Speaking with Matt Lewis of the “ Gone Medieval” podcast, Wellesley explains that the word manuscript (derived from the Latin manus, or hand, and scribere, to write) simply refers to a handwritten object, whether it be a charter, a map or a copy of a poem. The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval ManuscriptsĪ breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII Buy As Boyd Tonkin notes in the Arts Desk’s review of the book, “Manufacture of lavish manuscripts could take almost as long as building the abbeys and cathedrals that housed them.” Out now from Basic Books, The Gilded Page resurfaces the stories of Hugeburc and countless individuals like her, tracing the intricate process of translating text into beautifully illuminated manuscripts while celebrating the unheralded achievements of their creators-particularly women. “When manuscripts were copied and recopied, there was no guarantee that an author’s name would survive the process, especially if that name was a female name.” “I like to think she stitched this code into the space between the texts because she had some inkling of the way authors’ names were often lost in manuscript transmission,” Wellesley adds. Manuscript featuring hidden code identifying the text's author as Saxon nun Hugeburc Penned at a time when “many different hands”-most of them anonymous-contributed to the creation of each individual manuscript, Hugeburc’s words are “something of an exception,” writes historian Mary Wellesley in her new book, The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts. Decoded by scholar Bernhard Bischoff in 1931, the hidden message reads, “I, a Saxon nun named Hugeburc, composed this.” At first glance, the writer of an eighth-century biography of Saints Willibald and Winnebald offers few clues regarding her identity, describing herself only as an “unworthy Saxon woman.” Upon closer inspection, however, a seemingly meaningless series of lines inserted between two blocks of text reveals a decisive declaration of authorship.
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