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This article argues for a conceptual distinction between the practices and ideologies of institutional learning on the one hand (whose natural vehicle was Latin, the language of formal education) and those of a vernacular written culture that both challenges and models itself on the former. The garden, used as a figure for the ideal library by Richard de Fournival in the thirteenth century, creates order through the institutionalization of knowledge and the exclusion of undesirable elements. By contrast, the forest is deployed by medieval and modern thinkers to embody a wild, unsorted chaos apparently inimical to learning. And yet the forest in medieval literature functions as a margin always in contact with civilization, whose illicit danger is matched by its attractiveness as a space for unplanned encounters and reconfigurations of hierarchy and authority. As I demonstrate, an analogous concern with the potential for book collections to lead readers to unexpected discoveries is a recurrent theme of vernacular authors from Benoît de Sainte-Maure to Chaucer. This conceptual approach to the function and cultural value of medieval libraries offers a supplementary perspective to more traditional 'book archaeology', one which may be especially fruitful for making sense of the often fragmentary and vague records of private ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular in French royal and ducal libraries, the Ovide moralisé is the first full-length French translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses; it introduces pseudo-historical explanations and Christian moralizations. Fusing references to and tales from diverse medieval and classical sources, the Ovide moralisé is a microcosm of the late medieval library, offering a digest of myth and doctrine, and manifesting a reading practice aware of its reliance on, and reassessment of, previous instances of authority. With reference to Foucault's evocation of the bibliothèque fantastique, this article focuses on two auctores cited by the Ovide moralisé: Ovid and an author referred to as 'Crestien'. Evidence from Ovide moralisé manuscripts belonging to the libraries of King Philippe VI, his wife, Jeanne de Bourgogne, and their three bibliophile grandsons - King Charles V; Jean, duc de Berry; and Philippe le Hardi, duc de Bourgogne - suggests that the name Crestien, today evocative of Chrétien de Troyes, would likely connote the author of a twelfth-century translation and adaptation of the Metamorphoses' Philomela episode, which is interpolated into the Ovide moralisé. Focusing on encounters between these authors reveals the medieval library as a space of fantasy in which texts gloss, summon, adapt, and re-imagine one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medieval dioceses of Transylvania, Oradea, and Cenad were the easternmost ramparts of Western culture. Cathedrals, Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys, Franciscan and Dominican convents, parish churches, and urban communities owned books and libraries in the Middle Ages. Most of these were lost to fires and plunders. The Tartars' invasion in 1241 and the Reformation were also major occasions for book destruction. Starting from surviving book lists and manuscripts preserved in Romania and abroad, the present article attempts to reconstruct the landscape of literacy in medieval Transylvania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution demonstrates the methodological impact of the studies in book history by Jos Hermans, reflecting the book market in the Hanseatic city of Greifswald in the late medieval period. Referring to the contemporary libraries in the communities of the black and grey friars and in the parish church of St Mary's, surviving codices, archival sources, book binding and provenance history are evaluated. The intention of this study is to exemplify the characteristics of the book trade and library organisation during the incunabula period in a town totally dependent on book import in the absence of printing shops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the early history of monastic libraries in Christian history. The author begins with the practice of manuscript copying during the Middle Ages then moves backwards in history to the origins of monasticism in the Egyptian desert during the 4th century. The attitudes and practices of early monks are then explored, particularly as seen in the extant writings and teachings of the early monastic leader Saint Pachomius, regarding the value of books and reading as a tool to assist in prayer.