The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 4

In the final post in his Fragments series, Jeff Berry explains how appearances can be deceiving...

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Oddities are not unique to binding fragments, but the lack of a larger context and the incidental damage inflicted by the binding process can make them seem particularly mysterious. Here is an example of such an oddity. Mirror writing, where the script is written backwards as if in a mirror, is a practice that shows up now and again in medieval works. The most famous example is that of Da Vinci, who used it from time to time. Even in his case, however, no one seems to be clear on what the point of the exercise was.

Sometimes with fragments there will be bits of ink that have been transferred from the manuscript to some other page or cover; this can resemble mirror writing, but it is usually fairly obvious what has happened in these cases. In the first fragment below, the paint from the coloured initials has stuck to the wooden board serving as a cover. Some paint remains on the original leaf as well, and side-by-side it is clear what happened.

From the Stainton Parish Library collection,
York Minster Library, printed in Basel 1563

This next fragment is more difficult to assess. It has several layers, and a small roughly triangular shape is from a different manuscript than the more decorated one below it. It is that lower fragment which appears to be mirror writing.

York Minster Library, printed in Basel 1558

The clear, clean lines argue against a gluey, sticky transfer like that in the above case, as does the appearance of not only the red and blue, but the black as well. However, the effort required to perform the complex mis-en-page and the blue initial with the red pen-flourishing would suggest that this, too, is a case of ink transfer. Further detailed conservation work would be needed to be absolutely certain, but while mirror writing is a possibility, the mundane explanation of glue and moisture seems more likely. Whatever the case, the difficult and complex task of reading the backwards writing is now as simple as few keystrokes and mouse-clicks, as the digitally reversed image renders the mysterious text clear:

All photography by Paul Shields.

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The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 1
The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 2
The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 3

The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 3

Jeff Berry uses the third of his four blog posts to examine the use of liturgical texts in bindings.

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From the Archbishop Tobie Matthew
collection 1628, York Minster Library

Liturgical books were common in the middle ages, and were used in the various religious observances of the Catholic Church. The Protestant Reformation was contemporaneous with the rise of print, and the combination of the two meant that liturgical texts were excellent candidates for use in bindings in Protestant countries since their liturgical use was no longer required.

The photo to the right shows a lovely example, with alternating red and blue initials with beautiful pen-flourishing of the opposite colour. The fragmentary nature of the documents often makes dating them difficult, but with nearly a full page to work from, it is possible to put a rough date to this page; the script and decoration suggest that it was created in the late thirteenth century. The Minster collection has quite a few fragments which contain music to some extent.

Sometimes manuscripts were not just used in the binding, they were the entire binding. The book shown below has as its cover a vellum wrapper made from a thirteenth or fourteenth century commentary on the Psalms. The Psalms themselves are in red, with the commentary in black. Each line of the Psalm begins with a blue initial, and, interestingly enough, a red guide letter is visible inside the blue initial indicating that the blue was added at a later stage after all the black and red had already been completed. This was a usual practice, and uncompleted manuscripts with blank spaces for initials are not uncommon. This image shows Psalm 89, the end of verse 10, 'quoniam supervenit mansuetudo, et corripiemur,' and the first line of verse 11, 'Quis novit potestatem irae tuae.' The entire line is not visible in either case, and there are several abbreviations in use.

Held in theYork Minster Library, printed in Frankfurt 1579

All photography by Paul Shields.

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The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 1
The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 2

The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 2

In the second of his four blog posts, Jeff Berry investigates the practice of removing illuminations from manuscripts.

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It is easy to think that, once the early craze for reusing manuscripts in bindings had passed, these manuscripts were treated with more respect. While that might be true (then again, it might not), different problems ensued for the manuscripts. Chief among these was the tendency to view them as objets d'art rather than historical records. This resulted in many illuminated manuscripts being cut up to be sold as leaves, such as the famous 'Otto Ege Portfolios' where some fifty illuminates manuscripts were systematically broken down and recompiled into portfolios; each manuscript less useful or valuable as a whole than as a collection of parts. In some other cases, only the illuminations themselves were removed to be admired in isolation while the text, thought to be less interesting or attractive, was left behind.

From the Stainton Parish Library collection,
York Minster Library, printed Cologne 1539

Consider this pastedown from a thirteenth-century Bible.

Judges, chapter 1, verse 1 reads, in Latin: 'Post mortem Iosue consuluerunt filii Israhel Dominum dicentes quis ascendet ante nos contra Chananeum et erit dux belli.'

In a deluxe production, the start of a new book of the Bible would often have a large illuminated capital. This seems to be the case here, where a space clearly in the shape of the letter 'P' has been relatively carefully cut out, leaving the remainder of the page in situ. This poor Bible was mutilated twice, several hundred years apart - first by the bookbinder and then by a collector of illuminations.

Bibles, while often beautiful, were also a text that was often reproduced in the Middle Ages. Documents, on the other hand, are often relatively simple, undecorated manuscripts, but they may be more interesting since they often represent the only surviving instance of the underlying text. Three books in the Minster Library collection are a case in point. The books are roughly of a size, and can be traced to the same bookbinder. Each has a large page, front and back, from the same manuscript. The pages are from an account book, tentatively dated to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.

 

From the York Minster Library incunables, printed Lyon c1498-1500

All photography by Paul Shields.

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Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 1

The Minster Library - Fragments of the Past: Part 1

In the first of four posts, Jeff Berry, one of our Minster volunteers, considers the insights into the past that early recycling gives us.

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It was common practice in the early days of print for bookbinders to use parts of earlier manuscripts as strengtheners in their bindings. To modern sensibilities, the idea that these unique manuscripts were destroyed simply for their physical properties is an appalling one. It is worth considering, however, that such use represents in many cases both an instinct for efficiency and economy - after all, why use fresh vellum when used vellum will do just as well? - and a growing sense of the primacy of the text itself. In some cases, once a manuscript was in type, the manuscript itself was considered redundant, and reusing it in bindings was simply common sense.

These fragments may still be found in various books, and provide a tantalizing glimpse of information which is now lost forever. All manuscripts are on some level a puzzle. As unique, handcrafted objects, questions about their origin, purpose, and use naturally arise; this is equally true of luxury books and of seemingly more straightforward documents. How much more puzzling are the fragments, then, with much of their context lost or scattered? The manuscripts are in many cases works of art, and the bits used in the bindings are fragments of greater works. Often when viewing these fragments, I am reminded of visiting ruined medieval buildings where only the foundations or a few lengths of wall remain. It is enough to fire the imagination, but the vast majority of the data, of the history if you will, is gone.

That is not to say that there is nothing to be learned from the fragments. Quite apart from their aesthetic value, they can provide information about how early printers did business, can help to localize early books to their point of origin, can be used to track fashions and taste in literature, and doubtless can provide information in many other ways related either to the manuscripts themselves or their use as raw material.

The York Minster Library has one of the finest collections of early printed books in the country, and has a correspondingly rich collection of manuscript fragments in the bindings of those books. In this, and future posts, I would like to show you a few of the fragments which are of particular interest.

Image from a book published in Louvain, Belgium in 1562 (Minster Library V/3.N.2). The binding contains fragments of both Middle English prose and legal documents in Latin.