Hold my hand, Guido, and teach me to sing

While I was in the Philadelphia library looking at the Poe exhibit I found out that they are digitizing many of their holdings. They have their medieval manuscripts online and available through Columbia University's Digital Scriptorium. Which is pretty great. I had planned to write a post about the rare book collection at the Philadelphia Library, but this image from the Scriptorium hijacked me.



This is a "Guidonian hand with somatization symbols." Guidonian hands, in case you didn't know, diagram a medieval method of learning to site sing. You can read about them here, and there's a lovely short video of someone demonstrating their usefulness below.




But don't you just want to look at them? I love them.



The Granger Collection, NY



The Guido in question is Guido d'Arezzo, pictured here.



This is a parody of a Guidonian hand from this blog.



While I was looking at hand diagrams I came across a glove map of London.



It's from Bioephemera, which looks like a great blog, and from there I went to this wonderful collection of hand images that includes a really great grisly description of the medieval "hand of glory" that should creep you out just in time for Halloween.

Here are some more hand diagrams, just because they're awesome.