Department of English

See this coverage as it originally appeared in OMNIA: https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/medieval-manuscript

Medieval Manuscript

By Michele W. Berger

For the past year, Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, and a team of graduate students have transcribed, translated, and interpreted a scroll that chronicles the genealogy of Yorkist king Edward IV.

Most family trees that trace back hundreds of years are extensive. But 16 feet long unfurled? That’s the footprint of the Edward IV Roll, which was created in the early 1460s and has been at the Free Library of Philadelphia for more than 85 years. This medieval manuscript chronicles the genealogy of Yorkist king Edward IV, starting with Adam and Eve. For the past year, Emily Steiner, Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of English, and a team of graduate students—Emma Dyson in the Department of Classical Studies, and Noa Nikolsky and Ariel Bates in the Department of English—have been transcribing, translating, and interpreting the scroll, thanks to a grant from the Richard III Society American Branch. “These rolls are in Latin, and they are handwritten, often in a cramped style to fit the words into odd spaces,” Steiner says. There are both standard and non-standard abbreviations to contend with, in addition to deciphering what Steiner calls the document’s “propagandistic” intentions. “History gets massaged in these rolls,” she says. “It’s intriguing for the students to see how many different ways there are to record the past.” It’s been a labor of love, she adds. By fall 2024, the team’s translation will be fully digitized by Penn Libraries.

See more in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of OMNIA.