Iter Gallicum - Source-gathering trip to France

For a long time I had been planning a source-gathering trip to France due to the fact that some manuscripts of Biondo's Decades were in its libraries. The loud construction site on our building in Jyväskylä helped to set the trip on May-June 2023. Furthermore, since our seven-month-old daughter was now part of our lives, we decided it was best that she and my wife both accompanied me to France. This way we wouldn't have to spend any time apart from each other. In the next three blogs, I give some glimpses of what I have discovered on my voyage.

The aim of this journey was to consult, digitize and analyse five manuscripts, one in Besançon, three in Paris, and one in Saint-Omer. Some of the manuscripts had very scarce information online, so I was partly going in blind. The first destination was Besançon in the Eastern France, so we decided to fly to Zurich, and head to Besançon by train. The train journey took about four hours and finally Besançon was within sight.

Besançon is an ancient city as it has had occupants since Antiquity. It was called Vesontio by the Romans and Julius Caesar writes about the city in his Gallic Wars this way:

Vesontio [...] is the largest town of the Sequani, [...] and so fortified was it by the nature of the ground, as to afford a great facility for protracting the war, inasmuch as the river Doubs almost surrounds the whole town, as though it were traced round it with a pair of compasses. A mountain of great height shuts in the remaining space, which is not more than 600 feet, where the river leaves a gap, in such a manner that the roots of that mountain extend to the river's bank on either side. A wall thrown around it makes a citadel of this [mountain], and connects it with the town. (De bello Gallico 1.38).

Source gathering trip to Italy (and first live paper presented in Siena!)

On commute to the Vatican library

I thought I'd write a short post of my source gathering trip few weeks ago. The trip focused on Italy, more precisely, to Rome, Florence and Siena. The original aim was to participate the final colloquium of the Lamemoli-project (Late Medieval and Early Modern Libraries 2017-2022) and present a paper there, but this trip grew to a full three week journey to various Italian libraries.

I spent the first week (20.2.-27.2.) in Rome, where I delved in the Vatican library. My aim was to finish my research on certain manuscripts, which was interrupted by covid-19 in February of 2020. I honestly got a lot of things done, measuring codices and counting quires. I even managed to inspect some new manuscripts such as Ott. Lat. 1440 and Ott. Lat. 1916, which are some later copies of Decades. The latter manuscript was especially fascinating, partly due to its huge size (430 x 240 mm, with over 400 leaves). Also in Rome I had the time to meet many friends, some residing in the Finnish Institute in Rome, and some were just conveniently on holiday in the Eternal City. 

My first visit to the Vatican library - Spring in Rome as PhD student

[This post is a translation of a blog post I wrote on JYU Medieval studies blog in June 2020. The original post can be found here.]

The first spring of my doctorate program started with a bang. I spent the spring of 2020 in the Finnish Institute in Rome, where I worked as a part of the research group of the director Arja Karivieri. The building where the institute is situated, Villa Lante, is without a doubt on the best spot in Rome, from which one can admire all of Rome. The surroundings were motivational to say the least, and I was looking forward to the working possibilities of the coming spring. Along with the work in the research group, my aim was to start to write my doctoral thesis as efficiently as possible. Because my research focus deals with Italian Renaissance manuscripts and incunables, the Eternal City offered a perfect framework. I had planned to utilize the multiple libraries of Rome to find research literature, but my main aim was to visit the Vatican Apostolic Library, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

A view from the balcony of Villa Lante. Picture: Riikka Vuoksenmaa

 

Subject of my doctoral thesis

Hopefully, this is going to be my longest blog post. I intend to keep the rest of my posts short for the purpose of not using too much time on the blog alone. Below I try to lay down the subject of my doctoral thesis. I try to be as clear as I can and to avoid using too confusing language. Obviously, I cannot write about my topic conclusively, that is reserved for my actual thesis. However, I find it helpful to write my thought process in a more relaxed manner. This might help me organize my thoughts and bring up new ideas regarding my research.