Evina Stein
Until August 2021, I was a VENI postdoctoral researcher at the Huygens Institute, a humanities institute of the Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. My project Innovating Knowledge completed in October 2021 focused on early medieval intellectual networks and the role of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, the most important medieval encyclopedia, as a receptacle and vehicle of innovation in this period. I have began exploring this subject in 2017-18 as a Mellon Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto.
I received a PhD from Utrecht University in 2016 for my research on annotation symbols in early medieval Western manuscripts. My monograph/handbook of late antique and early medieval annotation symbols was published with Brepols in July 2019: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503581705-1.
I have carried out my PhD research in the project Marginal Scholarship: The Practice of Learning in the Early Middle Ages at Huygens ING, an institute of the Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, in The Hague. I have a keen interest in early medieval annotation practices, in particular the use of symbols rather than words in this context - and I might be the right person to ask a question about this subject.
I have been trained in Classical and Medieval Latin (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic) and in Medieval Studies (RMA Utrecht University, the Netherlands). In the recent years, I have expanded my skills to Latin paleography and codicology and digital humanities. Besides Latin, I also know some Hebrew and I worked with Hebrew texts (for example, I published several articles about the 1389 Prague Easter pogrom), and I am interested in Jewish Studies and the late antique history of the Middle East. I hope to improve my coding and paleography skills in the future and hopefully get back to Hebrew and medieval Jewish history.
I also try to write popularizing articles about history-related topics on various platforms, both in English and Slovak (my native language), and to organize popularizing events. If you are interested in this material, scroll down and you will find most of my published texts below.
Supervisors: Mariken Teeuwen and Mayke de Jong
I received a PhD from Utrecht University in 2016 for my research on annotation symbols in early medieval Western manuscripts. My monograph/handbook of late antique and early medieval annotation symbols was published with Brepols in July 2019: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503581705-1.
I have carried out my PhD research in the project Marginal Scholarship: The Practice of Learning in the Early Middle Ages at Huygens ING, an institute of the Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, in The Hague. I have a keen interest in early medieval annotation practices, in particular the use of symbols rather than words in this context - and I might be the right person to ask a question about this subject.
I have been trained in Classical and Medieval Latin (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic) and in Medieval Studies (RMA Utrecht University, the Netherlands). In the recent years, I have expanded my skills to Latin paleography and codicology and digital humanities. Besides Latin, I also know some Hebrew and I worked with Hebrew texts (for example, I published several articles about the 1389 Prague Easter pogrom), and I am interested in Jewish Studies and the late antique history of the Middle East. I hope to improve my coding and paleography skills in the future and hopefully get back to Hebrew and medieval Jewish history.
I also try to write popularizing articles about history-related topics on various platforms, both in English and Slovak (my native language), and to organize popularizing events. If you are interested in this material, scroll down and you will find most of my published texts below.
Supervisors: Mariken Teeuwen and Mayke de Jong
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Videos by Evina Stein
This talk was originally presented at the monthly webinar of the Huygens Institute on November 25, 2020.
Books by Evina Stein
This book represents the first systematic study of annotation symbols used in the Latin West between c. 400 and c. 900. Combining paleographic evidence with the evidence of written sources such as late antique and early medieval lists of signs, this book identifies the most important communities of sign users and conventions in use in the early Middle Ages. It explores some of the notable differences between regions, periods, linguistic communities and classes of users and reconstructs a fascinating history of the practice of using signs, rather than words, to annotate text. Those who work with early medieval manuscripts will, furthermore, find this book to be a practical handbook of the most common annotation symbols attested in early medieval Western manuscripts or discussed in ancient and medieval sources.
Papers by Evina Stein
The new version is available at: https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/22292
This talk was originally presented at the monthly webinar of the Huygens Institute on November 25, 2020.
This book represents the first systematic study of annotation symbols used in the Latin West between c. 400 and c. 900. Combining paleographic evidence with the evidence of written sources such as late antique and early medieval lists of signs, this book identifies the most important communities of sign users and conventions in use in the early Middle Ages. It explores some of the notable differences between regions, periods, linguistic communities and classes of users and reconstructs a fascinating history of the practice of using signs, rather than words, to annotate text. Those who work with early medieval manuscripts will, furthermore, find this book to be a practical handbook of the most common annotation symbols attested in early medieval Western manuscripts or discussed in ancient and medieval sources.
