The Fine Script
Schedule
Mon, 31 Aug, 2026 at 10:00 am to Tue, 01 Sep, 2026 at 03:30 pm
UTC+02:00Location
Irish Cultural Centre | Paris, IL
About this Event
This event can be attended in-person at the Centre Culturel Irlandais or online (the zoom link will be circulated via email prior to the event).
We welcome you to this conference set in Paris at the Centre Culture Irlandais between the 31st of August and the 1st of September 2026 to explore and examine with international researchers hands from the past through their legal marginalia from 1100 to 1700. This conference will connect the present with the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period—placing Ireland within Europe, and Europe in its relationship with the Middle East and the Byzantine Sphere.
Agenda
🕑: 10:00 AM
Welcome and introduction ‘Reading the Fine Script’
Host: Héléna D.M. Lagréou (University College Dublin)
🕑: 10:20 AM
The toolbox: functional marginalia between visual and written rhetoric
Host: Eachiarn Erbnen (University College Dublin)
Info: Eachiarn Erbnen (University College Dublin), ‘Marginalia in the Copy of O’Davoren’s Glossary from TCD MS 1317 (H2.15b): Types and Choices’ Maria Alessandra Bilotta (UAb – IEM-NOVA/FCSH), ‘Law in the Margins: Annotating and Visualising Legal Knowledge in Illuminated Legal Manuscripts from Southern France (13th–14th Centuries)’
🕑: 11:40 AM
Coffee Break
🕑: 12:00 PM
Scribes as editors: processing and transforming legal material
Host: Stefan Drechsler (University of Bergen)
Info: Stefan Drechsler (University of Bergen), ‘The Marginal Notes of AM 309 fol.: Indications of Use, Textual Development, and Codicological Units’
Andrew Ó Donnghaile (University College Dublin), ‘⁊ diultaim iat, mar aderid in drong dligthe-so sis: the voices of scribes and jurists in late medieval Irish legal manuscripts’
🕑: 01:20 PM
Lunch Break
🕑: 02:30 PM
Aggregating building blocks: movable knowledge across manuscripts
Host: Jesús R. Velasco (Yale University)
Info: Jesús R. Velasco (Yale University), ‘Glossing as a Model Kit’
Gero Dolezalek (University of Leipzig), ‘Cross References, added to Western Manuscripts of Roman Law’
🕑: 03:50 PM
Coffee Break
🕑: 04:10 PM
Overlapping spaces: coexisting environments within the page
Host: Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge)
Info: Geoffrey Khan (University of Cambridge), ‘Writing on the Verso of Medieval Arabic Documents’
Sarah White (University of Nottingham), ‘Between Text and Practice: Marginalia in English Manuscripts of the Ordines’
🕑: 05:30 PM
Apéritif Dinatoire
🕑: 09:30 AM
Morning Coffee
🕑: 09:50 AM
Short Welcome and introduction
Host: Héléna D.M. Lagréou (University College Dublin)
🕑: 10:10 AM
Dialogue in time: temporal layers in search of authority through marginalia
Host: Zachary Chitwood (University LMU Munchen)
Info: Zachary Chitwood (University LMU Munchen), ‘Digital Approaches to Editing the Hexabiblos of Constantine Harmenopoulos (1345) and Its Scholia’
Jaqueline Bremmer (University KU Leuven), ‘Constructing legal authority in the glossed Digestum vetus, c. 1200–1300’
🕑: 11:30 AM
Coffee Break
🕑: 11:50 AM
The poetics of law: artificiality of legal writing in genre-bending marginalia
Host: Chantal Kobel (Maynooth University)
Info: Chantal Kobel (Maynooth University), ‘Do fubhtad borb ⁊ ainēolech ‘to frighten off the rude and ignorant’: erudition in the margins of Copenhagen MS 261B’
Fangzhe Qiu (University College Dublin), ‘More than just a rann: marginal verses in Irish legal manuscripts’
🕑: 01:10 PM
Lunch Break
🕑: 02:30 PM
Closing Panel - Legal coexistence
Host: Yasmine Beale-Rivaya (Texas State University)
Info: Yasmine Beale-Rivaya (Texas State University), ‘Writing Authority in the Margins: Marginalia, Orality, and Multilingual Legal Culture in Medieval Iberia’
🕑: 03:10 PM
Closing Remarks and send off
Where is it happening?
Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Rue des Irlandais, Paris, FranceEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
