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Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
@SJLahey
Andrews Fellow in #BookScience @OldBooksNewSci @UofT· olim: @theUL+@GirtonCollege· @UofTCMS @UVic @LUCAS_Leiden @uOttawa @SMUHalifax· #Quant #Manuscripts 🇨🇦
Toronto, Ontario
hcommons.org/members/SJLahey
Joined July 2011
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Aug 7, 2024
    Replying to @SJLahey
    From 01 September, I return to @UofT’s @OldBooksNewScience Lab as the Mark Andrews Fellow in Book Science. Watch this space! 📚📜🔬📊 #BookScience #MedievalManuscripts #MedievalTwitter
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Aug 12, 2023
    Replying to @SJLahey
    From 02 Oct, I will be Cambridge University Library’s @theUL @theULSpecColl Oschinsky Research Associate and Fellow of Girton College @GirtonCollege … #MedievalTwitter #MedievalManuscripts #Manuscripts x.com/sjlahey/status…
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    May 19, 2024
    Replying to @GianmarcoSoresi
    Some people find a light snack before bed can help them drift off. I recommend eating the doctor. Slowly.
    27K
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Nov 8, 2023
    Pay attention! This is the important bit—right here. #MedievalManuscripts #Manuscripts #Monks #TinyMonk
    Detail of a leaf in a medieval manuscript: folio 143 verso in Cambridge, University Library, manuscript Additional 3097. The image focusses on the fore-edge of the parchment leaf. At the right of the image run 9 lines of Latin script copied in dark brown ink; only the first 3 or 4 words of each line are shown. The fourth of these lines opens with a paragraph mark rendered in faded red ink that has begun to crackle. At the left of the image stretches a generous margin. This margin is empty—but for a pen-and-ink sketch of a tiny, tonsured, rosy-cheeked monk. A mere 4 text lines high, he points with a shockingly elongated finger—a digit half the length of his body!—directly at the red paragraph mark, urging us to attend to this specific passage above all others.
    28K
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Mar 9, 2021
    Delighted to announce that I’ve been awarded a @SSHRC_CRSH #Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue my research on medieval #parchment under the auspices of @UofT’s @OldBooksNewSci with @AlexGillespie. #MedievalTwitter #Manuscripts
    A medieval manuscript leaf. 28 lines of Latin script in brown ink. In the middle of the top margin, a symbol has been added in brilliant scarlet ink. The upper left corner of the leaf bears a curved gap or hole; a similar gap mars the bottom edge of the leaf. The parchment surrounding the upper gap is stiff, darkened, and marked with striations. (These are effects of gelatinization of the parchment, a common feature of the edge of the treated hide.) Starting at the lower edge of this upper gap, a long, curved tear in the parchment snakes across the page, bisecting the text. It has been sewn up roughly with fine twine. the 2 edges of the cut almost match up—but not quite, so some words are hard to decipher. Peeking out from behind the leaf are the edges of the medieval wooden binding. Source: folio 7 verso in University of Toronto, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, manuscript 5321.
    The lower half of a leaf in a medieval manuscript. 16 lines of Latin script in dark brown ink with paragrah symbols added in plain red or plain blue. The shape of the leaf is distorted with a strangely drawn out fore-edge corner. the parchment at this corner is stiff and darkened, and peppered with tiny grain patterning, reflecting the texture of the skin from which the parchment was made. Along the lower edge of the leaf is a dense patch of fairly long, white fur: the parchment was inadequately scraped, so some of the animal’s coat lingers. Source: folio 12 reto in Bodleian Library, manuscript e Mus. 234.
    Lower right corner of a leaf in a medieval manuscript. 12 lines of Anglo-Norman French in brown ink. In the outer margin, a Roman numeral 15 has been added beside a blue paragraph symbol; together they mark a section of the text. The lower corner of the leaf has a large, rounded hole which causes the side of the leaf to curl up slightly. The parchment around this hole is translucent and very rough. The leaf behind this leaf, visible through the hole, is discoloured and sprinkled with hair follicles. Source: folio 30 recto in British Library, Harley manuscript 3817.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Apr 6, 2022
    Something a bit different today: an example of the remarkable output of the 14th century cartographer–priest Opicinus de Canistris. #manuscripts #diagrams #mysticism
    Medieval manuscript leaf: almost a full hide of parchment, 1.5 times as tall as wide, trimmed to square along the bottom and sides. The top, left untrimmed, forms a triangle with squared vertex and scooped hollows along its 2 edges. This leaf—folio 24 recto in Vatican Library, Pal.Lat. 1993—bears densely packed notes and diagrams, mostly in black and red ink, in many vertical columns. The centre column holds 6 diagrams made of concentric rings, some enclosing symbols, others radiating complex networks of straight lines. The topmost set of rings bears a human face; human feet poke out of the lowest set. 2 arms extend from the column to form a human figure. It is flanked by large drawings of zodiac symbols—bull, lion, and so on—filled-in with green, orange, brown ink. They loop the human: down along 1 arm; up the other. Bordering all this are cramped columns of notes. Above & below, further notes and sketches fill the space at wild angles. The effect is 1 of strange yet harmonious chaos.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Aug 6, 2024
    This is one of the Secret Facts that we medievalists conceal from the public.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Aug 9, 2020
    The Mother of all ‘I’s? #Manuscripts
    Photo of a leaf in a medieval manuscript: folio 8 recto in Yale, Beinecke, MS 589. Two columns of Latin text—the first with 32 lines, the second with 40 lines—both in black ink with touches of red. Nearly half the width, and the entire length, of column two is taken up by a massively-enlarged majuscule ‘I’ (for “IN principio”) rendered as a long blue rectangle decorated with white highlights, plus a dense mass of intricate red pen-work both within and without the initial. At the top of the page is an enlarged header in alternating red and blue majuscules.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Jan 14, 2022
