Medieval Multilingual Manuscripts: Case Studies from Ireland to Japan

Description

Manuscripts provide rich documentary evidence for understanding the history of cultural life across the breadth of Europe and Asia down through the Middle Ages. Many illustrate engagement between and across languages, in both similar and contrasting ways from east to west. The demarcation of manuscript studies into single-language academic disciplines has often obscured this reality, privileging one constituent part or contributing language from each manuscript rather than exploring the combination as a nuanced and complex whole. This volume seeks to examine manuscripts as integrally united artefacts, respecting the diversity of their constituent elements. Case studies are presented of twelve manuscripts with evidence for various levels of inter-language exchange and collision, from horizons as diverse as the Atlantic West, Carolingian Europe, the Byzantine world, the Silk Road cultures, and east Asia. The essays function individually as discrete contributions, but together they highlight a range of overlapping themes, illustrating language interaction in global religions, pedagogical exchange, and secular society-building.The analogies as well as the concrete points of connection between them underline the value of a cross-disciplinary approach. Contents Introduction Language Interaction and Education Contested Vernacular Readings, c. 800–830 CE: The Satō-bon Kegon mongi yōketsu and the Tōdaiji fujumonkō Latin Grammar Crossing Multilingual Zones: St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 904 Medieval Wales as a Linguistic Crossroads in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 153 A Sanskrit-Khotanese Colloquy: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Pelliot chinois 5538 Language Interaction and Religion The Bilingual Manuscript with the Irk Bitig: London, British Library, Or.8212/161 Fragments from the First Order of Fustat: Finds from the Cairo Geniza at Cambridge University Library The Manuscripts of the Irish Liber Hymnorum, a Bilingual Anthology of Sacred Verse A Greek Gospel of Luke for the Arabophone: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, suppl. gr. 911 Language Interaction and Constructing Polities The Harley Trilingual Psalter, a Witness to Multilingualism at the Court Scriptorium of Roger II of Sicily A Gateway to the Six Languages: Cambridge, University Library, MS Add.1698 Scribbling in Newar on the Margins of a Sanskrit Manuscript: Cambridge, University Library, MS Add.2832 International Vernacularisation, c. 1390 CE: The ‘Book of Ballymote’ Indices Contributors