SECULAR MANUSCRIPTS

Although many medieval manuscripts were made for religious practice or the study of theology, by the thirteenth century several secular traditions were well established. A major impetus for this development was the founding of some of Europe’s first universities, creating a population of students who needed books on many different subjects. Shifts in the economy nurtured the rise of cities as well as of a larger, more literate middle class. Although public libraries as we know them today did not yet exist, monasteries and universities often allowed open access to their libraries. Those who could read enjoyed poetry, copies of ancient Greek and Roman literature, historical fiction (including tales of exotic travels and legendary histories of ancient Rome and Troy), and adventure stories of knights and royalty. Examples of yet other types of secular manuscripts, such as medical texts (such as the fifteenth century Herbal and the Tacuinum Sanitatis), and the Canterbury Tales, written by Chaucer in the 14th century), are exhibited here. Also displayed is a facsimile page from De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, a book on falconry written and beautifully illustrated at the court of Naples in about 1260.
Legal treatises, texts, and case books were also in demand. Medieval law consisted of Canon (or Church) law and Civil law. The earliest and most active center of legal training and law practice was Bologna, Italy, where the university specialized in law from its beginnings in the 1100s. However, texts recording court proceedings and cases for law scholars to study were made in many places throughout Europe.
Early illuminated law texts had little visual or structural tradition from which to draw. Many relied on images in Bibles for models; others were modeled on sixth-century compilations of laws made in Constantinople for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. These were usually illustrations of ordinary court scenes rather than visualizations of the abstract concepts of the legal text. By the thirteenth century the layout and images of civil law manuscripts had developed a highly specific form of articulation, which we see here in the photograph and in the Contemporary Legal Manuscript Page.