Decoding a Medieval Notebook: The Case Study of ms. Basel, Universitätsbibliothek A-X-44

Taking notes is a widespread practice: students, travelers, writers and scientists jot down information, impressions and empirical observations, all the while encoding these notes with their previous intellectual experience and their envisioned future use for them. The present workshop aims at decoding the notebook of Henricus de Rinfeldia, a Dominican who studied at the University of Vienna. It is preserved in the ms. Basel, Universitätsbibliothek A-X-44 on whose peculiarities and particularities the RISE project is centered. Among the elements that make this artefact extremely attractive for the researcher one can count its special material structure, the multitude of ideas that it transmits, as well as the fact that it bears witness to the teachings of the first generation of professors at the University of Vienna, whose names have been brought to the fore by this impressive witness from the obscurity of the cartularies.

The papers to be presented are meant to shed new light on the practice of taking notes as well as on the role notebooks had in spreading knowledge, by analyzing the manuscript from several perspectives (codicological, paleographical, theological and philosophical).