Dr Laure Miolo

Munby Fellow 2020-21

Email: lm886@cam.ac.uk

Laure Miolo completed her PhD in Medieval History in 2017 at the University Lyon II with a thesis devoted to the scientific medieval manuscripts of the Collège de Sorbonne, their owners and users from the 13th century to the early 16th century. She was a research associate at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Department of Manuscripts) for four years (2011-2015), and in 2014 held a Humphrey Wanley Fellowship at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. From 2016 to 2017, she worked as an intern curator and as a project cataloguer at the British Library (Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Section).

Since then, she has held post-doctoral positions in Paris, first at the Paris Observatory as part of the ERC funded project ALFA (Alfonsine astronomy), focusing on John of Genoa's astronomical works (composed in the 1330s), and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études as a PSL Scripta Research Fellow with a project dedicated to Lewis of Caerleon's writing practices. In early 2020, she was awarded a Neil Ker Memorial Fund Grant from the British Academy to pursue her research on Lewis of Caerleon.

Munby Fellow Project: Revisiting Malay Islamic Reading, Writing and Annotating astronomical manuscripts in 15th-century Cambridge. John Holbroke and Lewis of Caerleon, their books, milieux and networks.

In line with Laure's research on Lewis of Caerleon's astronomical manuscripts and writings, the project focused on manuscripts, texts and autograph marginalia of 15th-century astronomers and astrologers associated with the University of Cambridge. It aimed at better understanding the readings, writings and practices of these scholars and aimed to help unravel their relationship to textual sources and other authors. For this purpose, they mainly focused on the works and manuscripts of two major Cantabrigian astronomers, John Holbroke (d. 1437) of Peterhouse and Lewis of Caerleon (d. c. 1495). Remarkably, the UL and various College libraries possess manuscripts and autographs of both astronomers, as well as other volumes belonging to other contemporary Cantabrigians well-versed in the ‘science of the stars’.

The corpus of manuscripts studied were divided into the autographs or notebooks, which could be directly linked to these scholars; the books they commissioned, copied by a professional scribe; the manuscripts they consulted or borrowed, which can be identified by autograph marginalia; and the manuscripts they obtained at second hand or purchased. Laure's work included a catalogue of these manuscripts but also consisted of an analysis of their history and contents, the study of their annotations as well as the edition of several texts with a particular focus on Lewis of Caerleon's astronomical works. Overall, the project intended to provide an overview of the readings, practices and milieux of these astronomers who established a new scientific tradition in Cambridge.

Selection of publications:

• 'Retracing the tradition of John of Genoa's Corpus astronomicum through extant manuscripts', in ALFA: Alfonsine Astronomy Book 1, ed. by R. L. Kremer, M. Husson, J. Chabás (forthcoming, Brepols publishers).
• (with Prof. Jean-Patrice Boudet) 'Alfonsine Astronomy and Astrology in Fourteenth Century Oxford: the case of MS Bodleian Library, Digby 176' in ALFA: Alfonsine Astronomy Book 1, ed. by R. L. Kremer, M. Husson, J. Chabás (forthcoming, Brepols publishers).
• 'La Scientia stellarum entre la France et l’Angleterre', in France et Angleterre : manuscrits médiévaux entre 700 et 1200, ed. by C. Denoël, F. Siri Bibliologia 57 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) [in press, release 10/2020].
• 'Un manuscrit de Pierre de Limoges († 1306) à la British Library. À propos du codex London, BL, Additional MS 38688', Scriptorium 74 (2020), 79-111.
• 'In quest of Jean des Murs’ Library', Erudition and the Republic of Letters 4 (2019), 13-39.
• 'Le Liber de causis et l’Elementatio theologica dans deux bibliothèques anglaises:. Merton College, Oxford et Peterhouse, Cambridge', in Reading Proclus and the Book of causes. 1: Western scholarly networks and debates, ed. by D. Calma, M. Geoffroy, Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic tradition, 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 120-150.
• 'Liber de causis in libraria. Pour une mise en perspective du Liber de causis dans la bibliothèque du collège de Sorbonne', in Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages, II. New Commentaries on Liber de causis and Elementatio theologica (ca. 1350-1500), ed. by D. Calma ( Brepols: Turnhout, 2016), pp. 337-499.
• 'Science des nombres, science des formes : arithmétique et géométrie dans la Biblionomia de Richard de Fournival' in Richard de Fournival et les sciences, ed. by C. Lucken, J. Ducos, Micrologus Library 88, (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, SISMEL, 2018), pp. 155-178.
• 'La formation d’un modèle scientifique universitaire: le traitement du quadrivium au sein de la bibliothèque de Sorbonne' in Apprendre, produire, se conduire: le modèle au Moyen Age. Actes du 45ème congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015), pp. 275-284.

Selection of seminars, conferences and workshops organised:

• Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (Manuscripts Department), 2019-2020: Seminar series "Introduction to medieval astronomy and astrology", with Dr. Alexandre Tur (BnF).
• Paris, École Normale Supérieure, 3-4 December 2019: International workshop "Clues of Observation practices in astronomy, medicine and natural sciences in the late Middle Ages (Arabic, Hebrew, Latin sources)", with Dr. Matthieu Husson, Prof. José Chabas and Prof. Richard Kremer.
• Paris, Observatory, 10-12 September 2019: Young Scholars International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), "Transcultural Knowledge".
• Paris, Observatory, May 2019: International workshop "Performing (with) Manuscripts", in collaboration with Dr. Matthieu Husson, Prof. Richard Kremer and the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg.
• Paris, 24-27 Sept. 2018: “Analysing the corpus of Alfonsine text”, in collaboration with Dr. Matthieu Husson, Prof. José Chabas and Prof. Richard Kremer.
• Paris, 15 June 2018, Bibliothèque nationale de France: ‘Show and tell’: Exploring Scientific Medieval Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France