Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation

Within European manuscript culture in the twelfth-century, a vast network of monastic and cathedral scholars circulated texts between their institutions, copying them, incorporating them into other manuscripts, and, in turn, preserving them. This study of the early circulation of two texts by Nicolaus Maniacutius (†ca. 1145), a Cistercian scholar in Rome, reveals that they were incorporated into other codices in Rome, London, and northern England through different types of scholarly networks, and suggests some of the modes of transmission. How these texts were circulated clearly indicates how each text was valued, and demonstrates how "intellectual property" was valued in twelfth-century Europe.