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Fragmentology is the study of surviving fragments of manuscripts (mainly manuscripts from the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
and the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
in the case of European manuscript cultures). A manuscript fragment may consist of whole or partial leaves, typically made of
parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins o ...
, conjugate pairs or sometimes gatherings of a parchment book or
codex, or parts of single-leaf documents such as
notarial acts. They are commonly found in book bindings, especially printed books from the 15th to the 17th centuries, used in a variety of ways such as wrappers or covers for the book, as endpapers, or cut into pieces and used to reinforce the binding. In other non-Western manuscript cultures, fragments of paper manuscripts and other materials, takes place beside parchment, including board covers that many times reused written paper.
In recent years, fragmentology has become an active part of scholarly
medieval studies
Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages.
Institutional development
The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books ...
fueled by the abundance in institutional libraries of binding fragments that have never been studied or even catalogued. A number of symposia, websites and projects have been formed to pursue the study. In their field-defining editorial, William Duba and Christoph Flüeler note that fragmentology's "transdisciplinary nature requires the collaboration of specialists trained in a range of fields, not just paleography, codicology, and diplomatics, but also the history of the printed book, the history of libraries, musicology, art history, intellectual history, digital humanities -- in sum, most historical arts dealing with content on a page."
Fragments used in bookbindings
Leaves and parts of parchment leaves have been used in bindings of manuscripts since the Middle Ages. The use of manuscript fragments in bindings increased greatly at the end of the 15th century when printed books began to appear in increasing numbers, supplanting many older manuscripts.
[""] The conversion of northern Europe to Protestantism and the closing of monasteries and convents resulted in the discarding of many Catholic religious and liturgical manuscripts some of which were used by bookbinders.
[ Sometimes, manuscript fragments have been removed from bookbindings either because the fragments were viewed as significant or valuable, or in the course of rebinding. Removal of these fragments destroys important context and evidence and is strongly criticized by scholars. Where it is necessary to remove such fragments, accepted practice requires they be preserved with the book and their original location recorded.
]
Evidentiary value of fragments
Manuscript fragments may provide a variety of useful evidence for medievalist
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...
s, bibliographer
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
s and paleographers, including:
* Preservation of a unique or rare text or other writing.
* Preservation of early or significant script.
* Evidence where a book was bound. Since medieval manuscripts generally did not travel far from where they were produced, the fact that a binding incorporates fragments of a manuscript from a known location may be evidence that the book was bound there or nearby.
* Evidence concerning the book binder. The fact that fragments of the same manuscript are found in various bookbindings may connect the bindings, perhaps to a specific binder.
* Evidence of ownership or provenance.
* The internal and external structure of the bookbinding.
Modern breaking of manuscripts
Beginning in the nineteenth century, collectors cut ornamented initial letters and miniatures from illuminated manuscripts. In the twentieth century some book dealers began removing leaves from manuscripts to be sold for greater profit as individual pages or keepsakes.[""] This "breaking" of manuscripts has been most common with books of hours
The book of hours is a Christian devotional book used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages and as a result, they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript ...
which contain illuminated pages, gilding and attractive decorations. "As a result, today there are tens of thousands of single leaves in several hundred U.S. collections." This practice continues today and many individual leaves of books of hours and antiphonal
An antiphonary or antiphonal is one of the liturgical books intended for use (i.e. in the liturgical choir), and originally characterized, as its name implies, by the assignment to it principally of the antiphons used in various parts of the ...
s are available on eBay and from book and manuscript dealers. Scholars strongly condemn this practice, even where the manuscript is incomplete to begin with, as it destroys the integrity and evidence of the entire manuscript. The most famous or infamous manuscript breaker was Otto Ege, who dismembered many complete and fragmentary manuscripts to sell the leaves individually or in large boxed collections.
Digital fragmentology
Scholars have studied Otto Ege's dismemberment and sale of manuscript leaves and have attempted to locate the present locations of the leaves of some of those manuscripts. A number of online projects have been started to collect images of these and other manuscript leaves in a virtual reconstruction of the original manuscripts, including Fragmentarium
Fragmentarium (Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments) is an online database to collect and collate fragments of medieval manuscripts making them available to researchers, collectors and historians worldwide. It is an interna ...
