{"id":368,"date":"2012-08-23T08:44:53","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T08:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labs.stefanschleifer.com\/codex\/?p=368"},"modified":"2013-04-12T23:25:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T23:25:20","slug":"the-geraardsbergen-manuscript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/?p=368","title":{"rendered":"The Geraardsbergen Manuscript"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Geraardsbergen Manuscript<\/em> is a simple codex <\/a>from the fifteenth century, which contains a collection of almost 90 texts <\/a>from a wide range of genres. The scribe who copied these texts into the codex must have had considerable experience in writing books,\u00a0but he did not taken great pains to produce this particular manuscript. He hardly used any rubrication and he arranged his collection in an disorderly, sloppy way, with many blank spaces in between the texts.\u00a0All this gives the book a very \u2018personal\u2019 look, which makes it not unlikely that the\u00a0scribe was also the first owner and that he made the manuscript for his own use.<\/p>\n

The codex has been named the \u2018Geraardsbergen Manuscript\u2019<\/em> by modern scholars, because in its contents there are clear pointers to the Flemish town Geraardsbergen <\/a>(Grammont), situated south-west of Brussels. These pointers are a famous inn in that town (‘Inden vranxschen scilt’ –\u00a0‘In the French Shield’) and two men:\u00a0Perceval vanden Noquerstocque<\/a>, who was a priest in Geraardsbergen and member of a patrician family there, and Pieteren\u00a0den Brant<\/a>, who is often found in archival records as an organizer of cultural events.<\/p>\n

The Geraardsbergen Manuscript<\/em>\u00a0is not only\u00a0interesting because of its diverse contents, but it also\u00a0gives us an idea about the cultural life in a medium-sized town in Flanders in the second half of the fifteenth century. This cultural life turns out to have more aspects than one would expect from general overviews in literary histories. The manuscript contains many different types of texts, for instance riddles<\/a>; captions <\/a>in Latin, French or Dutch to be written next to paintings, statues, mirrors or even the door of a toilet; itineraries<\/a>; religious texts on the right way to say confession or the manner in which one can help a dying person to pass away in peace. One of these texts was meant to be posted <\/a>on the church wall, others were clearly meant for private use. And then we have some narrative verse texts<\/a>; a letter <\/a>in verse; even a sermon<\/a>; popularized scientific information; calendars; and a world history in \u2018Reader\u2019s Digest\u2019 format. Going through the manuscript’s contents\u00a0gives us an insight into the remarkable diversity of medieval culture.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, this diversity makes it difficult to determine the status of this manuscript. Modern scholars have proposed very different hypotheses about the use of the collection and the identity or the social status of the original producer\/owner of the manuscript.\u00a0Every codex tells a story? Well, this one tells at least five<\/a>!<\/p>\n

See also:<\/p>\n