Crafting knowledge in the early medieval book: practices of collecting and concealing in the Latin West

This volume explores how knowledge was made in the early medieval book in the Latin West through two interrelated practices: collecting and concealing. The contributions present case studies across cultures and subject areas, including exegesis, glossography, history, lexicography, literature, poetry, vernacular and Latin learning. Collectio underpinned scholarly productions from miscellanies to vademecums. It was at the heart of major enterprises such as the creation of commentaries, encyclopaedic compendia, glosses, glossaries, glossae collectae, and word lists. As a scholarly practice, collectio accords with the construction of inventories of inherited materials, the ruminative imperative of early medieval exegesis, and a kind of reading that required concentration. Concealment likewise played a key role in early medieval book culture. Obscuration was in line with well-known interpretative practices aimed at rendering knowledge less than immediate. This volume explores the practices of obscuring that predate the twelfth-century predilection, long recognised by historians, for reading that penetrates beneath the “covering” (integumentum, involucrum) to reveal the hidden truth. Cumulatively, the papers spotlight the currency of two crucial practices in early medieval book culture and demonstrate that early medieval authors, artists, compilers, commentators, and scribes were conspicuous collectors and concealers of knowledge.