In recent years, the digitization of medieval manuscripts has grown from a few intrepid trickles to a global flood. Driven by twin commitments to preservation and access, major digitization efforts dedicated to medieval books have arisen across the planet. This tide has also given rise to important warnings that digitization is fundamentally transforming scholarly work upon medieval books.5Although “the physical” and “the digital” are frequently presented in opposition, beneath significant disagreements all sides share core convictions. Namely, that medieval books matter, that they must be cared for, preserved, read, and maintained, that these objects’ physical forms—their words, miniatures, margins, fore-edges and bindings—are vitally important to uncovering complex textual meanings, and to recovering the identities, concerns, and desires of the people who made and read these books centuries before us.

Atop these core convictions, there are significant differences between the work that can be done on physical, analogue codices and that which can be done using digital medieval manuscripts. In photographs, much of the sensual experience of the codex goes missing: one cannot touch it, hear it, smell the book; one cannot see the particular movement of these specific leaves as they respond to the exact humidity of the weather on the day of the reader's visit.