Kathryn M. Rudy's Books

Piety in Pieces

How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Piety in Pieces

How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?

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226

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Open Book Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783742364

ISBN 13

9781783742363

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

In this ingenious study, Kathryn Rudy takes the reader on a journey to trace the birth, life and afterlife of a Netherlandish book of hours made in 1500. Image, Knife, and Gluepot painstakingly reconstructs the process by which this manuscript was created and discusses its significance as a text at the forefront of fifteenth-century book production, when the invention of mechanically-produced images led to the creation of new multimedia objects. Rudy then travels to the nineteenth century to examine the phenomenon of manuscript books being pillaged for their prints and drawings: she has diligently tracked down the dismembered parts of this book of hours for the first time. Image, Knife, and Gluepot also documents Rudy’s twenty-first-century research process, as she hunts through archives while grappling with the logistics and occasionally the limits of academic research. This is a timely volume, focusing on questions of materiality at the forefront of medieval and literary studies. Beautifully illustrated throughout, its use of original material and its striking interdisciplinary approach, combining book and art history, make it a significant academic achievement. Image, Knife, and Gluepot is a valuable text for any scholar in the fields of medieval studies, the history of early books and publishing, cultural history or material culture. Written in Rudy’s inimitable style, it will also be rewarding for any student enrolled in a course on manuscript production, as well as non-specialists interested in the afterlives of manuscripts and prints. The Royal Society of Edinburgh has generously contributed to this Open Access publication. Due to the number and quality of the images in this book, we have provided the option of a more expensive hardback edition, printed on the best quality paper available, in order to present the images as clearly and beautifully as possible. We hope this range of options — the freely available PDF, HTML and XML editions; the economically priced EPUB, MOBI and paperback editions; and the more expensively printed hardback — will satisfy everyone. Furthermore the HTML edition allows readers to magnify the images of the manuscripts displayed in the book.

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254

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Open Book Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1783745193

ISBN 13

9781783745197

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 2: Social Encounters with the Book

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 2: Social Encounters with the Book

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

In the late middle ages (ca. 1200-1520), both religious and secular people used manuscripts, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of their use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, public reading, and memorializing the dead, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment. This second volume, Social Encounters with the Book, delves into the physical interaction with books in various social settings, including education, courtly assemblies, and confraternal gatherings. Looking at acts such as pointing, scratching, and ‘wet-touching’, the author zooms in on smudges and abrasions on medieval manuscripts as testimonials of readers’ interaction with the book and its contents. In so doing, she dissects the function of books in oaths, confraternal groups, education, and courtly settings, illuminating how books were used as teaching aids and tools for conveying political messages. The narrative paints a vivid picture of medieval reading, emphasizing bodily engagement, from page-turning to the intimate act of kissing pages. Overall, this text offers a captivating exploration of the tactile and social dimensions of book use in late medieval Europe broadening our perspective on the role of objects in rituals during the middle ages. Social Encounters with the Book provides a fundamental resource to anybody interested in medieval history and book materiality more widely.

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301

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Open Book Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1805111671

ISBN 13

9781805111672

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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254

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Open Book Publishers

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ISBN 10

1783745193

ISBN 13

9781783745197

Piety in Pieces

How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Piety in Pieces

How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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226

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Open Book Publishers

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ISBN 10

1783742364

ISBN 13

9781783742363

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

What role did images play in the mania for indulgences during the decades prior to the Protestant Reformation? Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts considers how indulgences (the remission of time in Purgatory) were used to market certain images. Conversely, images helped to spread indulgences, such as those attached to the Virgin in sole and the Mass of St Gregory. Images also began depicting the effects of indulgences: souls escaping Purgatory. Drawing on numerous unpublished sources, Kathryn M. Rudy demonstrates how rubrics modified behaviour and expectations around image-centred devotion. Her work is the first to analyse systematically the way that indulgences and images interacted – indeed, shaped each other – prior to the Reformation.

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Page Count

338

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004326960

ISBN 13

9789004326965

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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338

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BRILL

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ISBN 10

9004326960

ISBN 13

9789004326965

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 1: Officials and Their Books

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 1: Officials and Their Books

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

The Medieval book, both religious and secular, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of its use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment. Rudy presents numerous and fascinating case studies that relate to the evidence of use and damage through touching and or kissing. She also puts each study within a category of different ways of handling books, mainly liturgical, legal or choral practice, and in turn connects each practice to the horizontal or vertical behavioural patterns of users within a public or private environment. With her keen eye for observation in being able to identify various characteristics of inadvertent and targeted ware, the author adds a new dimension to the Medieval book. She gives the reader the opportunity to reflect on the social, anthropological and historical value of the use of the book by sharpening our senses to the way users handled books in different situations. Rudy has amassed an incredible amount of material for this research and the way in which she presents each manuscript conveys an approach that scholars on Medieval history and book materiality should keep in mind when carrying out their own research. What perhaps is most striking in her articulate text, is how she expresses that the touching of books was not without emotion, and the accumulated effects of these emotions are worthy of preservation, study and further reflection.

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210

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Open Book Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1800649622

ISBN 13

9781800649620

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 2: Social Encounters with the Book

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

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Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Volume 2: Social Encounters with the Book

By: Kathryn M. Rudy

Average ratings

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Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

301

Publisher

Open Book Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1805111671

ISBN 13

9781805111672

Book's by Kathryn M. Rudy

Piety in Pieces

Piety in Pieces

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print

Piety in Pieces

Piety in Pieces

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

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