This past summer, I spent two weeks at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, thanks to the generous funding of the Nottebohm grant. This enabled me to begin an exciting new project on the relationship between early modern print media and medieval manuscripts. Specifically, I became interested in how Christoph Plantin and his editor Theodore Pulmann physically and conceptually engaged with medieval manuscripts and fragments in the preparation of their print editions. The museum houses Pulmann’s papers, which shed light on his editorial process and extensive knowledge of classical texts–texts that he was able to study and reprint because they had been preserved in the Middle Ages.

As an early medievalist, I never anticipated dipping my toes into early modern waters, but sometimes a path of inquiry leads you into unfamiliar waters (to continue with the aquatic metaphors…!).

I’ll be presenting an aspect of this research–the invocation of “ancient codices” on the title pages of Plantin’s printed books–at the upcoming Medieval Congress at Leeds.