Compositiones Variae

This volume offers a groundbreaking study of the Compositiones variae, the earliest surviving medieval collection of artisanal recipes, copied in Lucca around 800 CE. While traditionally examined for its textual content, this publication shifts focus to the manuscript’s physical structure, revealing how its materials, construction, and context illuminate early medieval practices of knowledge, craft, and power. Situating the manuscript within its Lucchese setting, it uncovers the Compositiones variae as a dynamic cultural and social artefact.

The ‘Compositiones variae’ is the earliest extant medieval collection of artisanal recipes. Translated into Latin from a Hellenistic source and copied at Lucca, it is said to preserve technical knowledge surviving in Tuscany around 800 CE and to have offered practical assistance to the Lucca scriptorium. The recipes are today bound together with numerous early medieval historical and liturgical texts in a massive compendium, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare ‘Feliniana’, Cod. 490. The scripts and textual contents of the compendium have been intensively studied but the volume’s physical and material features have been largely ignored. This publication demonstrates that as much meaningful data is embedded in the manuscript’s materials and structure as in the words on the page. The significance of the ‘Compositiones variae’ appears when its context is reconstructed, using evidence supplied by the early medieval Lucchese setting and numerous texts. An investigation of functional relationships – production, uses, practices and preservation – what the object’s materiality represents, reveals the ‘Compositiones variae’ as a social product placed within the cultural and social history of medieval knowledge and power. Thea Burns is an independent scholar living in Canada and is Adjunct Professor, Department of Art History and Art Conservation, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.

Contents

Acknowledgements

The Compositiones variae: introduction to historical and contemporary approaches

Date and origin

Source(s) of the recipes

Methodological considerations

This book Ch.1. Material and technical description of Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Cod.490

Introduction

The parchment Quire structure

Preparing the parchment for writing: pricking & ruling

Binding

Foliation

Boards

Quire signatures

Fly leaves & pastedowns

Evidence of earlier restoration campaigns

Leather covering

Clasps

Placement of writing block on the page & description of inks

Condition

Ch.2. The historical context of the Compositiones variae

Lucca: its significance as a centre introduction

Roman & late antique Lucca

Lombard Lucca

Roman & other roads

The pilgrimage

Early Carolingian Lucca

The cathedral library

Terminology: 'scuola cantorum', clerical or cathedral schools, scribal and chancery schools, scriptoria', workshops

Conclusion

Ch.3. The textual format of Lucca, Bib. Cap. 'Feliniana', Cod.490

Survival of classical technical literature

Formats of ancient & medieval manuscripts

'Oh, how burdensome is script!'

The Lucca compendium: a paradigm shift? a new codex form?

Compendia

Libelli (booklets): fabrication of Cod.490

Format history: a hypothesis

Ch.4. The content of the Compostiones variae unit

Introduction

Early modern interest in the Compositiones variae

Compositiones variae: 'recipes'

Character of the 'recipes'

1. Descriptive entries

2. Incomplete instructions

3. Fuller instructions

4. Recipe series

Quires 29 and 28

Folio 211 verso

The relationship of Compositiones variae and Mappae Clavicula 'recipes'

Ch.5: Artistic, artisanal and architectural context for the reception of the Compositiones variae at Lucca 'Art' in Lombardy

Clerical interest in the Compositiones variae in late eighth-century Lucca

The 'Good Shepherd' miniature

The broader context

Appendix 1: Contents of Lucca, Bibl. Cap. Feliniana, Codex 490

Appendix 2: List of detailed physical characteristics of the text block of Lucca, Bibl.

Cap. Feliniana, Codex 490

Bibliography

Lists of illustrations by chapter with captions

Index

• By (author) Thea Burns

"Burns's work offers a simple, but at the same time fascinating, work hypothesis." Letteraturaartistica - April 2017
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Burns's work offers a simple, but at the same time fascinating, work hypothesis.

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