The new version is available at: https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/22292
Older data versions are available at: https://zenodo.org/record/8378866
• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to corpora of pre-modern manuscripts and texts;
• Network analysis as a means of understanding the circulation of texts and transmission of knowledge in the pre-modern period;
• Quantitative study of networks of medieval book exchange and letter exchange;
• Network analysis as a tool of textual criticism and text editing;
• Network graphs as stemmata of texts and genres with complex textual history;
• Networks of co-citation of pre-modern authors and authoritative texts;
• Networks of co-occurrence and compilation of texts in medieval manuscripts;
• Network analysis as a tool for the study of annotation practices and commentary traditions in pre-modern manuscript cultures;
• Network analysis as a tool for the study of citation and reception in pre-modern manuscript cultures.
1 300 words
An up-to-date version of this handout can be found at: https://mittelalter.hypotheses.org/22292
If you have questions about any of the signs or sign categories, comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact me at: evina.steinova@gmail.com
If you are interested in the subject, you may also wish to check the prezi 'Pay attention and mark your references!' which was created to accompany this summary with images: https://prezi.com/ktarevrxflrv/pay-attention-and-mark-your-references-the-use-of-technical-signs-in-manuscript-margins/.
See: https://prezi.com/ktarevrxflrv/pay-attention-and-mark-your-references-the-use-of-technical/
Drvivá väčšina týchto poznámok na okrajoch strán je však anonymná, a preto nevieme určiť, či ich vyhotovil niekto zo známych vzdelancov alebo nie. Len zriedkavo sa odborníkom podarí identifikovať autorov takýchto prípiskov, ale závery ich analýz nie sú vždy prijaté širšou vedeckou komunitou. Kniha Michelle Brown vyšla iba v októbri, a preto si ešte musíme počkať na finálny verdikt odbornej komunity o jej hypotéze.
Rok 2017 sa zatiaľ ukazuje ako obzvlášť plodný pre tých, ktorí sa venujú dejinám matematiky. V auguste dvojica matematikov z Austrálie oznámila, že našli trigonometrickú tabuľku vyhotovenú v starovekej Mezopotámii na začiatku 2. tisícročia pred n. l., čím posunuli objav trigonometrie o vyše 1500 rokov hlbšie do minulosti. V septembri zasa médiami zarezonovala správa o tom, že v Bodleyovej knižnici (Bodleian Library) v Oxforde bol objavený najstarší doklad moderného symbolu nula. Čím je tento objav výnimočný a významný?
Tradične sa uvádza, že trigonometriu, oblasť matematiky zaoberajúcu sa pomerom uhlov a strán v trojuholníkoch, vynašiel grécky astronóm Hipparchos v 2. storočí pred n. l. Dvaja austrálski matematici však tvrdia, že obyvatelia starovekej Mezopotámie položili základy trigonometrie vyše 1500 rokov pred Hipparchom. Nie všetci odborníci však s ich závermi súhlasia.
It is widely believed that trigonometry was invented by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchos in the 2nd century BCE. However, two Australian mathematicians have recently claimed that inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia may have laid the foundation of trigonometry some 1 500 years before Hipparchos. Not all specialists agree with their interpretation of a well-known mathematical cuneiform tablet - Plimpton 322.
This popular article discusses the secret prison diaries of a Spanish converso, who was prosecuted by the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico in the late 16th century for returning back to Judaism. After their theft from the National Library in Mexico City in the 1930s, they were rediscovered in a British auction house in 2016 and digitized by Princenton (in Slovak).
This article summarizes the newest evidence of 'genetic engineering' in the Middle Ages, which has affected the current genome of domesticated chickens, horses, fruits and vegetables (in Slovak).
A popularizing article about the discovery of Roman coins in Japan and possible remains of ethnic Chinese at a Roman burial site in Britain (in Slovak).
A popularizing article about the early medieval mathematical puzzles preserved in Propositiones ad acuendos iuvenos (in Slovak)
A blog post written for Historyweb.sk concerned with the Yale Culinary Tablets and the history of cooking (in Slovak).
