Exhibition Closing
Shaping the Soul: Medieval Manuscripts Exhibition
Aubrey R. Watzek Library, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, ORegon
12 January to 6 March 2026
Credit: R. Hanel Photography
From January 12 to March 6, over thirty items from the 13th through 16th centuries will be on display in Aubrey R. Watzek Library. Bringing together books normally unavailable to the public with recent acquisitions by Lewis & Clark’s Watzek Library, Shaping the Soul is the first public exhibition of medieval manuscripts in Portland in nearly three decades.
Viewing a medieval manuscript is a profoundly intimate experience. Unlike today’s mass-produced publications, medieval manuscripts are unique, bespoke productions, revealing traces of both their makers and their readers. Medieval books also performed a number of roles: developing moral character through education, nurturing interiority through meditation and prayer, creating community through shared use in worship, forming the public self through legal documentation, and more. Shaping the Soul demonstrates the various ways that people understood themselves and their world through books. Highlights include a nun’s private devotional handbook, a lawyer’s manual with amusing doodles for memory aids, a grand choir book, a thirteenth-century Bible, and sumptuous books of hours.
Curated by Professor Gross (Professor of English) and Alli Sanders (BA ’26), this exhibition is made possible in part through the Manuscripts in the Curriculum initiative developed by the international art dealer Les Enluminures (Chicago, New York, and Paris). Lewis & Clark is the first liberal arts college to participate in this program. Shaping the Soul also benefits from generous loans made by Phillip J. Pirages’s Fine Books & Manuscripts (McMinnville, Oregon). These partnerships attest to the unique opportunities created by Lewis & Clark’s instruction in Special Collections and the strong reputation for research by faculty, staff, and students.
For more information, visit https://college.lclark.edu/live/news/57521-shaping-the-soul-medieval-manuscripts-exhibition