Exhibition Announcement: Medieval Manuscripts and Books: Dismembered and Dispersed
Medieval Manuscripts and Books: Dismembered and Dispersed
An Exhibit on Fragments and Leaves
Special Collections and University Archives
February-May 2024
This exhibit is about the dismantling of bound volumes created in the medieval period for the purpose of financial gain. It is also about the ethics of that practice, and the aiding and abetting by libraries and private collectors in their acquisition through purchase.
Without question, if there were no demand from libraries and private collectors, there would be a lesser market for single leaves. The core issues have always been the financial gain for the seller and the financial capacity of institutional buyers. Except for large research universities, few institutions have financial means to purchase complete medieval period works. University of Oregon (UO) Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) was fortunate to acquire a large collection of complete works from Edward Sandford Burgess through donation in the 1930s. In addition to that core collection, some fifty leaves and over a dozen portfolios and leaf books were purchased from various rare book dealers. Today, purchasing complete illuminated medieval manuscripts is out of reach for the UO Library, who can only afford single leaves due to the rampant rise in pricing of complete works driven by wealthy private collectors.
While fragments are found in many leaf books, as can be seen in this exhibit, the most notorious of such endeavors was perpetrated by Professor Otto F. Ege. In Cutting Up Manuscripts for Pleasure and Profit, Christopher de Hamel characterized Ege as a villain, who “probably destroyed more medieval manuscripts than any single person,” (de Hamel, 1998). The destruction to which de Hamel refers took the form of dismembering bound manuscripts (and printed works) for the purpose of selling individual leaves or creating portfolios covering a genre or time-period, like the Bible leaves displayed in this exhibition.
In addition to assembling groups of leaves into portfolios using various manuscripts and printed books he owned, Ege wrote the commentary accompanying the leaves, and stressed their educational value and the equally important experience of seeing and handling the original artifact. In several publications and interviews, he bragged about being a biblioclast. Some of the leaves and portfolios were sold in collaboration with the New York bookseller, Philip C. Duschnes, who marketed their sale pitching this moral high ground.
Ege created a new standard of behavior and acceptance in his wake. Afterwards many dealers were more aggressive in their dismemberment of bound medieval manuscripts and incunabula. In the exhibit cases located in the SCUA Reading Room, you will see examples of portfolios created by rare book dealers, like Foliophiles and Dawson Books, as well as examples from bibliophilic societies, like the Book Club of California and the Caxton Club, who produced for its members limited edition leaf books using dismembered pages from the rarest and earliest printed titles.
Many of Ege’s leaves and portfolios have since been dispersed, frustrating scholars who wish to understand the content and context of the original volumes. Due to the widespread dispersal of leaves from complete codices, the challenge for scholars has expanded far beyond Ege’s exploits. Hope resides in the potential for reassembling these codices using digital copies of the leaves to reproduce a complete volume and made accessible at a single online location.
Exhibit Overview
SCUA Hallway: Selections from Oto Ege’s Portfolio of Early Bible Leaves
SCUA Reading Room Exhibit Cases:
Introduction to the Ethics of Book Breaking and Digital Reconstruction
Examples of Licit breaking and reuse in the Medieval period: paste downs, bindings, palimpsests, etc.
Selections from four Portfolios by Foliophiles
Selections from the Book Club of California Leaf Books
Book of Hours, the Most Broken Genre
Selections of Leaves and Fragments from Breviaries, Missals, Antiphonals, etc.
Selections from Dawson Book Shop Leaf Books
Selections from Caxton Club and Pirages Leaf Books
Works Cited
De Hamel, Christopher. 1998. Cutting up Manuscripts for Pleasure and Profit. Charlottesville, VA: Book Arts Press.
— David de Lorenzo, Giustina Director