Tento článok vyšiel 19.11.2015 na HistoryWeb.sk: http://historyweb.dennikn.sk/clanky/detail/utok-v-parizi-sa-nepodoba-vyplieneniu-rima#.Vlmgir-ELbv
I have prepared this blogpost for historyweb.sk. It is aimed at wider audience and concerns the child oblation in the Early Middle Ages (in Slovak).
This book review (in Slovak) was published in Česká literatura 3 (2017), ss. 429-435.
This is just an excerpt of a longer article that was published on 18 August 2016 by In Vivo magazine at: http://invivomagazin.sk/myty-o-vedeckej-revolucii-chybne-predstavy-o-vitazstve-heliocentrizmu_481.html.
This newspaper interview made by Zuzana Zimmerman was published by HN History on 10 January 2022, at: https://history.hnonline.sk/starsie-dejiny/18486260-medievalistka-evina-steinova-aj-stredovek-mal-svoju-wikipediu-a-bol-to-bestseller
An interview published in the weekly Týždeň (in Slovak) on July 23rd, 2017. Author: Anton Vydra
https://www.tyzden.sk/rozhovory/41203/nijaka-doba-nie-je-temna/
Interview with Science.sk (July 6, 2015), by Zuzana Vítková. Available at: http://science.dennikn.sk/clanky-a-rozhovory/spolocnost-a-kultura/dejiny/5810-historicka-stereotypy-su-rovnake-stovky-rokov-aj-my-raz-budeme-ti-spinavi-a-zaostali
Sponsored by the ERC Project CONNEC 'Connected Clerics: Building a Universal Church in the Late Antique West' and Royal Holloway, University of London. Organised by Victoria Leonard, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London and David Natal Villazala.
For the presentation, check the link above.
In my presentation, I wish to present the first attempt at such a systematization. I examined ninth-century manuscripts available in the digital collection of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and combined my observations with additional information provided by works of Bischoff and Bergmann. I am here presenting the first statistical output - the numbers of manuscripts annotated versus devoid of marginal activity in this particular set. I further examine which of these annotated manuscripts can be connected to known sites of production, contain particular texts or types of texts, what is the relationship between annotation and the physical form of these manuscripts in terms of dimension and which hands may be identified in the margin, where possible. In addition, I classified the manuscripts in question according to distinct types of marginalia contained in them and provide a comparison based on this classification.
In this respect, it is significant, that the signs that occur in medieval margins resemble strongly the signs that were used in earlier periods, in Hellenistic Alexandria and in Classical Rome, and can be found in the fragments of ancient papyri. Medieval sources, such as Isidore’s De Notis in the first book of Etymologiae and the Anecdoton Parisinum, a sign list in Paris lat. 7530, further claim that the signs they list go back to the Roman grammarians (Valerius Probus, who worked on Virgil, Horace and Lucretius) and the Alexandrians (Aristarchos, who worked on Homer). This was the line of thought that was elaborated by the scholars in the 19th century, who wished to see the Ancients as the first philologists, emending and commenting upon canonical texts by means of marginal signs. Yet, the new material discoveries in the 20th century and a thorough re-examination of the theory made clear, that there are rather large differences between the medieval and pre-medieval signposts, even if they have the same graphic form. The Greek and Latin signposts were used exclusively for philological annotation of classical poetry and were conceived as a personal tool of the scholars, deployed into their private copies of texts and, at best, shared with their inner circle of apprentices. Moreover, the presupposed editions and commentaries of the ancient scholars disappeared in a wisp of smoke, as it became evident that their hypomnemata and notae were, rather, private notes, to be treated casually, or might have had only an oral form. The medieval signposts represent, in contrast, a much vivid, flexible and firmly-established phenomenon, that approaches our modern practices of handling texts. They occur in texts irrespectively of the nature of the content, classical as well as medieval, poetry or prose, literary or non-literary, and serve a wide array of functions, from criticizing ideologies and interpretations, through indicating corrupted passages and places in need of emendation, to providing an exit-point for further extraction or querying of information. Furthermore, they were employed by whole communities and might have been even consciously, and en masse, taught at school. It is noteworthy, that it is only in the early Middle Ages, whether in the Greek- or Latin-speaking word, that they are assigned names and materialize in sign lists and scholia. While there is certainly a grain of truth in the lists of Isidore and in the Anecdoton Parisinum, such as their Greek background, the association with historical figures is “mythological”, or perhaps “mythopoeic”, rather than real. By all indications, the lists represent an amalgamate of sources that cannot be older than the Late Antiquity and were fueled by pre-extant mythology of ancient scholars, Suetonian and Servian Valerius Probus, and the Alexandrians as captured by the early medieval Greek scholia.
