In Memoriam Albert Derolez (1934-2026)
The Mmmonk project partners (Ghent University Library – Boekentoren, Bruges Public Library, Ten Duinen Major Seminary Bruges and the Diocese of Ghent) announce with great sadness the passing of Albert Derolez, internationally renowned medievalist and expert in the study of medieval manuscripts. His exceptional knowledge of and passion for the Liber Floridus and other manuscripts in the Mmmonk corpus will leave a profound and enduring impression.
Eulogy by Hendrik Defoort, Head of Collections, Ghent University Library – Boekentoren
"Albert Derolez studied Greek and Latin humanities at the Royal Athenaeum in Ghent before going on to study History at Ghent State University (1952–1956). His love of Latin led him to specialise in Antiquity and to write his licentiate dissertation on a subject in Gallo-Roman archaeology, under Professor Sigfried De Laet. Medieval Studies carried such weight in the historical education of the time that every student was, as it were, also trained as a medievalist, including in the palaeography of the Middle Ages. A one-year assistantship in the Palaeography course under Professor Egied I. Strubbe (1957–1958) enabled him to develop his expertise in the field further. After a year as a secondary-school teacher, he was appointed in 1959 as a research fellow of the National Fund for Scientific Research, with responsibility for collecting and publishing Belgium’s medieval book lists. This work would eventually grow into the Corpus Catalogorum Belgii, published by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. The first volume appeared in 1966; the project was resumed and continued from 1994 to 2016, resulting in seven volumes, with Albert as principal editor. This work required numerous visits to Belgian libraries and archival repositories. In 1959, he had also taken the examination for Archivist-Palaeographer at the General State Archives, coming first among the candidates in the Dutch-language section.
Having qualified as an Archivist-Palaeographer (1959) and Librarian-Bibliographer (1962), he was appointed in 1962 as a librarian, and later curator, in the Manuscripts and Rare Books Department of Ghent University Library. This opened up new perspectives, increasingly focused on the study of manuscripts. Through his collaboration with Professor Luc Indestege on the catalogue Boekbanden uit Vijf Eeuwen (1961), he acquired an unparalleled knowledge of early bookbindings. Above all, however, his daily engagement with the Ghent manuscript collection, for which he published an Inventory in 1977, gave him the opportunity to explore in depth the complexities of the medieval codex.
To mark the 150th anniversary of Ghent University, he organised an international Liber Floridus Colloquium at the University Library in September 1967 and was commissioned to produce a facsimile and diplomatic edition of the Liber Floridus (BHSL.HS.0092, 1968). The Liber Floridus would never leave him. His codicological study of the complex autograph manuscript of the Liber Floridus culminated in a doctoral thesis, with which he was awarded a doctorate in History from Ghent University with the highest distinction in 1970, under the supervision of Professor Raoul Van Caenegem. The work was awarded a prize and published by the Academy in 1978. Books on the same subject appeared in English in 1998 and 2015, the latter richly illustrated.
He repeated this codicological study of an individual manuscript – in which the history of a text is reconstructed from the study of the material object – with regard to the Ghent manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber divinorum operum (BHSL.HS.0241, 1972). This in turn led to the edition of the work in Corpus Christianorum (1996), produced in collaboration with Peter Dronke. That edition had been prepared by an edition, in the same series, of the correspondence of Guibert of Gembloux, Hildegard’s secretary (1988–1989).
Meanwhile, the idea had taken shape of attempting a codicological study of groups of manuscripts. A study grant offered in 1972 for a journey to Italian libraries marked the beginning of twelve years of research, in Italian and European libraries, into the codicological characteristics of 1,200 dated manuscripts written in humanistic script. The resulting book (1984) also served as his thesis for the qualification of Geaggregeerde van het Hoger Onderwijs in Manuscript Studies. In the same spirit, in 1979 he devoted a book to the approximately sixty surviving manuscripts from the library of the Ghent abbot Raphael de Mercatellis, of which Ghent University Library holds the largest collection.
