17.10.2023
Since 2018, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and Museum Plantin-Moretus have offered an annual travel grant to Antwerp to encourage research on the history of the printed book, with the support of the Stichting Nottebohm and the Dotatiefonds voor Boek en Letteren. Two international researchers will receive financial support to carry out several weeks of research in Antwerp's library collections in 2024.
Louisa Hunter-Bradley
Louisa Hunter-Bradley is a musicologist from London researching how music was disseminated across Europe through books in the early modern era. She is part of the research project Dissemination, ownership and reading of music in early modern Europe (DORMEME) at King's College London. For this project, scholars look for traces of usage in printed and handwritten sheet music.
During her stay in Antwerp, Louisa will analyse the printed music books of Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. She will also delve into the Plantin Archives and look into the registers relating to the sale of music books by Christopher Plantin and his successor Jan I Moretus during the annual book fair in Frankfurt. Louisa thereby combines book history and music history to gain new insights for both areas of research.
Jennifer Awes Freeman
Jennifer Awes Freeman studies the role of art, book illustrations and illuminated manuscripts in medieval religious society, as professor of theology and literature at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA).
As part of her research project on the fifth-century Carmen Paschale of Sedulius, she will thoroughly analyse a Carolingian manuscript from Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp containing a ninth-century copy of this text.
During his career, Christopher Plantin purchased several manuscripts, such as the Carmen Paschale, with the aim of publishing these texts in his printing office. The document is heavily annotated by Plantin's supplier of manuscripts, Theodoor Poelman. Through a comparative case study between this manuscript and other manuscripts, as well as early modern printed books from the library collections of Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Awes Freeman aims to gain insights into the continuity of the use and influence of medieval manuscripts on the early modern printing industry.
