Scribal Collaboration and Gender in a Middle Dutch Song Manuscript and a Rapiarium of the Devotio Moderna

Abstract

This article discusses two important representatives of the manuscript culture of the Devotio Moderna in the late medieval eastern Low Countries (c. 1500): a vernacular devout song manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz mgo 185) and a Middle Dutch rapiarium or collection of various short religious texts (Zwolle, Historisch Centrum Overijssel, Collectie Emmanuelshuizen 13). Both religious multi-text codices, the material similarities between both types of manuscripts have frequently been pointed out but were never studied in detail. These particular manuscripts, however, offer fertile grounds for such a comparison, since both were in part copied by the same—probably female—scribes. Examining the nature and extent of their efforts and collaborations, this article further develops questions and arguments raised in previous scholarship on the production processes of song manuscripts and rapiaria.