, based in Switzerland. This has been referred to as "digital fragmentology." Websites have also been used to identify and date manuscript fragments through crowdsourcing.Erwin, Micah, Archivist declares medieval manuscript fragment crowdsourcing project success
Harry Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...
.
Gallery
File:Flickr - Yale Law Library - AL 141 H7 B22 -1580-1.jpg, Manuscript leaf used as cover
File:Flickr - Yale Law Library - RL 46 R833-1.jpg, Manuscript leaf used as pastedown
File:Flickr - Yale Law Library - RB Y32 Hvi -1500-2.jpg, Manuscript leaf used as hinge reinforcement
File:Berlin heliand.jpg, Manuscript leaf removed from book cover
File:14th century manuscript leaf used for bookbinding.jpg, Book cover of manuscript leaf with slits for binding cords
See also
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Codicology (the study of manuscript codices or books as physical objects)
*
Paleography (the study of old handwriting and scripts)
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Otto Ege
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Binding waste (the sheets or fragments themselves)
Notes
Further reading
Symposia and studies
Duba, William and Christoph Flüeler, "Fragments and ''Fragmentology''" (editorial), ''Fragmentology'' 1 (2018), 1-5 DOI: 10.24446/a04a
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Mark Mersiowsky: ''Wenn Buchmenschen zum Messer greifen: Zur Wiederverwendung mittelalterlicher Bücher.'' In: ''www.flick-werk.net. Die Kunst des Flickens und Wiederverwertens im historischen Tirol'', hg. v. Siegfried de Rachewiltz u. Andreas Rauchegger in Zusammenarbeit mit Christiane Ganner (Schriften des Landwirtschaftsmuseums Brunnenburg 15), Brunnenburg 2014, S. 200–21
* Perani, Mauro & Ruini, Cesarino (eds.), ''Fragmenta ne Pereant. Recupero e studio dei frammenti di manoscritti medievali e rinascimentali riutilizzati in legature'', Longi Editore (Ravenna 2002).
* Kienhorst, Hans, Verbruikt Verleden, Handschriftfragmenten in en uit boeken van klooster Soeterbeeck, Radboud Universiteit (Nijmegen 2009) With photographs of manuscript fragments in books at the Soeterbeeck Cloister.
Catalogs of manuscript fragments
* Babcock, Robert Gary; Davis, Lisa Fagin & Rusche, Philip G., Catalogue Of Medieval And Renaissance Manuscripts In The Beinecke Rare Book And Manuscript Library At Yale University: MSS 184 - 485 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies: V. 34, 48, 100, 176), Brepols Pub. (2004), . Fragments in Beinecke Library.
* Gumbert, J. P., Illustrated Inventory of Medieval Manuscripts in Latin Script in the Netherlands, Introduction: Rules-Instructions, Hilversum, Netherlands (2009), . Rules for describing manuscript fragments.
* Gumbert, J. P., Illustrated Inventory of Medieval Manuscripts in Latin Script in the Netherlands, Vol. 1 Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent, Hilversum, Netherlands (2011), . (Illustrated)
* Gumbert, J. P., Illustrated Inventory of Medieval Manuscripts in Latin Script in the Netherlands, Vol. 2 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Hilversum, Netherlands (2009), . (Illustrated)
* Ferrari, Mirella
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the University of California, Los Angeles University of California Press (1991), , pp. 92–144. Collection of 134 medieval manuscript leaves.
* Ker, Neil R., Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings, with a Survey of Oxford Binding c. 1515-1620, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, Third Series, No. 4., Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society (1954), .
* Skemer, Don C., Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library, Princeton (2013), Vol. II, Ms. 132, pp. 371–381, Taylor Collection of 89 Manuscript Leaves and Documents, Ms. 138, pp. 387–400, Princeton general collection of 133 Manuscript Leaves and Documents {{ISBN, 978-0-691-15750-4.
External links
General
Research Group on Manuscript EvidenceFragmentology: A Journal for the Study of Medieval Manuscript Fragments
Digital fragmentology projects
Fragmentarium-International Digital Research Lab for Medieval Manuscript FragmentsCenter for Digital Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences at
Saint Louis UniversityBroken Books ProjectManuscriptlink University of South CarolinaMedieval Manuscript Fragment ProjectUniversity College, London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = Â ...
Lost ManuscriptsCentre for Bibliographical History at the
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
Books within books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries
Palaeography
Medieval manuscripts
Bookbinding