Virginia Brown, paleographer and fellow emerita of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, passed away over the weekend. A notice from her husband is posted here; thanks to Drew Traver for the link. VB taught me paleography and codicology in my first year at Toronto and I was her teaching assistant the following year. I spent a spring chasing Ege leaves around the Great Lakes for her and a really rather extremely memorable week in Sicily with her in 1997. I am going to have the honor this fall of holding the fellowship in paleography named for her at Ohio State and had been looking forward to consulting her at PIMS in 2010. Her death brings home forcefully how much paleography is still a craft passed from person to person, like dance. For all the studies and catalogues published by the great paleographers, there comes a point where what you need is someone’s oculus peering over your shoulder. Questions I wish I could ask VB are flooding into my head, and I’m sure the sense of loss will only grow the deeper I get into the work of my edition.
Addendum: PIMS has posted a more complete notice here.
3 responses so far ↓
meg // July 7, 2009 at 6:36 pm |
That is sad. 69 seems so young to me now…
Carin // July 7, 2009 at 6:41 pm |
Indeed, and before this paleographers always seemed such a long-lived bunch. VB used to delight in telling stories of the deaths of famous paleographers. We thought there ought to be a fresco cycle on the theme.
What Now? // September 9, 2009 at 8:44 am |
Oh, Carin, I’m so sorry — what a loss for you and many other scholars.