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Hebrew manuscripts are considered to be invaluable documents and artefacts of Jewish culture and history. Research on Hebrew manuscript culture is progressing rapidly and therefore its topics, methods and questions need to be enunciated and reflected upon. The case studies assembled in this volume explore various fields of research on Hebrew manuscripts. They show paradigmatically the current developments concerning codicology and palaeography, book forms like the scroll and codex, scribes and their writing material, patrons, collectors and censors, manuscript and book collections, illuminations and fragments, and, last but not least, new methods of material analysis applied to manuscripts. The principal focus of this volume is the material and intellectual history of Hebrew book cultures from antiquity to the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, its intention being to heighten and sharpen the reader’s understanding of Jewish social and cultural history in general.
This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’.
This work represents an important contribution to the history of medieval books, providing full scholarly description and discussion of an otherwise very little known category of written artefact in quasi-book form, but one that the 60-odd identified examples suggest was relatively common. This volume will be of interest not only to medieval book-historians and codicologists but also to historians of medieval science and of the liturgy, and of medieval written culture and cultural practice more broadly. Although a large proportion of the volume takes the form of a catalogue, the information and explanatory material presented in the introduction to the catalogue as a whole and to each of the sections into which the catalogue is divided give the volume the coherence and value of a historical and codicological survey of this form of artefact, the kind of texts they contained, and how and by whom they were made and used. The way in which the catalogue is structured in chronological and thematic sections, each with their own introduction, also contributes to enhance this aspect of the volume.