1.

)Book of Kells

The Book of Kells (Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais) (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. (58),
sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin,
containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and
tables. It was created by Celtic monks ca. 800 or slightly earlier. The text of the Gospels is
largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the
earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is a masterwork of Western
calligraphy and represents the pinnacle of Insular illumination. It is also widely regarded as
Ireland's finest national treasure.

The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells surpass that of other Insular Gospel
books in extravagance and complexity. The decoration combines traditional Christian
iconography with the ornate swirling motifs typical of Insular art. Figures of humans, animals
and mythical beasts, together with Celtic knots and interlacing patterns in vibrant colours,
enliven the manuscript's pages. Many of these minor decorative elements are imbued with
Christian symbolism and so further emphasise the themes of the major illustrations.

The manuscript today comprises 340 folios and, since 1953, has been bound in four volumes.
The leaves are on high-quality calf vellum, and the unprecedentedly elaborate ornamentation
that covers them includes ten full-page illustrations and text pages that are vibrant with
historiated initials and interlinear miniatures and mark the furthest extension of the anti-
classical and energetic qualities of Insular art. The Insular majuscule script of the text itself
appears to be the work of at least three different scribes. The lettering is in iron gall ink, and the
colours used were derived from a wide range of substances, many of which were imports from
distant lands.

The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells that was its home for centuries. Today,
it is on permanent display at the Trinity College Library, Dublin. The library usually displays two
of the current four volumes at a time, one showing a major illustration and the other showing
typical text pages.

2.)Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye

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Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye or Recueil des Histoires de Troye, is a French courtly romance
written by Raoul le Fevre, chaplain to Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. Translated by William Caxton,
and printed by him probably with Colard Mansion in 1473 or 1474 (traditionally "ca. 1475") at
Bruges. The work is now known mainly as the first book printed in the English language. The
more precise dating is that given in the Incunabula Short-title Catalogue. [1]

3.)

4.) The Belleville Breviary (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 10484, 2 volumes) is an illuminated
breviary. It was produced in Paris some time between 1323 and 1326 by Jean Pucelle. It was probably
produced for Jeanne de Belleville, the wife of Olivier de Clisson. The breviary is divided into two volumes
of 446 and 430 folios. Volume 1 contains the prayers used during the summer, while volume 2 contains
those used during the winter.

The manuscript was owned by Jeanne de Belleville. It was later owned by King Charles V of France and
his son Charles VI. Charles VI gave the manuscript to his son-in-law King Richard II of England. Henry IV
of England gave it to Jean, Duc de Berry. Jean gave it to his niece, Marie who was a nun at Poissy. It was
purchased in 1454 by another nun at Poissy, Marie Jouvenal des Ursins.

5.) The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the
end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a
story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the
shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In a long list of works, including "Troilus and
Criseyde", "House of Fame", "Parliament of Fowls", the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus.
He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English
society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The
Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in
1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles.

6.) he book of hours was a devotional book popular in the Middle Ages. It is the most common type of
surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is
unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often
with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many
examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but
books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures.

Books of hours were usually written in Latin (the Latin name for them is horae), although there
are many entirely or partially written in vernacular European languages, especially Dutch. The
English term primer is usually now reserved for those books written in English. Tens of
thousands of books of hours have survived to the present day, in libraries and private
collections throughout the world.

The typical book of hours is an abbreviated form of the breviary which contained the Divine
Office recited in monasteries. It was developed for lay people who wished to incorporate
elements of monasticism into their devotional life. Reciting the hours typically centered upon
the reading of a number of psalms and other prayers. A typical book of hours contains:
A Calendar of Church feasts

An excerpt from each of the four gospels

The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The fifteen Psalms of Degrees

The seven Penitential Psalms

A Litany of Saints

An Office for the Dead

The Hours of the Cross[2]

Various other prayers

Most 15th-century books of hours have these basic contents. The Marian prayers Obsecro te ("I
beseech thee") and O Intemerata ("O undefiled one") were frequently added, as were
devotions for use at Mass, and meditations on the Passion of Christ, among other optional
texts.

7.)

8.) The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory
depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers
aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction. This concept makes up the
framework of the 15th century book Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant, which served as the
inspiration for Bosch's famous painting, Ship of Fools: a ship--an entire fleet at first--sets off from Basel
to the paradise of fools. In literary and artistic compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, the cultural
motif of the ship of fools also served to parody the 'ark of salvation' (as the Catholic Church was styled).

