They were taught calligraphic techniques similar to those used by medieval illuminators and embellished their creations with real gold leaf like the illuminations in some of the manuscripts! As interest in the manuscript project deepened, local artist Debbie Thompson Wilson held an illuminations workshop at the library where students learned to make their own illuminated letters. Some students later appeared in that segment on the evening news, discussing the importance of the project and delivering mini history lessons on their chosen texts. The widespread fascination with the manuscripts was in full evidence when a crew from CTV News visited the archives to produce a special report on the exhibit and its student curators. Physically connecting with an item from the past heightened visitors' understanding of how these objects existed in their historical context: dark marks on the margins indicated where a finger had repeatedly touched to turn a page, and notes scrawled in the back of a book showed someone practicing their Latin or penmanship. Visitors were encouraged to touch and turn the pages of the manuscripts, a priceless interaction that few had anticipated. For many in attendance, the unveiling provided their first opportunity to see and touch an object that had somehow survived intact for upwards of five hundred years. A lively full house of students, professors, and members of the public gathered to take in the spectacle, reflecting the broad communal appeal of these rare items. Once the texts were delivered to the library, students got a sneak peek at the subjects of their research before a formal unveiling was held to publicly display the new arrivals. Grouping the manuscripts into specific categories lent structure to the exhibit and gave curators the space to thoroughly convey the historical significance of each item. We created five subthemes: education, prayer, community, property, and the supernatural. Finally, we settled on daily life in the Middle Ages and set out to discover how the medieval experience was shaped by the societal institutions that the manuscripts represented. The texts reflected several different areas of historical interest, including religion, administration, and education, so we needed a theme that was relevant to all the texts but narrow enough to facilitate a coherent exhibit. Between biweekly class meetings, students delved deep into the historical environment of their chosen text.Īs the provenance of each item came into focus, a unifying theme for the exhibit also became clear. None of the curators, however, could be accused of any thumb twiddling while we waited before the manuscripts and books arrived, each graduate student involved in the project selected one text to curate for the exhibit. The start of the Fall semester commenced an anxious period of waiting for the manuscripts to be delivered to the climate-controlled embrace of the University archives. This exhibit, in its physical, digital, and catalogue(atrium link?) formats, would not have been possible without the generous support of Les Enluminures. The University was chosen from a competition to participate in Les Enluminures' Manuscripts in the Curriculum II program, which provides students with access to a diverse range of rare historical texts, an opportunity typically reserved for professional researchers and collectors. Three of the exhibited items are part of the library's own collections, but nine of the texts were loaned to the University of Guelph by Les Enluminures, an international rare book and manuscript dealer. The manuscripts' historical contexts and the physical evidence left on the objects themselves allow us to access the historical worlds that medieval individuals and communities inhabited. The project explores how medieval texts communicate information about the daily lived experiences of the people who owned and interacted with them. Dr Susannah Ferreira, professor in the Department of History, and Melissa McAfee, Special Collections Librarian, offered their expertise and leadership to guide students through the research and curation processes. Illuminating Life: Manuscript Pages of the Middle Ages is an exhibit of twelve medieval manuscripts and printed books curated by graduate and undergraduate History students at the University of Guelph. Explore our most recent experiential learning project and get a feel for the dynamic work of creating an exhibit.
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