Book section : Chapter
Matthew Paris’ manuscripts: working books and artefacts in medieval and early modern collections
- Abstract:
- This chapter traces the material lives of the manuscripts written, annotated, and illustrated by Matthew Paris, following them from their creation as working books at St Albans Abbey through successive regimes of use, collecting, and conservation from the later Middle Ages to the present. Unlike most medieval authors, Matthew survives in an unusually large corpus of autograph and semi-autograph manuscripts, which together form not merely witnesses to texts but a coherent archive of authorial practice, revealing modes of historical, hagiographical, and scientific writing that were at once personal and collaborative, structurally fluid, and responsive to audience, patronage, and circumstance. By reconstructing the codicological histories of these books, the chapter shows how they functioned as mutable artefacts within a living monastic library, subject to rearrangement, expansion, lending, and display, before examining the rupture caused by the dissolution of the monasteries, when Matthew’s manuscripts were dispersed into royal and private collections and reinterpreted through early modern antiquarian, confessional, and aesthetic priorities. The interventions of collectors such as Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton—through rebinding, recombination, supplementation, and physical alteration—profoundly reshaped the form in which Matthew Paris has been transmitted and read. The chapter concludes by considering the emergence of modern conservation practices and reproductive technologies, from eighteenth-century restoration after fire to photography, microfilm, and digitization, arguing throughout that Matthew Paris’s reception has been shaped by the survival, handling, and presentation of his manuscripts, which have continually mediated between function and artefact for medieval, early modern, and modern readers.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 248.0KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1017/9781108562355.017
Authors
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Host title:
- The Cambridge Companion to Matthew Paris
- Pages:
- 335-367
- Chapter number:
- 16
- Series:
- Cambridge Companions to History
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
- Publication date:
- 2026-01-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-01-12
- Edition:
- 1
- DOI:
- EISBN:
- 9781108562355
- ISBN:
- 9781108473491
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Subtype:
-
Chapter
- Pubs id:
-
1319800
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1319800
- Deposit date:
-
2023-01-12
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- James G Clark
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © James G. Clark 2026. This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
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