Michel Foucault, who wrote Madness and Civilization, saw in the ship of fools a symbol of the
consciousness of sin and evil alive in the medieval mindset and imaginative landscapes of the
Renaissance. According to Jose Barchilon's intro to Madness and Civilization,

9.) The Summa grammaticalis quae vocatur Catholicon, or Catholicon, was completed March 7, 1286 by
John Balbi (Johannes Januensis de Balbis), of Genoa, a Dominican. The Catholicon was a religious Latin
dictionary which found wide use throughout Christendom.

The Catholicon is a Latin dictionary, which was arranged already 1286 by Johannes Balbus and served in
the late Middle Ages to interpret the Bible "correctly". The educated citizen could gather from it the
substantial knowledge of his time.
The Catholicon was one of the first books to be printed, using the new printing technology of Johannes
Gutenberg in 1460; it is unclear who did the printing. It was printed with a newly cut Gotico Antiqua, a
small but easily readable, still gothically influenced, printing type, using sixty-six lines of forty letters in
each column.

The Catholicon was printed in three editions, which – on the basis of the types of paper – in each case
can be assigned to the years 1460, 1469 and 1472. The set of these three expenditures is alike. For the
explanation of this phenomenon the printing scientist Lotte Hellinga puts forward the thesis that the
Catholicon was manufactured in the same year, only on three different presses by three different
printers, who cooperated in a joint venture. Holding against is Paul Needham, who presents the
revolutionary opinion, that the Catholicon was printed be means of plates or stereotypes, thus by firm
printing forms created from the original set. Thus this form of printing would be three centuries before
their "official" invention. The correct allocation of the Catholicon is one of the substantial problems of
the incunabula research.

10.)

11.)

12.) Intaglio refers to a number of techniques in art, applied to many different materials, which all have
in common that the image is created by cutting, carving or engraving into a flat surface, as opposed to a
relief, where the image is what is left when the background has been cut away to leave the image above
the background. The term may also refer to objects made using these techniques:

Intaglio (printmaking), a group of printmaking techniques with an incised image

Intaglio (jewellery), similar techniques in jewelry (most likely meaning for "an intaglio")

Intaglio (sculpture) is also known as sunken-relief

Intaglio (burial mound), a similar technique for decorating burial mounds with geoglyphs

Blythe Intaglios, large Native American designs on the ground in California

In wood carving, more correctly known in English as Inlay

13.) Poeticon astronomicon is a star atlas and book of stories whose text is attributed to "Hyginus",
though the true authorship is disputed. During the Renaissance, the work was attributed to the Roman
historian Gaius Julius Hyginus who lived during the first century BC However, the fact that the book lists
most of the constellations north of the ecliptic in the same order as Ptolemy's Almagest (written in the
second century AD) has led many to believe that a more recent Hyginus created the text.

The text describes 47 of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, centering primarily on the Greek and Roman
mythology surrounding the constellations, though there is some discussion of the relative positions of
stars. The first known printing was in 1475, attributed to "Ferrara."
The Poeticon astronomicon was not formally published until 1482, by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice, Italy. This
edition carried the full title Clarissimi uiri Hyginii Poeticon astronomicon opus utilissimum. Ratdolt
commissioned a series of woodcuts depicting the constellations to accompany Hyginus' text. As with
many other star atlases that would follow it, the positions of various stars are indicated overlaid on the
image of each constellation. However, the relative positions of the stars in the woodcuts bear little
resemblance to the descriptions given by Hyginus in the text or the actual positions of the stars in the
sky.

As a result of the inaccuracy of the depicted star positions and the fact that the constellations are not
shown with any context, the Poeticon astronomicon is not particularly useful as a guide to the night sky.
However, the illustrations commissioned by Ratdolt served as a template for future sky atlas renderings
of the constellation figures. The text, by contrast, is an important source, and occasionally the only
source, for some of the more obscure Greek myths.

14.) The Divine Comedy (Italian: La Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri
between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature,[1]
and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.[2] The poem's imaginative and allegorical
vision of the Christian afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the
Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard.[3] It is
divided into three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

On the surface the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; but at a deeper
level it represents allegorically the soul's journey towards God. [4] At this deeper level, Dante draws on
medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.[5] At the
surface level, the poem is understood to be fictional. [6]

Originally the work was simply titled Commedia and was later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio.
The first printed edition to add the word divine to the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico
Dolce,[7] published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari.

15.)