A film about the creation of the manuscripts, produced for Tyniec Abbey

as part of a temporary exhibition in the monastery scriptorium, which was open to visitors in 2018–2019.

A film was produced for this beautiful exhibition, which briefly explains how a handwritten, illuminated page was created.

For the project, we chose a page featuring the opening of Psalm 1, which is adorned with an illuminated initial ‘B’. The film shows the individual stages: cutting the parchment, preparing it for writing and painting, trimming the quill, ruling the page, preparing the pigments, writing the text with a goose quill, gilding, and finally illuminating the entire page.

The film was directed and produced by Marcin Gęsiarz in record time. It was a wonderful project that we carried out together at Tyniec Abbey. 

This is what the Chronić Dobro Foundation wrote about the exhibition at Tyniec Abbey:

“For centuries, the monastic scriptoria were the scene of what might truly be called ‘Benedictine work’, demanding great patience and precision from the scribes. On the one hand, it was a noble occupation, as it required highly valued skills and left a lasting legacy. For this reason, it was recommended that only humble monks should become scribes. On the other hand, it was exhausting work, about which people complained, even in the margins of the works being copied, as in the famous surviving words: ‘three fingers work, but the whole body toils’.

Amidst Europe’s turbulent history, amidst wars and conflagrations, it was the monastic libraries that proved to be the most faithful custodians of knowledge and preserved books until the time when the invention of printing, and subsequently other technologies, allowed for the unlimited reproduction of text.

And today, with such easy and cheap access to the written word, are we still able to appreciate the work of medieval scribes and the legacy they have passed on to us?”

You can see the movie here.

back