Carved in ink: Magnus Makculloch and book production in fifteenth-century Scotland

Abstract

This thesis examines the life and career of the Scottish ‘scribe’ Magnus Makculloch. In doing so it will disentangle the information that is known about Makculloch’s life, and problematise how we conceptualise the roles of book producers in the late fifteenth century. This thesis offers a framework for understanding the logic texts produced at the University of Leuven in the second half of the fifteenth century. Building on this, it will fit the manuscript Makculloch produced in 1477 at Leuven into this context and use it as the basis through which we can understand his later career in Scotland. This thesis also provides a detailed discussion and analysis of the manuscripts Makculloch would produce when he returned to Scotland, as well as the wider context in which they were created. On this foundation it uses the surviving works from the library of archbishop William Scheves – who commissioned Makculloch’s work – as a basis for broadening the discussion of book production, collection, and consumption in Scotland in the later decades of the fifteenth century. As a result, my thesis contributes in two main areas; the specifics of a pre-modern intellectual, and the courtly, intellectual and artistic construction and creation of knowledge in the context of both Scotland and Northern Europe.