Lisa Fagin Davis – författare

Lisa Fagin Davis offers the first photographic reconstruction of the extant leaves of the Gottschalk Antiphonary, an important twelfth-century manuscript from the Austrian monastery in Lambach. The Gottschalk Antiphonary, which was dismantled for binding scrap in the fifteenth century, is examined from various angles - art historical, liturgical, and musical - and its contributions to the study of medieval drama and the long-term ramifications of the investiture controversy are explored. The manuscript is studied within the historical and political context within which it was created, in order to better understand the decisions which went into its production. In addition to a black-and-white facsimile of the recovered portion of the manuscript, the book includes a survey of the twelfth-century Lambach scriptorium and a detailed codicological reconstruction of the codex. Appendices of charts and tables demonstrate how the Gottschalk Antiphonary compares to other liturgical manuscripts from the same period.

Beyond Words accompanies a collaborative exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Harvard University's Houghton Library; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area institutions, this catalog provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as a guide to its production, illumination, functions, and readership. Entries by eighty-five international experts document, discuss, and reproduce more than two hundred and sixty manuscripts and early printed books, many of them little known before now. Beyond Words also explores the history of collecting such books in Boston, an uncharted chapter in the history of American taste. Of broad appeal to scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike, this catalog documents one of the most ambitious exhibitions of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts ever to take place in North America.