    My Little Pony, Medieval Edition. #manuscripts #pink #equestrian #MLP
    Detail from the bottom edge of an ornamental border in a medieval manuscript. At top, a decorative bar in gold, blue, and burgundy separates the main border from the text. Below it swirl leafy green vines dotted with ivy leaves in shining gold, plus simple 4-petalled flowers in red, blue, and purple. Amidst the foliage, a red-cheeked soldier rides a pony, his feet nearly brushing the ground. He is clad in a blue jacket over green hose, and a golden hood with short cape. Topping all is a golden helmet with cheek-guards; the helmet follows the curve of his head, culminating in a point. The soldier glances warily to our left, back over his shoulder, as if watching for pursuers. His lively pony, prancing from left to right, is uniformly bright bubblegum pink from ear-tip to tail-tip. It is kitted out with bridle, reins, and saddle in a slightly darker shade of pink. Source: folio 64 verso in J. Paul Getty Museum, manuscript Ludwig IX 5.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Mar 4, 2022
    Pleased to announce that my PhD dissertation, hdl.handle.net/1828/13412, has been awarded @UVic’s Gold Medal for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in the Humanities. Thank you @UVicEnglish, @UVicHumanities, @UVicResearch. #BookHistory #QuantitativeCodicology #manuscripts #parchment
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Apr 7, 2022
    Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s (c.970–1016) ‘Diagram of the Physical & Physiological Fours’, maps out the cosmos’ underlying 4-fold unity, linking macrocosm with microcosm, the human with the universe. #manuscripts #diagrams
    Medieval manuscript diagram, pen-drawn in red ink with black ink labels in Latin, and some elements coloured in with green, blue, or red ink. It is 1.5 times tall as wide, and consists of several embedded layers. 1st, a capsule formed of 3 concentric rectangles with rounded corners, 1 is labelled with zodiac signs; the others with Roman numerals and names of months. Within the capsule sit 3 concentric diamond shapes or lozenges. The 1st lozenge’s perimeter is interrupted by 8 circles: 1 at each angle, linking it to the outer capsule, and 1 along each edge. These lozenges and circles are labelled with 4-fold divisions: the elements (earth, air, fire, water), the seasons, compass points, stages of life (childhood, adolescence, youth, old age), and so on. Every line of the diagram bears further labels, and brown ink annotations surround the whole. At the diagram’s very centre sits a red circular sigil. Source: folio 7 verso of Oxford, St John’s College, manuscript 17.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Jun 24, 2024
    Replying to @SweShaggy @Zenoxx69 and 4 others
    Same in Canada.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Jul 14, 2022
    Dear medieval dudes, if you could’ve refrained from drawing genitalia in the statute books, that would’ve been great. #Manuscripts #LegalHistory #Graffiti #PlusÇaChange 😑
    The upper fore-edge of a parchment leaf in a medieval manuscript: folio 53 recto in Bodleian Library, manuscript Rawlinson C.668b. Photographed on an angle, the image shows the ends of 19 lines of Latin text, neatly copied in dark brown ink. A single-word running head—copied in the same ink, but ornamented with a blue paragraph symbol—floats in the middle of the upper margin. Faint lines running the length of the page, plus a series of tiny pin-pricks along the leaf’s fore-edge helped our scribe to copy the text in straight lines. Amidst the fruit of all this careful labour, in the broad, pale, originally pristine margins, some unknown person has used a pointed implement to scratch graffiti into the parchment: two penises, each with attached testicles.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Jul 23, 2020
    Keep forgetting certain scribal #abbreviations? Take heart—our medieval forebears also struggled with them (Germany?, 13th / 14th century). #Manuscripts #learning #education #memory #palaeography
    Photo of a leaf from a medieval manuscript: folio 3 verso in Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek Fulda, MS 100 C 4. Two columns of text, each of roughly 35 lines, copied messily in black ink. Each column is further divided into two columns, the leftmost listing Latin abbreviations; the rightmost providing the expanded word. The two main columns are separated from one another by a red line running the length of the page. The list is arranged alphabetically—items on this page cover abbreviations starting with F, G, H, and I or J—and the same red is used to add the initial letter for each alphabetical section.
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    Stephanie J. Lahey, PhD 🇨🇦
    @SJLahey
    Apr 8, 2022
    Schematic representation of the cosmos? Apotropaic amulet? 🤔 Nope. This circular diagram is the #autobiography of Opicinus de Canistris (1296–c.1353) laid out in 40 concentric rings, one for each year of his life. #manuscripts #diagrams #DataViz #DataVisualization
    Medieval manuscript leaf: folio 11 recto in Vatican Library, Pal. lat. 1993. Almost a full hide of parchment, over 1.5 times as tall as wide, trimmed to square at bottom and sides. The top, left untrimmed, slopes upwards irregularly to a tiny tab. This leaf bears a pen-&-ink diagram in brown ink with highlights in a fulgent vermilion, still vivid after nearly 8 centuries. It consists of 40 concentric circles, compass-drawn in brown, each representing a year. At very centre of them sits a sketch of the Virgin Mary with infant Jesus on her lap; depicted head-on, they gaze at us sternly. From Jesus, 12 straight red lines radiate outwards to the diagram’s perimeter; they divide the 40 circles into months. Every circle is annotated with the year in red ink, plus notes about the scribe’s life in brown. Extending from the outer circle are pen-drawn figures including symbols of the Evangelists—an angel for Matthew, lion for Mark, eagle for Luke, ox for John. Added notes surround the whole.