Medieval Scriptorium in Miniature-Baronial A&S Champion AS LX

 

I am a graduate student at Dalhousie University and during the holiday break I was contacted to see if I wanted to submit an entry for our annual A&S competitiont that we host at Ruantallan's 12th Night celebration. I had already finished my holiday crafting and I took a few days to think about what I would like to enter. In the society, I am a scribe first. I don't really do much sewing, it gives me a headache. I am not a cook or baker by any stretch and I do not work with leather or metals.  A decade ago I had entered a competition and it was a not quite complete novice scribal kit. I had made some ink and quills, and wrote a one pager on what I felt was important about being a scribe and I was quite pleased with the feedback I recieved. The judges were very kind and it gave me a starting point to improve any future entries. 
I had not entered anything since because I did not feel my skills as a scribe were good enough, oh imposter syndrome raised it's ugly head as I am sure it does for many creatives. Over the past few years I have been collecting 1:12 scale dollhouses and furniture with the goal of renovating them and...well I haven't got that far yet. I enjoy building furniture and staging a 'room' to make it look like the occupant just stepped out for moment. Does anyone remember reading The Borrowers as a kid? I truly think that was the impetus of my mini passions. When contemplating what I could do, I decided that I would create a medieval scriptorium as a visual representation of the paper I wrote for the submission, Women Scribes, Patronage, and the Salzinnes Antiphonal in the Late Middle Ages.( I have included it below).

I based my miniatures on scanned images from extant documents. I began the project with a lantern. This seemed to be the easiest to make. I located measurements from images 

The lantern is made from an old manila folder and painted with a silver metalic paint pen, cut to size and glued around two small wooden dowels. The rest of the project was accomplished the same way. I would locate images of manuscripts or paintings that depicted the scriptorium and used general measurements of the furniture and scaled it down to 1:12 ( 1 foot = 1 inch ) and built the rest. 

The desk was fashioned after this image,

As I continued with the project, I began filling out the diorama adding a floor lantern with candles, a table complete with pigments and books, a penner, quills and other accoutrements that medieval scribes would need to work on a book like the Salzinnes Antiphonal. I penciled out a couple of folios to make it look like the scribe had to leave for prayers but would be coming back. In the image above, the large book beside the desk is a scale model of the actual Antiphonal that is held in the Patrick Power Library at St. Mary's University in Halifax. 

The furniture was made by hand out of wood, cardstock, manila folders and glue. I used the measurements I found online to ensure the scale was accurate, as much as it could be. For the competition, I had a list of everyday items 'hidden' in the minature and asked the judges and the populace to see if they could find them all. A few examples...

1. Earring backs 

    They are at the top of the writing plane to hold the paper in place (look for the brass bead) 

2. A plastic lid to a Covid test (painted brown to look like pottery and holding a quill)

3. Christmas tree hangers (the base of the floor lamp)

4. A brass split pin (the blade to the pen knife on the corner of the desk)

I enjoyed making the miniature and it was a great visual aid for the research paper I wrote for the entry. The combination of my love of research and the happiness from making minatures made this a wonderful experience. I have already been planning my next A&S Competition project for the Tir Mara championship later this year. And yes, there will be a blog post about that too. 

Research project if you are so inclined to read it. 

Women Scribes, Patronage, and the Salzinnes Antiphonal in the Late Middle Ages 

 

Barony of Ruantallan

Arts and Sciences Competition

AS60

 

Lady Juliote de Castlenau d’Arri

 

 

 

Entry Introduction

The entry seen here showcases the role of women who produced exceptional works of scribal arts during the medieval period. I, Lady Juliote de Castlenau d’Arri, am a dedicated scribe for the East Kingdom and have been creating scrolls for over a decade in our game. The artistry and research are the things I enjoy most about being a scribe. This project is persona adjacent because while I do not play an ecclesiastical medieval woman, there are similarities between what I do as a scribe and how women during the Middle Ages would be commissioned to create using parchment, ink, and paint.

The miniature depicts a scribal desk in the scriptorium of the Abbey at Salzinnes (I have absolutely NO proof of this but it’s my entry so there!

