Portland State Magazine

Marginalia Ott says notes in the margins made by at least three separate hands give us a sense for how the texts were read and used. These ranged from a paragraph symbol (¶) to underlined words and squiggly markings, or nota bene marks, used to draw readers’ attention to details (see inset). On one page in the Fasciculus temporum , there was also a handwritten notation: “Rex” (Latin for king) and the names of two kings of the Kingdom of Judah, Jehoshaphat and Josiah. Undergraduate student Jeremy Maly drew on his Latin skills to provide the class rough translations.

Codex printers The Fasciculus temporum in PSU’s codex was printed by Johann Prüss in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France) and the Malleus maleficarum was printed by Peter Drach in Speyer. At some point shortly after printing, the two texts were bound together in pigskin with brass clasps (see inset). Master’s student Zachary Hamilla found a missal listed as published in Strassburg by “Johann Prüss for Peter Drach” around 1490, the same year that Drach published the Malleus , and another master’s student, Andy Swinford, found evidence of a second codex in which the same two texts were bound together. This suggests that they were printed and sold as a pair.

SO-MIN KANG

Woodblock illustrations The Fasciculus temporum was illustrated with a number of woodcuts—some of cities, some of catastrophes like cities on fire, some of marvels such as birth abnormalities. One illustration shows physical deformities occurring in conjunction with a solar or lunar eclipse (see inset), which Harrison said is interesting, given that this edition was bound with a text dealing with witchcraft. “In this society, you have prevalent thinking that an eclipse could cause human deformity,” she said. “This is the thinking that’s going on at the same time that people are thinking that witches have the power to control whether or not crops thrive, whether the weather is fair, or whether a person lives or dies.”

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FALL 2020 //