Mary & Jasmine graduated from the School of Language, Linguistics & Cultures last year with first class honours and have been a great help to the MMEMS project. They will continue volunteering with us & will work on transcribing more of the English MS we have already digitised. Indeed, Mary has already begun work on English MS 1310 – ‘On Urines’.

recipe for Drepe, and Mawmene

The above recipes are as follows;

(.xix.) Drepee. Take bla(u)nched alma(u)nd(es) grynd he(m) & temp(er) vp with gode broth take oyno(u)ns a grete q(ua)ntite. p(ar)boyle he(m) & fry he(m) & do þerto.
take smale bridd(es) p(ar)boile hem & do þ(er)to. & do þ(er)to pellydore & salt & a litul grece.

(.xx.) Mawmene. Take a potel of wyne creke. & ii. pou(n)nde of sug(ur). take and clarifye þe sug(ur) w(i)t(h) a q(ua)ntite of wyne & drawe it þorow a st(ra)yno(ur) i(n) to a pot of erthe.

As mentioned previously, here is a complete list of the 57 incunables we have digitised by the Centre for Heritage Imaging & Collection Care thanks to funding by Gale Publishing.  Amongst these incunables is a copy of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.  Part of the Spencer Collection, it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde on 25 March 1498.  Although our copy (JRL 15396) is imperfect, it is the only known surviving copy.

Page from Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur

For those Malory enthusiasts out there, please take a look at the Malory Project site.  The Malory Project is an electronic edition and commentary of Malory’s Morte Darthur (1469-70), with digital facsimiles of the Winchester Manuscript (British Library, Add. MS 59678) and John Rylands Copy of Caxton’s first edition.

1. The famous Mappemonde, a huge French map created in 1546.  The map, measuring 2.6 meters long, has been photographed in the past, using 5×4 equipment.  Our Phase One P65+ however, along with new techniques, will allow us to capture much more detail than the original transparencies.  Our JRUL Imaging Services team (Suzanne Fagan & Gwen Jones) will be working on this project.

2. ‘Gateway to the Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri’ funded by TIMA.  We will be digitising Arabic MS 42, a 16th century Koran.  The manuscript measures a whopping 84cm by 54cm.  Once described by Alphonse Mingana as “possibly the biggest Koran in the world”, all 470 leaves are highly decorated with gold leaf.  The manuscript will require us to build a special foam ‘cradle’ to support it throughout the process.  It also requires special moving and handling due to its size, and it has to be covered and held end up, as it will not fit in any of the buildings lifts laying flat!

French MS1 143v

Some people may have heard of the Rochefoucauld Grail, an illuminated medieval manuscript that was recently sold by Sotheby’s for over £2 million.

These three volumes auctioned by Sotheby’s were originally part of a set of four.  The fourth and final volume is itself split between the John Rylands (French MS. 1) and the Bodleian (Douce MS. 215).

All the images of French MS 1 can be found here.

• Luca Pulci, Cyriffo Calvaneo (13735)
• Marsilio Ficino, De Christiana religione (16751)
• Cristoforo Landino, Formulario di epistole (17427)
• Aesopus moralisatus (17645)
• Luca Pulci, Il Driadeo (18183)
• Domenico Cavalca, Frutti della lingua (9785.1)
• Domenico Cavalca, Specchio di Croce (9785.2)
• Angelo Poliziano, Silva cui titulus Manto (20797.1)
• Angelo Poliziano, Silva cui titulus Rusticus (20797.2)
• Angelo Poliziano, Silva cui titulus Ambra (20797.3)
• Angelo Poliziano, Silva cui titulus Nutricia (20797.4)
• Gerardus de Lisa, Mirabilia Romae (21324.1)
• Suetonius, De grammaticis et rhetoribus (21324.2)
• Sextus Aurelius Victor, De viris illustribus (21324.3)
• Soprascripti et introscripti di lettere (21324.4)
• Giovanni Boccaccio, Decamerone (18201)

CHICC are currently digitising another 57 incunables from our collection, the majority of which were printed in England.  Photography is nearly complete & so begins the painstaking job of cataloguing them all….  All incunabula will be freely available online in 2011.

If anyone has a particular interest in incunabula, it is worth having a look at the Cambridge Incunabula Project, which aims to create specialist records for all the incunables in the Library’s online catalogue, with special emphasis on copy-specific information such as anomalies, rubrication, decoration and illumination, annotations, binding, marks of ownership, and provenance.  The Project cataloguer is Dr. Laura Nuvoloni – have a look at her blog.