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The Book

The Late Medieval Miscellany MSS 01020 is a very small book, even smaller than a smartphone. It measures only about 110 x 180 mm and can be held in one hand. As small as it is, however, it still contains 156 leaves (each leaf includes front and back, so 1r means the front of the first leaf and 1v means the back of the same page).1

Binding

The manuscript is now bound in brown leather (its original binding has not survived), with blind tooled decorations. Though somewhat worn away, the geometric designs of half circles and dots are still visible. The leather is stretched over pasteboard.2 This binding is damaged: the clasp is broken (its bronze attachment point is still visible halfway down the right side of the cover; on the back of the manuscript, the larger catchplate is still attached) and the front cover has come unattached altogether.

Script

The text of the book is written mostly in brown ink, in Latin. The same gothic cursive script is used throughout the manuscript, however at least three distinct handwritings can be seen. The first hand is smaller and neater; it almost never leaves the margin lines. The second hand is larger and looser; it is more likely to go outside the margins, as if that scribe was not as skilled at estimating how much space would be needed for a word. The last hand is written in black ink and is only present on a single leaf; it appears to have been added sometime later, perhaps by an owner rather than a scribe; this hand uses more abbreviations than the others. In the last third of the manuscript, there is a transition away from the second hand, it may be the first hand again, or it may be a separate fourth hand.3

  1. “Late Medieval Miscellany,” University of Toronto Libraries,  https://fishercollections.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/fisher2%3AF10129.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.
The Book