the Gothic book hand, which consists of three distinct forms: Praescissa, Quadrata, and Semi-Quadrata, with Praescissa being the highest grade of Gothic and Semi-Quadrata being the lowest. The difference between these three forms is that, one, Praescissa does not use what we refer to as “serifs” at the bottom of letters like the other two forms do. Instead, for letters like “n,” the minims are flat at the bottom. In Quadrata, the foot of each minim has a diamond-shaped serif at the bottom while in Semi-Quadrata, they are only used sometimes. Below, if you look closely at the bottom of each minim in the letter “m,” you will notice a diamond-shape, which is a type of serif used in this book hand.

Transcription

After transcribing this, I noticed a few things. One, the ninth line of text has what is called sub punctuation (the three dots that appear below the baseline under each letter) to indicate that the text has been corrected. Secondly, the last line I transcribed lacked a punctus. I though this was unusual because every other stanza ends with a punctus except for this one. This led me to the conclusion that it may have been either forgotten or damaged.

Modern Version

I decided to make a museum blog in which I am the tour guide through the Egerton manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The reason I decided to do this was because Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead is a lot like a tour through museum exhibits. His tour guides are the poet Virgil and Beatrice. As he travels through each realm, the tour guides introduce him to the various things that make up each realm. These are often depicted in the illustrations and Dante seems to me like he observes these things like someone in a museum would. So, I decided to be a tour guide for The Egerton Museum of the Divine Comedy that made a blog to teach potential visitors about the manuscript and what to expect when visiting the museum. I did this by splitting my discussion units (blog posts) into museum exhibits.

The Text

The layout of the text of the poem is “text of the Commedia,” which is one column of 48 lines. The column of text typically appears in the center of the page. Since this is a poem, it contains all of the normal elements that make up a poem, such as verses, lines, stanzas, punctuation, and rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme of the poem is “terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.)” (Ricardo Quinones). These three-line rhymes are what make up the stanzas of this poem. Stanza breaks are indicated by paraph marks, which are pictured below in red and blue to the left of the text. In addition, the first letter of each stanza is majuscule (capitalized), and the end of each stanza has a punctuation mark called a punctus, which looks like a modern-day period. This is used to indicate a minor pause in the text. The poem is also divided into 100 cantos, with a canto being a subdivision in an epic poem. As mentioned before, this is an epic poem comprised of three sections (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). Therefore, each section contains 33 cantos, with the exception of Inferno, which contains one more that serves as an introduction to The Divine Comedy in general (Ricardo Quinones).

Ordinatio

The term ordinatio refers to the layout of the parts of a text in a manuscript and the methods used to indicate text divisions, such as books and chapters. There are several methods used in this manuscript to help the reader understand how to move through the page.

Rubrication

To indicate the different texts, scribes used rubrication, which refers to titles and headings introducing the new text, typically done in a red lead called minium (25). Titles and headings of medieval texts typically begin with the Latin word “Incipit,” which means “it begins/here begins” (Graham and Clemens 24). In this manuscript, the titles of each section of the poem are rubricated as well as the headings for each canto. These indicate to the reader that there is a significant transition happening in the text.

Decoration

In this manuscript, rubricated titles and headings are followed by a decoration to indicate where the next section or canto begins; usually, in the form of initials.

Initials

The first type of initial falls within the category of inhabited initials, which are initials that contain either a human or animal figure in it. It is called an anthropomorphic initial, which means a human figure appears in it somewhere. This specific initial pictured below is what is used to indicate the start of the first section of the poem, Inferno. The figure that appears inside of the initial is Dante because he is wearing a pink-colored robe. This is also a foliate initial because it has vine and leaf decorations that extend from it on the left side.

This next two initials fall within the same category, however, they are historiated initials. The difference is that these initials contain a human figure (in this case Dante) that is illustrated doing something that occurs in the text itself. The first image shows the initial that indicates the beginning of the second section of the poem, Purgatorio. Dante is presented like a typical medieval scribe, writing a book (perhaps this book) at a desk. This initial also includes foliate decoration that extends into the margins. The second image shows the initial that indicates the beginning of the third section of the poem, Paradiso. Dante is depicted in a praying position on his knees with his hands clasped together.

Now that we have some basic terminology, let’s take a look at how these elements contribute to the ordinatio.

Each of these pages has rubrication appearing at the top of the page to indicate the title of the section of the poem. In addition, each also includes an illustration at the top of the page, presumably meant to introduce the opening scene of that section. Next are the inhabited initials, which indicate where the main text of the section begins. Finally, although the text layout on these pages slightly differ from the standard column, the paraph marks provide the reader with the correct order.

Another category of initials are decorative initials, which are initials in a text that do not have figures in them. In this manuscript, these are used to indicate the start of a new canto. The image below is one example called a pen-work initial, in this case, a littera flourisha because it is done in red and blue colors that differ from the ink of the main text. This specific letter that appears below is blue with red pen-work decoration. It is also a litterae notabiliores because it is bigger and more noticeable than others on the page.

Another example of a decorated initial is pictured below; it is also a foliate initial.

Materials

A majority of medieval manuscripts were written on parchment, or a writing surface made of animal skins (Graham & Clemens 9). This was probably made of goat skin since those were the most common in Italy and Greece. This manuscript is primarily made of parchment but also includes some paper. In order to differentiate parchment from other writing surfaces, you can look at evidence that appears on the hair-side and the flesh-side. For example, the hair-side of the parchment often has what is called “peppering,” or little dots where hair follicles used to be (14). This can be seen in the first image below. The second image shows veining that may appear on the flesh-side of parchment.

Structure

Foliation

One folio, or leaf, consists of one recto and one verso. Today, a folio would be a single piece of paper with the recto being the front side, or the front page, and the verso being the back side, or the flip side of the page (Graham and Clemens 3). The term foliation refers to how the leaves of a manuscript are constructed and how someone wrote the folio numbers. Unlike page numbers, folio numbers appear only on the front side of a leaf. For example, instead of being page 1 followed by page 2, folio 1 consists of folio 1r (recto) and folio 1v (verso).

La Divina Commedia consists of a total of 188 folios. That would be 376 “pages” of a novel in today’s terminology. Folios 2v-62r make up Inferno, folios 63r-126r make up Purgatorio, and folios 129r-186r make up Paradiso. Folio 1 is an added paper leaf. Folio 188 is constructed of a parchment flyleaf plus one paper. There are also 2 parchment and 1 paper flyleaves at the beginning, and 2 parchment and 1 paper flyleaves at the end, all unfoliated. The other folios are made of parchment.

Collation

A quire is the result of folding together multiple sheets of parchment or paper to form leaves that are eventually linked together to form a book. A bifolium is one sheet folded in half; the plural is bifolia. The term collation refers to how the quires of a manuscript are arranged, how many quires there are, how many bifolia make up each quire, and how they are foliated. Quire sizes varied in the Middle Ages, but the most common quire structures were eight or ten leaves (14).

This is a diagram of a four-leaf quire structure from Graham and Clemens (15).

This manuscript consists of 19 quires of differing sizes. Folios 3-122 make up quires 1-12, each consisting of 10 leaves. Folios 123-128 make up quire 13 and consist of 6 leaves. Folios 129-178 make up quires 14 through 18, each consisting of 10 leaves. Folios 179-186 make up quire 19. This specific quire is peculiar because it is a quire of 8 leaves that was probably originally a quire of 10, with the last two leaves excised. The last folios 187 and 188 are two single parchment leaves.