Around the middle of a career lasting over forty years, Guillaume de Machaut (c.1300-77) was afforded an outstanding opportunity to present his oeuvre in a book. The occasion arose in the late 1340s, when a special manuscript was commissioned, perhaps by Queen Jeanne de Bourgogne, for the first time collecting all of Machaut's works, including narrative poems, lyrical poems, musical settings of lyrics, and motets. The manuscript would celebrate Bonne of Luxembourg, the wife of a future king of France. Only the royal treasury could have funded the extraordinary team of craftsmen involved in its production - from the careful preparation of fine parchment, to the calligraphy and ornament of the text, to the carefully copied innovative ars nova musical notation, to the miniatures painted in a shop directed by one of the greatest illuminators in France. Then Bonne died of the Black Death in 1349, just before the manuscript was completed. It would be finished for her son, the future King Charles the Wise. Although Machaut would go on to supervise other manuscripts, none were so luxuriously executed as his first complete-works manuscript (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, fr. 1586), known today as Machaut MS C. The present volume, the first dedicated entirely to MS C, offers a multidisciplinary collection of essays written by fourteen leading scholars, who provide innovative approaches to literary, musical, art-historical, and manuscript studies. It is replete with images, including over sixty colour reproductions from MS C itself.

Contemplative reading is a spiritual practice developed by Christian monks in sixth- and seventh-century Mesopotamia. Mystics belonging to the Church of the East pursued a form of contemplation which moved from reading, to meditation, to prayer, to the ecstasy of divine vision. The Library of Paradise tells the story of this Syriac tradition in three phases: its establishment as an ascetic practice, the articulation of its theology, and its maturation and spread. The sixth-century monastic reform of Abraham of Kashkar codified the essential place of reading in East Syrian ascetic life. Once established, the practice of contemplative reading received extensive theological commentary. Abraham's successor Babai the Great drew upon the ascetic system of Evagrius of Pontus to explain the relationship of reading to the monk's pursuit of God. Syriac monastic handbooks of the seventh century built on this Evagrian framework. 'Enanisho' of Adiabene composed an anthology called Paradise that would stand for centuries as essential reading matter for Syriac monks. Dadisho' of Qatar wrote a widely copied commentary on the Paradise. Together, these works circulated as a one-volume library which offered readers a door to "Paradise" through contemplation. The Library of Paradise is the first book-length study of East Syrian contemplative reading. It adapts methodological insights from prior scholarship on reading, including studies on Latin lectio divina. By tracing the origins of East Syrian contemplative reading, this study opens the possibility for future investigation into its legacies, including the tradition's long reception history in Sogdian, Arabic, and Ethiopic monastic libraries.