An undercover manuscript

This blog post was written by Aron Ouwerkerk and Juda Sieverink, as part of an assignment for the MA-course Medieval Written Culture in March 2021, supervised by prof. Marco Mostert and Bart Jaski, keeper of manuscripts of Utrecht University Library (editor).

For our assignment we were handed a nearly 500-year-old book to study, which concealed two scraps of parchment, separately wedged between the cover and the book block. This is quite common in books this old. When early modern books were bound after printing, residual strokes of paper or parchment were used to construct and strengthen the binding. For this purpose, redundant manuscripts were dismembered and given a new function. Compared to paper, parchment is a particularly strong material, but also very costly to produce, as it is made out of animal skin. This is how and why the two manuscript fragments became separated from their original manuscript. At the same time, they have made the cut rather literally: this second life has ensured their survival up to our time!

Latin Psalter

By closely analysing the text of the fragments, we discovered that they originate from a Psalter, a manuscript with the biblical psalms translated into Latin. This translation was done by Saint Jerome (Hieronymus, c. 345-420), an important Christian theologian who translated the complete bible from the Greek into Latin, and the Book of Psalms even three times from different sources. The version written on the manuscript fragments is the so-called ‘Gallican version’ (in Latin: versio Gallicana), which Jerome translated from the Greek. The host volume of the fragments contains the commentaries of Dionysius the Carthusian on books of the New Testament, and was printed in 1533 in Cologne (THO RAR 5-32). The fragments were recovered when the book was restored in 1997.

A puzzling case

Our transcription revealed that the two scraps of parchment, both measuring about 5,5 by 31 cm, each actually contained parts of Psalms 58 and 68. After some mental puzzle work, we were able to reconstruct what had happened. From the original manuscript, a quire had first been taken apart, which had resulted in a couple of so-called ‘bifolia’ or double leaves. [Psalter 2] The two fragments were then horizontally cut from the same bifolium, which displayed Psalm 58 on the one side, and Psalm 68 on the other. The original quire had therefore contained all the intermediate psalms as well, but because the fragments were cut from a bifolium, it seems like there is a leap in the text; what appears at a first glance to be two columns of text on either side of both fragments are really separate strands of text from two joint folios.

A peculiar script

Fragmented though they may be, they must have formed part of an impressive manuscript, carefully written in a large script with red initials. We identified the script as Carolingian, which became the standard script in the Carolingian empire in the ninth century and spread over large parts of western Europe until it developed in Gothic script during the twelfth century. Yet the script of our fragment contains some peculiar characteristics. For example, the word psallebant is written as pSallebaNt, using capital S and N (which looks almost as an H) where one would not expect them. [Psalter 3] The scribe also writes an ‘f’,  ‘r’ and high ‘s’ (ſ) with a descender below the writing line, and both a straight ‘d’ and a sloping one (∂). These features combined point to the influence of insular script, brought to the Continent by Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries and scholars such as Willibrord and Boniface. Our manuscript was written in the ninth century, and we were told this makes it one of the oldest medieval manuscripts in the collection of Utrecht University Library. It may be almost as old as the famous Utrecht Psalter!

A journey in time and place

Our fragments make for an intriguing case. A close, detailed look at the physical pages was crucial to grasp what we had before us. At the same time, however, it raised new questions, in particular where they came from. In the host volume we noted a mark of ownership: In Ruremunda ad sanctum Cornelium ad usum fratris Christophori Kaelen (‘In Roermond at Saint Cornelius for the use of brother Christopher Kaelen’). We found out that the Crosier Monastery (Kruisheren) in Roermond existed from 1422 to 1784. There is a document in the archives in Maastricht which mentions a prior named Christopher Kaelen, dated to May 1604. Since the book was printed in 1533, he probably was not the first owner of the book. Fortunately, the binding gives an important clue about its origins. Stamped in the leather binding are two weapons, one with an eagle, the other a shield with three towers and goutes (drops). [Psalter 4] According to Wikipedia this was the coat of arms of Cologne from about 1550-1580 onwards. As this is also the place the book was printed, the first buyer must have had it bound there. And the book binder used a bifolium of an old psalter, perhaps one that had become redundant when the Reformation caused many monasteries to be abandoned or closed. And so it is likely that our fragment originates from Cologne, and made a long journey to end up right in front of us in the University Library of Utrecht.

The wider context of medieval writing culture and book printing thus allowed for a better understanding of how these two manuscript pieces could end up in our hands today. One may also wonder if and where fragments of the same Psalter can be found, just waiting to be uncovered.