 

Women Scribes, Patronage, and the Salzinnes Antiphonal in the Late Middle Ages

Women’s contributions to manuscript culture in the Middle Ages have often been obscured by the anonymity of scribal labor and the historiographical focus on male monastic scriptoria. However, evidence from the fifteenth century demonstrates that women—particularly those in religious communities—played vital roles as scribes, correctors, patrons, and users of manuscripts. The Salzinnes Antiphonal, though produced in the mid-sixteenth century, exemplifies the continuity of medieval manuscript practices shaped by women and can be productively compared to the work of known fifteenth-century women scribes such as Christine de Pizan, the nuns of St. Clare in Nuremberg, and female scribes associated with the Devotio Moderna movement. 

During the fifteenth century, convents functioned as important centers of book production and textual transmission. Women in these communities were literate, musically trained, and deeply engaged with devotional texts. Surviving manuscripts copied by women such as Sister Kunigunde of St. Michael’s Convent in Nuremberg reveal careful attention to accuracy, legibility, and aesthetic presentation, particularly in liturgical and devotional works (Beach, 2004). Although few women identified themselves explicitly as scribes, colophons, marginalia, and stylistic analysis increasingly support the recognition of women’s hands in manuscript production.

The Salzinnes Antiphonal aligns closely with these fifteenth-century practices. Commissioned for the Abbey of Salzinnes in present-day Belgium, the antiphonal was intended for collective worship and daily use by a community of nuns. Its large scale and durable materials reflect priorities common to medieval women’s houses, where books were functional objects central to communal identity. The choice to produce the manuscript on parchment and to employ scribes rather than printers—despite the availability of print technology—mirrors the values upheld by fifteenth-century women scribes who viewed manuscript production as a devotional act.

Patronage played a crucial role in enabling women’s participation in book culture. Dame Julienne de Glymes, prioress and cantrix of the Abbey of Salzinnes, acted as both spiritual leader and patron of the antiphonal. Her role parallels that of earlier women patrons such as Christine de Pizan, who oversaw the production of her own manuscripts and collaborated with scribes and illuminators to ensure textual and visual consistency (Willard, 1993). Although de Glymes did not author the text, her authority over the manuscript’s form and function reflects the same model of female intellectual and material agency.

As Bain and Morley (2021) argue, the lavishness and iconographic planning of the Salzinnes Antiphonal suggest significant involvement from its conventual audience. This collaborative model echoes fifteenth-century convent practices, particularly those associated with the Devotio Moderna, where women actively copied texts for internal use and spiritual reform (McKitterick, 2003). In both cases, manuscripts were shaped by the needs and expertise of women readers, even when professional scribes were employed.

The material hierarchy embedded within the Salzinnes Antiphonal also reflects medieval norms. The patronage of the de Glymes family funded a network of artisans, including parchment makers, scribes, bookbinders, and leatherworkers. This collective mode of production mirrors fifteenth-century manuscript workshops, where women’s religious communities often acted as commissioners and supervisors. The inclusion of the family’s coat of arms within the manuscript follows a long-standing medieval tradition of visually asserting patronage and reinforcing social relationships between donors and religious institutions.

Although the antiphonal’s later history—including its relocation to Atlantic Canada and modern conservation—extends beyond the Middle Ages, its survival underscores the lasting impact of women’s manuscript culture. The modern conservation process, involving specialists at the Canadian Conservation Institute and Library and Archives Canada, parallels the original collaborative craftsmanship that defined medieval book production.

In comparison with known fifteenth-century women scribes and patrons, the Salzinnes Antiphonal emerges as a representative example of medieval manuscript practice sustained by women. It embodies the continuity of female intellectual labor, devotional commitment, and material expertise that characterized women’s engagement with books in the Middle Ages. Through such objects, the contributions of women scribes—often silent in the historical record—remain materially present.

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References

Bain, J., & Morley, S. (2021). Introduction: Material matters and the Salzinnes Antiphonal. Florilegium, 34, 66–70. https://doi.org/10.3138/flor-34.006

Beach, A. I. (2004). Women as scribes: Book production and monastic reform in late medieval Germany. Cambridge University Press.

McKitterick, D. (2003). Print, manuscript and the search for order, 1450–1830. Cambridge University Press.

Willard, C. C. (1993). Christine de Pizan: Her life and works. Persea Books.

 Images of the Antiphonal are available at the links below.

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. (2017). Centuries of silence: The discovery of the Salzinnes Antiphonal. https://artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/exhibitions/centuries-silence-discovery-salzinnes-antiphonal

St. Mary’s University Archives. (n.d.). The Salzinnes Antiphonal. https://www.smu.ca/academics/archives/the-salzinnes-antiphonal.html