Fun in the Margins: Line Fillers in Western MS 097

This exhibit explores the line-fillers found in the thirteenth-century Dominican gradual Western MS 097, located in Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. More specifically, it aims to group the many examples that appear across the pages of the Domenican manuscript into several discrete categories based on visual kinship. Helixes, flowers, hybrid combinations, and other "unclassified" or "miscellaneous" instances emerged as the major categories that can consolidate the overwhelming omnipresence of line-fillers in the gradual. 

The surprisingly low number of categories that emerged in this analysis suggests that line-fillers do not represent a product of free improvisation or uninhibited creativity. While within individual classes one can note a certain degree of freedom and deviation, it still appears that most line-fillers closely followed a particular schemata. Accordingly, the fascinating field of line-filling can be understood as a language with its own unique rules of grammar and syntax. Just like in verbal languages, the potential for diversity is situated not in individual elements, but in the great degree of combinatorial possibilities and inflections. Thus, while the scribe stayed faithful to a modest repertoire of forms, he could reorient them, turn them upside down, and connect them in unexpected ways. 

The points addressed so far are mostly concerned with the question of what (and how) does a line-filler do? In addition to the problem of functions and mechanism, this exhibition attempts to probe a much more difficult question of what is it that a line-fillers means. Through several brief observations and superficial comparisons, the examples in the following pages will suggest the ability of line-fillers to grapple with complex meanings of mortality, Mariology, and laziness.