Abbreviation sculpts the appearance of the medieval page. Scribes abbreviated words astonishingly frequently, and did so in even the most ornate manuscripts, yet scholarship has treated abbreviation as a hurdle for the modern reader to overcome, and not an object of analysis.
Focusing on medieval French manuscripts, the project uses abbreviation as a lens through which to rethink how medieval scribes wrote, what choices they made, and how writing in the vernacular developed in a manuscript culture long dominated by Latin.
The project is led by Dr Sebastian Dows-Miller as an Early Career Research Fellowship, funded by the Leverhulme Trust at University College London, and will run from 2025 to 2028. It is the first major study of abbreviation in medieval French manuscripts to combine traditional palaeographical methods with cutting-edge digital technologies.
Traditional scholarship has concentrated on cataloguing the signs used to mark abbreviation, often relying on nineteenth-century typologies that leave little room for scribal preference or historical change. This has obscured what abbreviation can tell us about the priorities, habits, and training of medieval scribes, as well as about the material and intellectual contexts in which manuscripts were produced.
My previous work has shown that identifying the characters removed through abbreviation reveals more about scribes’ priorities and preferences than the abbreviation markers they used, since an abbreviatory symbol can only be chosen after a decision has been made to abbreviate a given segment.
The project combines close engagement with medieval manuscripts with emerging digital and quantitative methods. It brings together large-scale analysis made possible by recent advances in handwritten text recognition with more detailed, carefully curated data that allow for fine-grain interpretation.
Rather than assuming a single, static system of abbreviation, the project treats abbreviation as a dynamic system that varies across time, place, text type, and individual.
The project asks the following questions:
The project will generate a range of scholarly and digital outputs that reflect its combined theoretical and technical focus. As the project develops, these outputs will contribute to a new way of thinking about abbreviation in medieval French manuscripts, situating it firmly within broader debates about writing practices, literacy, and manuscript culture.
Alongside more traditional outputs, the project will produce new tools and approaches that make patterns of scribal practice visible at a scale not previously possible. These methods are designed to be adaptable and reusable, opening up possibilities for future research well beyond the immediate scope of the project, including in dating manuscripts, identifying shifts in scribe, and tracing scribes across manuscripts.