An intimate exhibit at Lewis & Clark College brings medieval manuscripts into the context of community * Oregon ArtsWatch

"A book of hours, printed with movable type in 1517, features later additions, like heavily gilded color illustrations, to make it look like a (more valuable) handwritten manuscript. The printers even drew faint fake guidelines around the type to mimic the lines that aided calligraphers. An oversized "gradual," a book of choral chants, is big enough at 19-by-14 inches that several monks or other choristers could sing from it at once. It, too, dates from the mid-1400s."

"A whimsical horse sketched onto a vellum page in a notary's book from the mid-15th century notates a passage about grazing rights. You could call it a medieval Post-It. A long legal scroll, also on vellum, discusses the 1499-1500 case of a woman whose will, giving her estate to her daughters, was opposed by her husband. The husband's suit failed."

More than 30 medieval manuscripts from the 13th through the 16th centuries are on exhibit at Lewis & Clark College's Watzek Library titled Shaping the Soul: Books in Medieval Life. The collection includes vellum notary books with whimsical marginalia, a long legal scroll about a contested 1499–1500 will, a 1517 printed book of hours later embellished to resemble a manuscript, and an oversized gradual for communal singing. Vellum durability preserved repeated use, with smudges and worn passages indicating devotional and communal reading. Portable books like books of hours and pocket Bibles facilitated daily private devotion and travel.

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