“equally efficient in the visualisation of hidden medieval inks,”

June 5, 2016 4:23 PM

X-Rays Reveal 1,300-Year-Old Writings Inside Later Bookbindings [The Guardian] The words of the 8th-century Saint Bede are among those that have been found by detecting iron, copper and zinc – constituents of medieval ink. Medieval manuscripts that have been hidden from view for centuries could reveal their secrets for the first time, thanks to new technology. Dutch scientists and other academics are using an x-ray technique to read fragments of manuscripts that have been reused as bookbindings and which cannot be deciphered with the naked eye. After the middle ages manuscripts were recycled, with pages pasted inside bindings to strengthen them. Those fragments may be the unique remains of certain works.
posted by Fizz (13 comments total)

This is awesome.
posted by clawsoon at 4:31 PM on June 5, 2016

Dr Kwakkel has a website that rewards those interested in this sort of thing. In it he discusses at greater length the work under discussion with a lot more pictures. (Question is, can the technology also get at palimpsests?)
posted by BWA at 4:42 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]

Thanks for supplementing the post with those links BWA. Much appreciated.
posted by Fizz at 4:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

AH this is awesome but what does it say?!?!?!?! AH the suspense!!! Will the public be able to find out? When, how?

??!!!!
posted by xarnop at 4:59 PM on June 5, 2016

AH this is awesome but what does it say?!?!?!?

D O N T _ F O R G E T _ T O _ D R I N K _ Y O U R _ O V A L T I N E !

posted by Fizz at 5:03 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]

It may be worth targeting very particular period and places: bindings made immediately post-1540 in England and north-west Europe, for example, to catch reuse of manuscripts lately released from monastic libraries after their dissolution. We know from manuscript collections made in this period that a lot of interesting stuff was suddenly available but undervalued. From a work about what happened to these manuscripts there is specific reference to them being shipped overseas to bookbinders, "not in small number but at times whole shipfuls, to the wonder of foreign countries". The kind of stuff which would be most interesting--texts from Old English times--would be immediately identifiable due to the script.

It's a slim hope but a great prize. Like sifting Oxyrhynchian sands or peeling apart cartonnage.
posted by Emma May Smith at 5:51 PM on June 5, 2016 [11 favorites]

This also makes you think how our own pieces of modernity will be viewed through that long lens of history. Will some future Scientist or Literary Archivist find old scraps/quotations of Stephen King novels on a papier-mache mask or some such thing?!!? Who knows what the future will hold!?!
posted by Fizz at 6:34 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love this.

Cambridge University Library has some wonderful drawings made by Darwin's young children. The family kept hold of them, as you do - and that's how we still have some original manuscript pages from On the Origin of Species, the scrap paper that the kids were given to draw on.
posted by Catseye at 1:04 AM on June 6, 2016 [7 favorites]

Will some future Scientist or Literary Archivist find old scraps/quotations of Stephen King novels on a papier-mache mask or some such thing?!!

Alas, probably not, unless it's printed on acid free paper. My thinking is there's going to be a huge gap in the record from about 1850 to present.
posted by BWA at 5:40 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

For England, some of the work has already been done by N.R. Ker, in his book Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings (1954):

This remarkable undertaking in some ways epitomizes Ker's gifts as a scholar. A "pastedown" in a modern book is the heavy paper pasted to the inside covers to strengthen the binding. When the religious situation in post-Reformation England and the influx of new learning from Italy rendered many medieval texts expendable, some sixteenth-century binders, especially in Oxford and Cambridge, began using leaves of parchment from medieval manuscripts for pastedowns. Identifying some 2,200 Oxford bindings containing pastedowns, Ker was able to extrapolate from these once-isolated scraps of evidence an overarching understanding of the sometimes destructive transition from medieval to Renaissance libraries.

Some exciting work is currently being done by the Lost Manuscripts project, which aims to create a virtual Library of Babel out of all the surviving manuscript fragments in the British Isles.

The possibilities are almost endless .. but perhaps the biggest prize would be another fragment of the Ceolfrid Bible, one of the three Bibles commissioned by Ceolfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, circa 700. It's thought the Bible may have belonged to the library of Worcester Cathedral (possibly a gift from King Offa), but some time around 1600 it fell into the hands of a bookbinder, who cut it up. One fragment of the Ceolfrid Bible was rediscovered as recently as 1982, so it's quite possible there could be more out there.
posted by verstegan at 8:37 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

I feel like this story would have greatly appealed to Iain M. Banks.
posted by oneirodynia at 9:45 AM on June 6, 2016

The possibilities are almost endless .. but perhaps the biggest prize would be another fragment of the Ceolfrid Bible, one of the three Bibles commissioned by Ceolfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, circa 700.

The script of this early period is so beautiful. I've spent time wondering at the Cuthbert Gospel (part of the same extended family) for just how readable it is.
posted by Emma May Smith at 9:56 AM on June 6, 2016

Cool stuff!
posted by BlueHorse at 12:37 AM on June 7, 2016