Coffee With A Codex is an informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak Curator Dot Porter and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different manuscript and the expertise of other curators. We meet over Zoom on Wednesdays at 12pm ET / 5pm GMT / 9am PT and everyone is welcome to attend.

On May 25, Curator Dot Porter brought out LJS 361, a 14th c. Italian manuscript containing both a remnant of commentaries on gospel and epistle readings and astronomical and astrological tables mainly relating to determining days related to the church year. The manuscript was written in Naples in 1327, all by a single scribe, and there are a few doodles in the margins that, it has been argued, were added by small children.

LJS 361: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9951500353503681

Further Reading:
Thorpe, Deborah Ellen (2016) Young hands, old books: : Drawings by children in a fourteenth-century manuscript, LJS MS. 361. Cogent Arts & Humanities. 1196864. pp. 1-18. (https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/102519/)

Bohak, Gideon. "Stars without a Table: Planetary Horocrators from the Cairo Geniza." Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 111 no. 3, 2021, p. 380-388. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jqr.2021.0026. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/810810)

More about Coffee With A Codex, including links to join our mailing list and to register for future events: https://schoenberginstitute.org/coffee-with-a-codex/