The Bible, Church Fathers and their Mediaeval Readership: The Evidence of Paratexts

Van Elverdinghe, Emmanuel [UCL]

Ordinary users of manuscript books in the Middle Ages did not merely read or copy texts, they also reacted to them. While the reception history of biblical and patristic literature among Mediaeval authors and scholars has already attracted much attention, a broader and more “popular” audience, made up of copyists, sponsors, readers, etc. of manuscripts, has been largely overlooked. All kinds of adventitious textual material included in the manuscript may bear witness to this other kind of reception, namely poems, annotations, marginalia, front matter, and colophons. Through quotations, allusions, or similarities, the authors of such texts betray their specific interests in scriptural and patristic literature, as well as their way of interpreting it. This session will focus on the Greek, Latin, Armenian and Georgian evidence to outline the current state of the art in this field, discuss the relevance of such material, and identify paths for future research.