Lunch with the Libraries & Museums | Illuminations: Exploring Johns Hopkins' Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Collections

Description

Earle Havens, director of the Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance, and J.J. Haddad, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins, have begun a deep dive into the university's collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts as part of a larger project to more fully catalog and digitize all pre-1600 manuscripts in the Sheridan Libraries. Together, they will tell the story of how the university's collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts developed over time and share some of their greatest favorites. They will explore world-class illuminated books, sacred and secular, as well as humbler scribal fragments and many points in between. Highlights will include some stunning books of hours (including one stolen long ago from the Peabody Library), an ancient Jewish text scribally reproduced at a scriptorium in Renaissance Florence and owned by a pope, a forged medieval charter, and one of the earliest known examples of arguably the first "textbook" in Western history.

Join this virtual event through the Hopkins at Home livestream.