Researching medieval manuscript fragments is like trying to put together a jigsaw whose pieces are largely lost. It can be difficult to know how or whether the few parts that remain fit together. The fact that fragments are scattered across different libraries and are often uncatalogued compounds this problem, so reconstructing the original manuscript relies on both the good will of library staff and a fair bit of luck.
This reality was brought home to me in my experience over the past couple of years researching the fragments that are preserved in some early printed books in UCD Special Collections. This research began one afternoon when, as part of a larger project on Irish Manuscript Fragments led by Dr Niamh Pattwell, a colleague in the School of English, I went to investigate UCD Library’s Franciscan holdings. In the bindings of two volumes of a four- part set containing the theological commentaries of Alexander of Hales, printed in 1481-82, I spied some fragments being used as a kind of vellum sellotape. These ‘sewing guards’, were a feature of the earliest period of printing (1450-1500). In a response familiar to those of us who still need an analogue copy of a digital document for reassurance, the earliest binders of books, nervous of their new technology, reinforced the gatherings in these two volumes with a small strip of vellum cut up from an earlier manuscript.
OFM XL 4 (i): Double opening of the early printed book with sewing guard visible at centre.
It was clear to me when I first saw these fragments that they were written in Carolingian script. This type of hand was developed during the reign of the great early medieval emperor Charlemagne and was used across large parts of Northern Europe between the eighth and tenth centuries. In addition to recognizing the script, I could also see from the outset that I was looking at the remnants of a biblical text and in particular parts of an Old Testament. This was evident most clearly by the preservation in one of the guards of titles in an uppercase script that marked the ‘explicit’ or end of the book of the prophet Micah and the ‘incipit’ or beginning of that of Nahum.
OFM XL 4 (i): Close up of sewing guard featuring text from Zachariah 7.7 and 8.2 in columns a and b, the incipit for the book of Nahum [Incip(it) Liber Na(h)um Pr(op)h(eta)] in column c and text from Nahum 1.12 in columnn d.
The volumes in which these fragments played a supporting role preserved clues that could help uncover their history. Inscriptions and bookplates allowed me to trace the ownership of these books from contemporary Dublin to their purchase for a Franciscan friary in Killarney in the nineteenth century and then back to their original home, the monastery of Benediktbeuern in southeastern Germany. It seemed likely that the fragments in UCD were part of a manuscript produced at Benediktbeuern after the mid-8th century when the monastery was founded, which were then upcycled when the library moved from using manuscripts to books some seven hundred years later.
OFM XL 4(i): Bookplate from the library of Benediktbeuern.
OFM XL 4(iii): Frontpage noting in Latin that the book is the property of the monastery in Benediktbeuern. Later inscriptions record the visit of the Papal Nuncio and Bishop of Kerry to the Franciscan friary in Killarney in 1932.
Establishing this knowledge laid the foundation for the most interesting phase of my research. Were there other fragments of Old Testaments surviving from the medieval scriptorium at Benediktbeuern which could relate to the UCD material? To answer this question, I had to turn to the work of Bernhard Bischoff, the most famous of all palaeographers and, coincidentally, the recipient of one of the first ever honorary doctorates awarded by UCD. As part of his lifetime’s work on Latin manuscripts, Bischoff identified what remained of the early scriptorium at Beneditkbeuern up to the time when the monastery was sacked by Hungarian invaders in 955. Now largely held in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, there were two sets of Old Testament fragments in particular that could have represented other parts of the manuscript which the UCD material came from. Both were written in similar script, and they contained parts of the same Old Testament books as are preserved in Dublin without any textual overlap. After looking at the hands of the different sets of manuscripts, it was clear that the Dublin fragments preserved evidence from both possible candidates: one from a set of fragments which came from the Pentateuch and the second for the guards relating to the Minor Prophets. Furthermore, as the two sets of Munich fragments preserved whole pages of their original manuscripts, they confirmed many things that could only be conjectured based on the slim material that survived in Dublin, such as the number of lines each page contained, its overall layout, and ruling.
Munich, Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, Clm 29260(1: Fragmentary page featuring text from Leviticus from the same original manuscript as the UCD Pentateuch material.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 29265(7: Fragmentary page featuring the final chapter of the Book of Hosea from the same original manuscript as the UCD Minor Prophets material.
The final part of the UCD fragments’ story lies in their relationship with another set of sewing guards that are preserved in some early printed books in Auckland Central Library in New Zealand. The Auckland books had a similar transmission history to those in Dublin, being part of the Benediktbeuern library and sold after the secularization of the German monasteries during the nineteenth century. With the help of the staff in Auckland Central Library I was able to contact Professor Alexandra Barratt, who first identified these fragments in 2015. The notes and images shared by Professor Barratt and the Auckland library staff demonstrated that not only did both the UCD and Auckland material come from the same two manuscripts, but some of their sewing guards were from strips that were originally part of the same manuscript page and even adjacent to each other. This exciting discovery highlighted how paying attention to some of the smallest material in UCD’s special collections can uncover the library’s wide global connections.
Composite of the sewing guards in UCD OFM XL 4 (iii) and Auckland Central Library 1480 BIBL featuring adjacent text from the books of Exodus and Leviticus.
The sewing guards that are the subject of this blog connect the histories of many people across time and space: the Irish Franciscan community and a lover of books in New Zealand in the nineteenth century, the book binders at Benediktbeuern in the early modern period, and the medieval creators of this material for whom the production of Bibles was both the focus of their work and at the heart of their life. These histories demonstrate how the study of fragments involves not only using what remains now in part to imagine an original whole but is also a conduit to understanding how people relate to and value their containers of knowledge and the profoundly influential role of changing technologies in this process.
This guest blog post was written by Elizabeth Mullins and is based on Elizabeth Mullins, ‘Carolingian Bible Fragments in Dublin’, Fragmentology VI (2023), 67-87 doi: https://doi.org/10.24446/oedi
Intriguing story so well told ..
Interesting. Will watch out for same in later centuries
Many thanks
Michael Byrne