Carthusian manuscripts on IDEM
© Kortrijk, State Archives of Belgium, Collection Jacques Goethals-Vercruysse, codex 41, fol. 1r (detail) / Alamire Digital Lab
From 15 to 17 May, the conference "Carthusians and Images: New Perspectives on Religious Art and Devotional Culture in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Charterhouse" took place in Leuven. Carthusian charterhouses, which sprang up in large numbers in the late Middle Ages thanks to the support of wealthy nobles, often house a rich collection of art treasures. At this conference, the pictural heritage of these sites was examined through various themes.
One of these themes concerned illustrated manuscripts and printed books of Carthusian origin. On 16 May, the conference therefore moved to the site of Park Abbey for a visit to the Alamire Foundation. In the House of Polyphony, staff member Pieter Mannaerts gave a lecture on a gradual from the Carthusian monastery in Leuven (1506). The manuscript contains Gregorian melodies that were sung during the liturgy and was probably used until the eighteenth century. The colophon indicates that three scribes worked on the gradual, either simultaneously or consecutively. For the occasion, the manuscript travelled from Kortrijk to the Library of Voices, where it was digitized by the Alamire Digital Lab. At the same time, another gradual from a Carthusian monastery in Liège (1367), currently in the possession of the KBR in Brussels, was also digitized.
You can now consult the images of both graduals from Leuven and Liège on the Integrated Database for Early Music.