Description

This five-day intensive course explores the Middle Rhine Valley between Mainz and Bingen as a vital center of European learning, religious life, manuscript production, and printing from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. Designed for librarians, scholars, antiquarian booksellers, collectors, and others interested in the history of the book, the course combines expert lectures, close examination of original materials, hands-on workshops, and visits to significant cultural and historical sites in Mainz, Bingen, Rüdesheim, and the surrounding region.

The course begins in Mainz, where participants will examine the city’s development from a Roman settlement into a powerful ecclesiastical, political, and commercial center. Visits to Mainz Cathedral, the Diocesan Museum, and the Wissenschaftliche Stadtbibliothek (Mainz City Library) will introduce the religious institutions, monastic networks, artistic traditions, and geographic conditions that supported the region’s rich book culture. Selected manuscripts — including medieval choir books and examples of Mainz Gothic fleuronnée decoration — will provide opportunities to study the physical characteristics, production, use, and preservation of handwritten books.

At the Museum am Strom in Bingen and at the former Rupertsberg monastery, participants will investigate the life, works, and intellectual legacy of Hildegard von Bingen. Lectures and site visits will place Hildegard’s theological, musical, scientific, and medical writings within the context of medieval monastic culture while also engaging critically with recent scholarship and the construction of her modern reputation. At the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Rüdesheim, participants will explore the transmission of Hildegard’s works through the Scivias manuscript tradition and learn about the contemporary work of the sisters including conservation, preservation, bookbinding, and wine making.

The course then turns to fifteenth-century Mainz and the development of printing with movable type. Sessions at the Gutenberg Library and Gutenberg Museum will consider Johannes Gutenberg’s innovations in relation to existing technologies and practices — including manuscript production, metalworking, the wine press, and regional trade. Particular attention will be given to Gutenberg, Peter Schöffer, and the craftspeople, merchants, fairs, and transportation networks that enabled early printing to flourish in the region. Examination of incunables such as Schöffer’s Gart der Gesundheit will reveal the continuing influence of manuscript conventions on the design, decoration, and use of early printed books.

Throughout the week, hands-on workshops in manuscript illumination, historical ink making, bookbinding, and letterpress printing will deepen participants’ understanding of the materials and labor involved in producing books. Site-based learning, conversations with local specialists, and structured reflection will encourage participants to connect individual objects with the religious, intellectual, technological, environmental, and commercial networks through which they were created and circulated.

This course concludes at the beginning of Johannisnacht, a festival celebrating Gutenberg. If you want to partake you should plan ahead.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Analyze manuscripts and incunables as material objects, identifying evidence of their production, decoration, use, transmission, and preservation.
• Explain the religious, political, geographic, and commercial factors that made the Middle Rhine Valley an important center of medieval learning and book production.
• Situate Hildegard von Bingen’s writings and intellectual legacy within medieval monastic culture and critically assess their later reception.
• Describe the materials, tools, skills, and collaborative labor involved in manuscript illumination, ink making, binding, and early printing.
• Evaluate continuities and differences between manuscript and print culture, including the influence of scribal traditions on early typography and book design.
• Situate Gutenberg’s innovations within established artisanal practices and regional networks of trade, transportation, and communication.
• Compare the roles of monasteries, ecclesiastical institutions, libraries, workshops, and urban commercial centers in the production and circulation of books.
• Apply insights gained through object-based and experiential learning to the description, interpretation, teaching, collecting, and stewardship of rare books and manuscripts.

Application Deadlines

• Priority applications and scholarship applications are due February 1, 2027.
• Rolling applications are accepted until April 15, 2027 or until the course is fully-enrolled.
• Tuition for all accepted participants is due May 1, 2027.

Special Considerations

• A limited number of scholarships may be available.
• The course is dependent on enrollment confirmations. It is strongly recommended that potential participants book only refundable flights, hotels, and other travel arrangements.
• In some field sites, transportation may be infrequent, so wait times may be surprising.
• CalRBS is not responsible for the weather, institutional closures, restaurant dietary accommodations, and political disruptions. Many institutions in Europe do not have building climate control.