Illuminated Manuscripts from the High Middle Ages

The 12th century can be seen as the age of the Spaltleisteninitiale a type of scroll initial that emerged almost simultaneously across Latin Europe as the dominant form of book decoration, appearing in manuscripts from Portugal to Poland, and from Sweden to Italy. The surprising uniformity of the basic form its diverging letter shafts and scroll ornaments bound together with belt-like elements makes it a distinctive, super-regional feature of Romanesque, which could only have spread in this way by means of intensive, personal contacts. It testifies to an advanced book-culture based on exchange, transfer, and training. Such developments were enabled primarily by the monasteries, which following a period of reform and spiritual renewal experienced a sustained upswing in this period. Through the foundation of daughter houses, monasteries spread not only the Christian faith, but also a culture of study and learning on the basis of texts, copies of which as is widely known were supplied by in-house production, in some cases organized in a scriptorium. For works created in such contexts it is often far from sure when, where, and for whom they were made. Books at that time were intended not only to record information, but also to transport it and the original date and place of production were very rarely noted. Yet if the books contain basic decoration with at least ornamental initials they can be classified by art-historical methods, and set within their historical contexts as achievements of a particular region or products of specific historical- cultural realities. Such classifications require considerable research work not least because the remarkable uniformity of the scroll initials makes identification regional characteristics and tendencies difficult. The matter is further complicated by the seemingly diverse forms of collaboration between monasteries and convents in manuscript production, which was in no way restrained by institutional borders. Transfers are thus apparent not only from a founding house to its affiliations, or from one Benedictine abbey to another, but also between monasteries belonging to different orders. These circumstances inform the two main aims of the project. On one level, it makes grounded classifications for a clearly defined, representative collection of decorated manuscripts that of the University Library in Graz and thus creates fixed points for further attributions. On a second level, it seeks to use this work-group to investigate the networks of 12th-century book production. With its numerous, comparatively well-preserved medieval monastic libraries, Austria offers optimal conditions for such an enterprise, promising fundamental insights into medieval book production and thus into the material side of super-regional communication in Europe as a whole.