Juniors Experience Medieval Scriptorium at Rutgers
On April 30, students in the Junior Honors class at Mount Saint Mary Academy joined the Rutgers Book Initiative and Scarlet Letterpress for The Medieval Scriptorium where they experienced what it would have been like to transcribe medieval writing in their original languages.
According to Brittany Maldonado, Mount English Teacher, it was a day filled with historical materials, manuscript learning, and community-based creation.
"My students practiced calligraphy using quills and handmade ink, transcribed excerpts from Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales on parchment -- both of which we studied in class -- worked with goat skin parchment, and attended a lecture on medieval transcription by James Niessen, World History Librarian at the Alexander Library at Rutgers University. He explained how transcription is done and why it remains important today."
“The students also had an opportunity to talk to the scholars at Rutgers about their work with these texts and the medieval process of bookmaking and publishing,” said Mrs. Maldonado.
Before the Medieval Scriptorium lecture and activity, the students wrote an Anglo-Saxon love poem during a special creative writing workshop which was led by Leslieann Hobayan, a 1991 graduate of Mount Saint Mary Academy where her daughters, Gabrielle ’26, Sabrina ’27, and Marina ‘23 have studied/are studying during their high school careers. At Rutgers, Ms. Hobayan is a Professor of Creative Writing as well as an accomplished writer and poet.
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