The Fine Script

Héléna D.M. Lagréou

Conference exploring comparative approaches to legal marginalia circulating in Europe and the Middle East between 1100 and 1700

Irish Cultural Centre

This event can be attended in-person at the Centre Culturel Irlandais or online (the zoom link will be circulated via email prior to the event). We welcome you to this conference set in Paris at the Centre Culture Irlandais between the 31st of August and the 1st of September 2026 to explore and examine with international researchers hands from the past through their legal marginalia from 1100 to 1700. This conference will connect the present with the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period—placing Ireland within Europe, and Europe in its relationship with the Middle East and the Byzantine Sphere.

Agenda

Welcome and introduction ‘Reading the Fine Script’

Eachiarn Erbnen (University College Dublin), ‘Marginalia in the Copy of O’Davoren’s Glossary from TCD MS 1317 (H2.15b): Types and Choices’ Maria Alessandra Bilotta (UAb – IEM-NOVA/FCSH), ‘Law in the Margins: Annotating and Visualising Legal Knowledge in Illuminated Legal Manuscripts from Southern France (13th–14th Centuries)’ 

The toolbox: functional marginalia between visual and written rhetoric

Coffee Break

Stefan Drechsler (University of Bergen), ‘The Marginal Notes of AM 309 fol.: Indications of Use, Textual Development, and Codicological Units’
Andrew Ó Donnghaile (University College Dublin), ‘⁊ diultaim iat, mar aderid in drong dligthe-so sis: the voices of scribes and jurists in late medieval Irish legal manuscripts’

Scribes as editors: processing and transforming legal material

Lunch Break

Gero Dolezalek (University of Leipzig), ‘Cross References, added to Western Manuscripts of Roman Law' Heritage Library visit, guided visit at the Centre Culturel Irlandais 


Aggregating building blocks: movable knowledge across manuscripts

Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge), ‘Writing on the Verso of Medieval Arabic Documents’
Sarah White (University of Nottingham), ‘Between Text and Practice: Marginalia in English Manuscripts of the Ordines’

Overlapping spaces: coexisting environments within the page

Apéritif Dinatoire 

Morning Coffee 

Short Welcome and introduction 

Zachary Chitwood (University LMU Munchen), ‘Digital Approaches to Editing the Hexabiblos of Constantine Harmenopoulos (1345) and Its Scholia’
Jaqueline Bemmer (University KU Leuven), ‘Constructing legal authority in the glossed Digestum vetus, c. 1200–1300’

Dialogue in time: temporal layers in search of authority through marginalia

Chantal Kobel (Maynooth University), ‘Do fubhtad borb ⁊ ainēolech ‘to frighten off the rude and ignorant’: erudition in the margins of Copenhagen MS 261B’
Fangzhe Qiu (University College Dublin), ‘More than just a rann: marginal verses in Irish legal manuscripts’

The poetics of law: artificiality of legal writing in genre-bending marginalia

Yasmine Beale-Rivaya (Texas State University), ‘Writing Authority in the Margins: Marginalia, Orality, and Multilingual Legal Culture in Medieval Iberia’ 

The Fine Script

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The Fine Script

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