Marginal Scholarship: The Practice of Learning in the Early Middle Ages

This website contains a guide to manuscripts with marginalia. Our knowledge of Latin texts from Antiquity and Late Antiquity is mainly based on manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. The margins of these manuscripts contain notes that demonstrate that the texts were not only passed on, but that they were actively studied and utilized. For a long time, they have been regarded as insignificant writings by anonymous monks. On the contrary, they are meaningful sources of intellectual history: they tell the story of the changes in knowledge in many areas, from the natural phenomena of the cosmos to the orthodox teachings about predestination. They provide insight into the methods and interests of science and research in this period.