Medieval Manuscripts at Keio University

[The Patou Bible at the Free Library, Philadelphia, about which I blogged a week ago, turns out to be more complex and interesting than I had anticipated, so the next posts will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, readers may be interested to learn of a new publication.]

Thanks to Richard Linenthal I recently became aware of an exhibition of manuscripts belonging to Keio University, and thanks to the kindness of Takami Matsuda, I have a copy of the catalogue. A detail of the front cover, showing the English title, is above.


It comprises a catalogue of more than 100 items, each with at least one colour image, and often two (sometimes recto and verso, or full-page plus detail). Here, for example, is the leaf written by Bartolomeo Sanvito, which I blogged about here:

[As always, click images to enlarge]

Here is a leaf from the Goodspeed Bible that I did not know about when I wrote this blogpost:

And here is a Bible leaf that will appear in the forthcoming volume of the McCarthy collection, covering French items:

At the end of the volume is a full checklist of about 250 manuscripts, leaves, cuttings, and fragments (only documents in the Diplomatics collection are excluded); here is a sample page:

The catalogue can only be obtained by contacting Keio, but at 1000 Yen (less than £8 / €9 / $10), plus postage, it is very good value for money. To order a copy, you can go to http://www.mita.lib.keio.ac.jp/guide/publication/pub_index.html#rare where you will see this:

and a link to the Publications Order Form page (in Japanese and English).

With Google Translate, the title "The Ultimate Materiality" becomes "The ultimate texture":

Edit 15 Oct. 2019:
See the second Comment below for further contact details.