Manuscrits datés des bibliothèques de France, II

In the introduction to the first French volume of the Catalogue des manuscrits datés, published in 1959, Robert Marichal gave a superb account of the study of dated manuscripts and took on the challenge posed by Marc Bloch: ‘In 1200 there must have been plenty of scribes in their sixties who wrote as they had been taught around 1150’. The progress of the catalogues of dated and datable manuscripts has been steady, and they have proved an essential tool for those working on later medieval manuscripts. In this volume, Dominique Stutzmann writes a preface explaining the necessity for the continuation of such catalogues in the age of digital palaeography, and Denis Muzerelle, assisted by Genevieve Grand, Olivier Legendre, Monique Peyrafort and Guy Lanoë, as well as by Stutzmann, discusses the manuscripts of the Laon cathedral library and the biographies of their donors, and the books of the local monasteries including the Cistercians of Vauclair and the Premonstratensians of Cuissy (there are collections of statutes for both orders). The volume also includes manuscripts in the library of St Quentin and Soissons. It is essential for all students of French liturgical manuscripts, and there is a detailed illustrated study of the bindings of the Vauclair books

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