Shaping Knowledge: The Transmission of the 'Liber Floridus'

The encyclopedic compilation Liber Floridus, created by the Flemishcanon Lambert of Saint-Omer in the early twelfth century, survives not only inthe form of his famous autograph, but also in a considerable number of latermanuscripts which transformed the knowledge assembled by him and which becamestarting points for new appraisals of their texts and images. Shaping Knowledge examines the processeswhich determined this transfer over the centuries and evaluates the specificachievements of the different generations of scribes and illuminators. Takingaccount of the full range of manuscripts which transmit material from the Liber Floridus and focusing in moredetail on three of them - now in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel,in the Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden and in the Abdijarchief of Tongerlo - itshows that the makers of these manuscripts did not merely select and copymaterial from the Liber Floridus, butalso organized images and texts in new ways, sought out different exemplars forthem and embarked on compilatory activities of their own. These relationshipsat the textual, visual and conceptual levels are lenses through which we canobserve the networks subsisting among the manuscripts linked to the Liber Floridus and the much broadergroup of encyclopedic compilations to which they belong. Sixteen colour platesand one hundred black-and-white figures document the role of the visual andmaterial dimensions of the manuscripts in the processes of transmission.