Confessions Of An Accidental Medievalist

Mary Flannery on the Joys of Manuscripts

Dear Republic,

The Republic of Letters isn’t all discourse and debate, no no no. We are very interested also just in knowing what people’s inner lives are like, what makes people tick — as in this occasional series where we’ve asked academics (and, actually, anybody at all) what it is that they love about their jobs.

-ROL

CONFESSIONS OF AN ACCIDENTAL MEDIEVALIST

I have a confession to make: I never planned on becoming a medievalist.

The plan was to study Shakespeare. True, I was most interested in his history plays about the rise and fall of English kings between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, sometimes referred to collectively as “the Henriad.” I was fascinated by Shakespeare’s characterization of these medieval monarchs, from the petulant Richard II (dethroned by Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV) to the deceptively feckless Prince Hal, destined to deliver the famous St. Crispin’s Day Speech as Henry V at Agincourt. But I wanted to research the plays, not the history behind them.

What changed everything was manuscripts.

The word “manuscript” describes exactly what manuscripts are: scriptus (written) + manu (by hand). Every single stage in the production of a medieval manuscript was executed by hand—the stretching and scraping of parchment, the grinding and mixing of ink, the folding and sewing of manuscript sheets into leaflets or “quires,” the lining of pages with lead or ink, the shaping of each letter, the painting of each image, the binding of each book. To understand the traces that medieval hands have left behind in manuscripts, you have to learn to read all over again.

As a masters student at Cambridge, I learned how to handle manuscripts of different sizes and shapes; how to position them in their “cradles” so that they lay open without breaking their spines; how to hold down stiff parchment leaves gently with weighted “snakes;” and how to distinguish between the “flesh” and “hair” sides of parchment. (I quickly learned to wash my hands after handling manuscripts for any length of time—turning the pages invariably made my fingertips grubby.) I took courses in paleography (the study of ancient handwriting) and codicology, a discipline sometimes referred to as “the archaeology of the book.” I learned how to analyze the physical structure of manuscripts, and how to decipher scripts with names like Textura (which Johannes Gutenberg would later mimic in his printed bibles), Anglicana (distinguished by letter-forms like the figure-8-shaped lower-case g), and—my least favorite script—Secretary hand, the practically illegible cursive script dominant between the late fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.

To my astonishment, even as a masters student I could call up a manuscript all by myself at the library and be set loose with it in the reading room. I can still remember the very first manuscript I handled on my own: an early fifteenth-century manuscript with a beautiful illuminated initial on the opening page and occasional reader notes with comments like “very good Readynge.” Every single one of those early encounters with manuscripts was a moment of wonder. I couldn’t believe I was being allowed to touch precious objects normally displayed to the public behind glass (if at all).

Meeting a medieval manuscript is like meeting a person. Before I meet a new manuscript for the first time, I do background research on its contents, date, and provenance in the same way one might research the hobbies, interests, and background of a VIP guest. Each manuscript has its own history, character, origin story, and style. Although every manuscript is unique, most manuscripts have relatives, other manuscripts from which they may have been copied or for which they may have provided text to copy. A manuscript copy of a text is called a “witness,” as if it was a medieval observer now being interrogated by modern researchers. A manuscript that has leaves missing is sometimes described as “mutilated,” as if it were a once-whole body. Medieval manuscripts can even contain voices. At the end of one fifteenth-century manuscript in St. John’s College, Cambridge, the scribe writes, “Now it is over. I’m sorry if I wrote it wrong. Now I’ve written it all. For Christ’s sake give me a drink” (Nunc ffinem feci penitet me si male scripsi. Nunc scripsi totum pro christo da mihi potum).

Though it is impossible to calculate how many medieval manuscripts have been lost over the centuries, those that survive today have lived many lives. The famous ninth-century manuscript now known as the Book of Kells was once buried by monks hoping to protect it from Vikings. Even burial couldn’t keep it safe forever: it was later stolen, and lost its original jeweled covers. It is now held in Trinity College Dublin, the only book in the world that has street signs directing tourists to its location. The pocket-sized Cuthbert Gospel, copied roughly a century earlier, derives its name from Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, in whose coffin it was placed for four centuries. The British Library purchased it in 2011 for £9 million, and it is now displayed for half the year in London and half the year in Durham, where the saint was ultimately laid to rest. Books moved around so much in the Middle Ages that it is rare to come across manuscripts that haven’t moved from where they were originally copied (I still recall my shock when I came across one such manuscript at the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, still in its original eighth-century binding).

If my graduate work taught me to love manuscripts for their contents, my first postdoctoral job gave me permission to love them for their looks. During my nine months in the manuscripts department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I learned to recognize the saturated blue ink used by the Limbourg brothers, three Dutch painters most famous for their work on the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, all of whom died in 1416 before the age of thirty. I learned about their French contemporary, the Boucicaut Master, who produced manuscripts for the King of France. I encountered the late-fifteenth-century manuscript portrait of Bathsheba painted by Jean Bourdichon, which later became the cover image for my second book.

This brings me to my second confession: even though being a medievalist probably means I ought to love all manuscripts equally, there’s a special place in my heart for the fancy ones, the ones with glittering illuminated miniatures or jeweled covers or clasps. I also love the manuscript celebrities in my field: the Ellesmere Chaucer, with its famous portraits of the Canterbury Tales pilgrims, or the Nowell Codex, which contains the only known copy of Beowulf.

But here’s the thing: I know I’m not the only medievalist who feels this way.

Every time a big manuscript gets wheeled out in the British Library Manuscripts Reading Room, heads turn. Whenever I’m consulting a particularly beautiful manuscript, I catch other readers sneaking surreptitious glances at it. And even though we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, there’s nothing like clasps or a treasure binding for catching other readers’ attention.

In the end, I have no regrets about not becoming a Shakespearean, because I get to work with manuscripts. It’s a miracle that they were made. It’s a miracle that they survived for centuries. And every time I get to handle one is a miracle, too.

Mary Flannery is a writer and medievalist based in Switzerland. Her latest book is the biography Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard (2024). She writes about how to build a career with one’s research and writing at her Substack Page by Page, and her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, History Today, and McSweeney’s.