How do we know any of this?

Recently a reader posed one of those inherently fundamental questions that never occur to someone like me, who is buried in this stuff all the time.

Writing is so fragile – how did any of these primary sources survive? An excellent question. The quickest answer is that everything was written on a surprisingly robust medium, which was then stored away and forgotten. Survival!

Virtually all of our primary source material was written down on vellum, which is calf skin that has been treated and stretched. This material is far more robust than paper, which in any case didn’t make it to western Europe until the eleventh century. Early medieval scribes used two types of inks, one based in carbon and one in iron. Both produced a rich, long-lasting dark lettering. The manuscripts were bound with heavy leather or even wood, when the manuscript was particularly valuable. As long as you keep the manuscript reasonably dry, protected from rats, and away from flames, it will last a long time.

Monasteries were the centers of manuscript creation and copying. Abbots would borrow a book from another monastery, and then make several copies before sending it back. Then the additional copies could be used to trade with another monastery for something new. In this way dozens of copies of some manuscripts circulated throughout Europe. Court documents like capitularies were probably written and copied by monks at court for use by the missi and nobility, and then eventually collected in a monastery.

One of the scourges of manuscript study was the practice of scraping the old contents off the vellum, so something more topical could be written down. The preparation of a blank manuscript was a lengthy and expensive process, and it was much easier to erase something no one had referenced in literally centuries. A page that has been erased and rewritten is called a palimpsest. For a long time paleographers (those who study manuscripts) despaired at the practice, but new imaging techniques can reveal the missing content. It’s like a two for one!

Documents that were considered useful were copied many times, and obviously have a higher chance at survival. Laws and capitularies were widely copied, because everyone has to know the law. Charters, which are something like deeds of title, were necessary to validate land ownership, and thus were well cared for by the landowner.^1.This quality also made them ripe for forgery. Don’t forget the infamous Donation of Pepin. Charters weren’t usually copied, since no one but the landowner really cared. Saints lives, as long as they corresponded to the liturgical thinking of the day, were copied and spread widely. Older annals were incorporated into annals started in new monasteries. Poems and letters were saved if deemed of sufficient worth. No doubt many lesser poems, letters by middle-tier functionaries, local laws, and minor ecclesiastical matters have been lost to us.

So how did all this play out in the real world? Let’s take a look at some examples.

Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards was written in the eighth century, and survives in more than one hundred manuscripts. Four different eighth century manuscripts survive of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and it spread more widely in succeeding centuries. There are more than eighty manuscripts of Einhard’s Life of Charles. One editor used more than sixty different manuscripts for one critical edition in 1829, while a second editor used a single version for another edition in 1867.^2.Vita Caroli, introduction, p. 21.

Two of the sources I use the most survive in many manuscripts. There are thirty-four copies of Fredegar, the earliest of which is written in a single hand. But then there are the “Continuations,” written by another scribe at a later time. At what point is a manuscript the ‘original’? The oldest manuscript of the Royal Annals was found at the monastery at Lorsch. There are so many copies that there are five categories of manuscripts, just to get them organized.

As an aside, Annals arose from the manner in which the date of Easter was calculated and recorded.

In the centuries when Christian missionaries were carrying the Gospel into the West, the Easter tables provided room for annual entries on the events of the year. Anglo-Saxon monks were apparently the first to record on these lunar calendars noteworthy occurrences around them, and Anglo-Saxon missionaries brought the Easter tables and their casual notations to the Continent. One monastery, then, copied from another, frequently borrowing not only the dates of Easter but the events noted on the margins.^3.Royal Annals, introduction, p. 35.

Remember that medieval classic, The Song of Roland? The story was a huge hit all across Europe, and copies have been found in England, Germany, Venice, and of course France. The oldest Roland manuscript is at Oxford, and dates from between 1130 and 1170. It is thought that all of the different copies and versions derive from an original composed around 1098, right around the time of the First Crusade.

All those different versions have to be reconciled into something coherent, and that’s what an editor does. Sometimes there dozens of different manuscripts, and the editor has to figure out which ones came before the others, and how to reconcile differences and omissions between the manuscripts. Many of the versions for sale today are based on editions edited and compiled in the nineteenth century, when those efforts were at a peak.^4.At some point I’ll do a post on the Monumenta Germania Historiae. Fascinating and massive scholarly project. Roland, for example, was first printed in its original old French in 1837. The Penguin Classics copy I use is a translation based on an edition first printed in 1942. The Dorothy Sayers translation, which is an earlier Penguin Classics version, is based on an edition from 1922, which is in turn based on the Oxford manuscript.

You can see how translations can vary. First you have to pick an edition, then you have to actually translate it into a new language, for a new generation. Tricky stuff.

There are plenty of examples at the other extreme, where only a single instance survives. Usually these are noteworthy for the illustrations and sumptuous nature of the calligraphy. Well known examples include the Book of Kells^5.Finding a copy of De Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts would be worth your time, if you’re into this sort of thing. and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Both of those volumes are obviously unique works of art, quite apart from the conventional biblical texts they illustrate.

There is a set of four volumes known as the Coronation Gospels group, so-called because Charles allegedly placed his hand on one of the books for his coronation as Emperor in 800. While all four must have been at court at some point, they are now scattered, with one each in Vienna, Aachen, Brescia, and Brussels.^6.McKitterick, Charlemagne: Formation of a European Identity, p. 351.

Perhaps the most famous sole survivor is Beowulf. The manuscript has no title, no author, and no date, but probably dates to the early eleventh century. It floated around England for centuries before landing in the library of Robert Cotton. It passed from son to son, before the family library was bequeathed to the British nation. Out of danger now, right? The manuscript was moved for safekeeping to Westminster, only to narrowly escape a fire in 1731. The pages are so fragile that handling was literally destroying the edges of the pages, so it was backed with paper, and now is handled only extremely rarely.^7.Seamus Heaney released the latest critically acclaimed version in 2000. For pictures of the manuscript and more details, the British Library has you covered.

I’ve tried to point out that manuscript survival was not completely random. The world of the early middle ages was not some kind of all-against-all battle royale. Governments and governing bodies survived and even thrived, and like all bureaucracies, they lived through paperwork. Objects of artistic expression did not do quite as well, but generally people have an appreciation for fine things, and what they can teach.

But sometimes it really is just luck. We came within a hairbreadth of losing Beowulf. What else is gone, never to be recovered?