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Open Our Manuscripts

Posted On May 19, 2015 | 10:44 am | by meredithb | Permalink
Digital Facsimiles of Manuscripts in the Byzantine Collection

Dumbarton Oaks Museum is pleased to announce the addition of digital facsimiles of four Byzantine manuscripts to our suite of online scholarly resources.

Illustrated manuscripts are not simply texts. Neither are they simply a series of images. They are objects that combine text and image into a visual and verbal tool with particular uses and behaviors. We experience books sequentially by turning the pages. We can only experience a real book as openings, and then only one opening at a time. These animated manuscripts allow the reader to page back and forth through their text and images as they were intended to be used, and as they were used for hundreds of years before arriving at the museum.

In these digital facsimiles, the reader can turn the pages of a Greek Gospel lectionary (Dumbarton Oaks MS 1), a Psalter and New Testament (MS 3), the Gospels of Luke and John (MS 4), and a complete Gospel book (MS 5). All include front matter with physical and illumination descriptions, collation, acquisition history, internal navigation to manuscript sections, links to the HOLLIS catalog record, high-resolution images at Harvard Page Delivery Service, and additional information on the museum website. Furthermore, the eleventh-century Gospel lectionary is accompanied by a table of lections that enumerate the daily readings contained in the manuscript.

Read more about the new digital facsimiles here, and explore them here.