His long-awaited appointment as a part-time lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel finally came in 1972. Until 1999, he taught Codicology and Illumination, Christian Liturgy and Christian Iconography there. From 1982 to 1999, he also taught Latin Palaeography and the History of the Book and Library at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He had previously taught the latter subject for many years at the Antwerp Library School.
Through the art historian and eminent scholar of Northern Netherlandish and Flemish illumination, Professor James Marrow, he also developed an academic career in the United States from the mid-1980s onwards. As Distinguished Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985. From 1987 until 2014, he taught every summer at Rare Book School, first in New York at Columbia University and later at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was already a consultant to the Beinecke Library at Yale University in New Haven when, in 2007, he was invited to continue the online catalogue of its rich manuscript collection, a project he completed in 2016.
Despite his great expertise and many years of dedicated service, he was prematurely retired by Ghent University in 1994. Officially, this formed part of a programme of financial cutbacks. His profound disappointment was fortunately eased by his appointment as a member of the Academy in 1993 and by a period in Princeton as a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1995. He used the latter opportunity to take vigorous steps towards continuing the Corpus Catalogorum Belgii and to lay the foundations for a book on Late Medieval Gothic script. His growing frustration with the treatment of this period in the history of script, and with palaeography in general, by other palaeographers resulted in the publication of the handbook The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
In his study of manuscripts, Albert Derolez sought as far as possible to replace the impressionistic approach of connoisseurs – however experienced, and indispensable though they are to the history of illumination – with the observation of concrete facts that could be verified by anyone. Hence the great importance he attached to dated manuscripts, both in codicological and palaeographical studies.
From 1975 onwards, he was a member of the Bureau of the journal Scriptorium, and from 1989 a member of the select Comité International de Paléographie Latine, of which he served as president from 1995 to 2005. Following the publication in October 2015 of his opus magnum, The Meaning and the Making of the Liber Floridus, by Harvey Miller in the series Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History, Albert Derolez returned to another longstanding passion.
As curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Boekentoren, he had published a concise catalogue of the medieval manuscripts in the collection in 1971. Armed with several decades of additional expertise, between 2015 and 2017 he once again undertook the entire collection of medieval holdings in order to produce a catalogue: Medieval Manuscripts – Ghent University Library. The lavishly illustrated book was published by Snoeck in 2017, and all the rich metadata Albert had compiled were incorporated into the online catalogue of Ghent University Library.
The final chapter of Albert’s career as a scholar was a book for the general public devoted to his favourite manuscript: Liber Floridus. De oudste geïllustreerde encyclopedie (1121). Beautifully illustrated and published by Borgerhoff & Lamberigts, the book was the ultimate culmination of his lifelong scholarly passion for this exceptional work. For the first time, the complex contents of Lambert’s twelfth-century autograph manuscript were made accessible to a broad Dutch-speaking readership. Albert guided the reader, folio by folio, through the medieval world of knowledge of Lambert of Saint-Omer, canon of Saint-Omer. He provided not only a translation, but above all clear explanations of the complex miniatures, astronomical tables, maps, and descriptions of plants and fabulous creatures.
The book was presented at ‘his’ Boekentoren on Monday 31 March 2025. A visibly and justifiably proud Albert was surrounded there by his wife and children. The spirited ninety-year-old subsequently began to experience increasing physical difficulties. In early 2026, Albert was admitted to hospital, after which his need for care led to his moving to Moervaartheem residential care centre in Lochristi. Our last contact with him was on 16 June, when, in a manner entirely characteristic of him, he thanked us for sending him, at his request, an article by Thomas Kren and the edition of Hanna Vorholt’s doctoral thesis on … the Liber Floridus, of course. With Lambert of Saint-Omer no doubt still present in his thoughts, Albert Derolez died in Lochristi on Saturday 11 July. He was buried in the presence of his family.
The entire Boekentoren team is deeply grateful to him for his tireless commitment to making the collection more accessible, and extends its heartfelt sympathy to his family at the loss of their husband, father and grandfather."
Hendrik Defoort
Head of Collections, Ghent University Library – Boekentoren
2026