The two sets of practices - medieval signposting and classical annotating - share some important similarities, which, however, may derive from the general nature of the manuscript culture, e.g. their graphematic form and position in the margin. On large, they arose from distinct contexts and needs and thus cannot be seen as directly related. The Carolingians, rather, (re-)invented their own practice, framed into a particular manuscript context (parchment codices, punctuated and divided script, and relatively legible Caroline minuscule, as opposed to papyrus rolls, scriptio continua, and classical scripts with their low readability) and responding to their aspirations, such as accumulation of knowledge on an unprecedented scale. As a part of this programme, the Alexandrian/Roman tradition was seized and incorporated into the vibrant, emerging medieval scholarly culture, blending in with those aspects that had no relation to it. As a result, the Alexandrian philological markers occurred side by side with signposts stemming from other traditions (Tironian shorthand) or invented intuitively in the Carolingian period (crosses, slashes, dot-signs).
Alexandrijská knižnica je považovaná za jeden z divov starovekého sveta. Táto inštitúcia, ktorú v 3. storočí pred n.l. založili v Egypte vládcovia z dynastie Ptolemaiovcov, mohla počas dní svojej najväčšej slávy obsahovať až pol milióna kníh, viac ako ktorákoľvek podobná inštitúcia pred ňou. Bola tiež domovom viacerých veľkých vedcov starovekého sveta. Vďaka veľkosti a prestíži Alexandrijskej knižnice by sa mohlo zdať, že tento projekt bol pre starovekú vedu požehnaním. Istú dobu to tak skutočne aj bolo. Z hľadiska uchovávania dát pre budúce generácie však knižnica bola skôr katastrofou. Je dokonca možné, že Alexandrijská knižnica prispela k tomu, že sa nám zo starovekých gréckych vedeckých a technických spisov takmer nič nedochovalo.
Ako je možné, že z preslávenej kolekcie Alexandrijskej knižnice neprežil ani jeden bit dát? Pritom z omnoho staršej Aššurbanipalovej knižnice v Ninive, ktorá mala podobné ambície ako knižnica v Alexandrii, sa nám dochovalo niekoľko tisíc klinopisných tabuliek. Naopak, kláštory raného stredoveku, miesta, ktoré si obvykle nespájame s pestovaním vzdelanosti a šírením vedeckých poznatkov, sa preukázali v 9. storočí ako efektívne depozitáre kníh a vzdelanosti, ktorým vďačíme v podstate aj za všetky dodnes zachované staroveké znalosti.
Prečo sa stala Alexandrijská knižnica čiernou dierou pre dáta a prečo naopak kláštory v ranom stredoveku sa stali rajom starých kníh? A čo sa môžeme podučiť od starovekých alexandrijských učencov a stredovekých mníchov o tom, ako efektívne navrhovať dátovú infraštruktúru dnes?
Večera s Havranom sa bude venovať stredoveku. S moderátorom Michalom Havranom budú o stredovekých mentalitách, klišé o temnej dobe a otázke, či sme iní, ako ľudia 11. storočia debatovať Evina Steinová z Univerzity Utrecht, Martin Nodl z Univerzity Karlovy a Tunde Lengyelová z HU SAV.
Reláciu RTVS vysiela v premiére v utorok 23. februára 2016 na Dvojke o 22:40.
V archíve STV na: http://www.rtvs.sk/televizia/archiv/10128/88831
Location: Sapienza-University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, Rome, CU003 (Faculty of “Lettere e Filosofia”), Third Floor, Department of “Storia Religioni Arte Spettacolo“, Room “A di Studi storico religiosi".
The reference version is kept at: http://fragmentology.ms