From the time of its composition (c. 1280) for Philip the Fair of France until the early sixteenth century, Giles of Rome's mirror of princes, the De regimine principum, was read by both lay and clerical readers in the original Latin and in several vernacular translations, and served as model or source for several works of princely advice. This study uses an interdisciplinary approach toward the surviving manuscript copies, as well as documentary and literary evidence, to show how people of the later Middle Ages read Giles' text and appropriated it for their own particular purposes.

This book reconstructs and studies the music, liturgy, and illustrations of a twelfth-century manuscript from the Austrian monastery in Lambach. The manuscript was taken apart in the fifteenth century and subsequently sold to various collectors in the twentieth century. The pages are here brought together (albeit photographically) for the first time since the original manuscript was dismantled five centuries ago. The book includes a black-and-white facsimile of the recovered portion of the manuscript. Charts and tables are used to demonstrate how it compares to other twelfth-century...

This book centers on the copy of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus produced in Constantinople around 880 for the emperor Basil I as a gift from the patriarch Photios. The manuscript includes forty-six full page miniatures, most of which do not directly illustrate the text they accompany, but instead provide a visual commentary. Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium deals with how such communication worked, and examines the types of messages that pictures could convey in ninth-century Byzantium.

The service books of the Florentine Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore reflected the city's position of power and prestige. Largely unexplored by modern scholars, these manuscripts provided the texts and music necessary for the celebration of the liturgical services. Marica S. Tacconi examines comprehensively the sixty-five extant liturgical manuscripts produced between 1150 and 1526 for both Santa Maria del Fiore and its predecessor, the early cathedral of Santa Reparata. Her study provides new insights into late medieval and Renaissance Florentine ritual and culture, from liturgical, musical...