Structuring the medieval page, Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book

The video series Exploring the Medieval Manuscript Book features book historian Irene ODaly (Leiden University), introducing a wider audience to unique artefacts that were created with pen and ink in a distant past. In this second episode, she discusses the structure of the medieval page. In modern printed books, chapters begin on a new page and paragraphs are usually indented. Not so in the layout of a medieval codex, where text is structured by colour and decoration, not by space. Painted or decorated initials sometimes in combination with a fullpage miniature mark the beginning of a new text section (SCA 1). A scribe can even write texts in different colours when presenting concurrent narratives spread over two pages (SCA 14). Explore these manuscripts (held by Leiden University Libraries) yourself: SCA 1: SCA 14: This video is created for The Art of Reading in the Middle Ages project