Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from c. 1300
37 comments
·March 31, 2025ggm
staplung
As you pointed out, reusing parts of old books or manuscripts was quite common. Evidently, there was quite a lot of it going on in England just after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Their libraries had a lot of books that were "unwanted" and there was also a lot of new stuff getting printed that needed binding. Parchment is a very sturdy material (consider that it's essentially a bag meant to hold in the internal organs of an animal that may weigh hundreds of kilos).
Anyway, I guess the novelty here is that they were able to read much of the older work without dismantling the Turducken book (one article I read used that term).
Was a little surprised to see that the researchers seemed to be holding the book with bare hands. Would have guessed those sorts of things are usually handled with gloves but maybe this was about pioneering the technique on something considered less valuable.
ggm
I've noticed recently historical works being handled differently depending on the materials. I think there's been a revision in the protocols: Maybe the white cotton gloves are mechanically harmful sometimes? I doubt they let somebody do it who just fixed their bike chain, but if you wash your hands before touching it's possible for parchment, it's not that big a deal.
https://library.pdx.edu/news/the-proper-handling-of-rare-boo...
rags2riches
I think some of the harm of wearing gloves is in the loss of sense. Fingertips are very sensitive, which must be helpful when handling something delicate. They mention tearing in the link. I guess they just found you're more likely to accidentally tear the pages when wearing gloves.
staplung
Oh, interesting. Makes sense, I suppose. The article you linked doesn't recommend it but if you wash your hands with detergent (e.g. a drop or two of liquid Tide) you'll pull all the oil right out of your skin. No fingerprints! It only lasts for a few minutes however and I doubt that removing the oil from your skin is really doing you any favors, long term but maybe there's some extremely narrow Venn diagram intersection where you need to commit the perfect crime but are unwilling to carry nitrile gloves but are willing to carry around a bottle of laundry detergent and wash your hands every few minutes. ;-)
Anyway, thanks for the link.
mdiesel
In the highly educational show Cunk on Shakespeare, she's told not to wear gloves when looking at an early book since doing so tends to result in people being more heavy handed with the pages.
colanderman
Somewhere I read that the cotton gloves are just for show, because onlookers get in a tizzy if they see things being handled without them. Gloves limit dexterity, so it's apparently less damaging to use bare hands.
mistrial9
there is oil on your skin and perhaps waxes.. if those stay on the paper after handling the paper, then those elements will contribute to accumulation of dirt and new kinds of rot
RataNova
I love how these layers of reuse in bookbinding turn ordinary archival work into a kind of historical archaeology
RataNova
The fact that a 13th-century Arthurian manuscript was quietly hiding inside a 16th-century book cover for centuries is wild enough on its own, but the way they virtually unfolded it without causing damage feels almost as magical as the story of Merlin itself
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clauderoux
"La suite vulgate du Merlin" might translate as: "the vulgate follow up of THE Merlin", which I find quite curious. Modern French would rather say: "DE Merlin". It was as if Merlin was not a proper name but the name of some creature of the Merlin species, or some kind of properties.
Xorakios
I was taught in high school (an unfortunately long time ago :) that Merlin was a title, not a name, primarily of Scottish origin to refer to the chief Druid priest...
updated: according to irishmythswebsite Emrys was the name of the particular merlin that served Arthur, as proposed in the TV series Merlin, but I need HG Wells to go check!
layer8
It could be short for “du conte de Merlin”.
mellosouls
A really nicely presented exposition of the benefits of an institutions intra-departmental work.
Here's the manuscript itself for page-by-page viewing:
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-VANNECK-BOX-00005-A-FOLIO...
grandchild
Once you know that _usually_ people use white cotton gloves when handling museum artifacts, I find it a bit distressing that the person halfway down the article is not wearing any while holding the priceless 700-year-old pages.
namaria
“According to the Library of Congress, wearing gloves while handling antiquarian books may do more harm than good. Portland State University Library Special Collections follows their advice to handle most rare and valuable books with clean, dry hands.”
https://library.pdx.edu/news/the-proper-handling-of-rare-boo...
"Hands in gloves lack the tactility and manual dexterity of bare hands. Handling a book with gloved hands could lead to accidentally torn pages when the gloves catch on fragile edges, or a dropped book if the gloves prove to be loose or slippery.
Cotton gloves in particular have a tendency to lift fragments from pages, including pigments. Their fibers can catch in cracks that are invisible to the naked eye, further damaging friable pigments and inks.
This also means that cotton gloves retain a lot of dirt, making them not so clean after all! In this same vein, gloves cause the hands to sweat, and this moisture can penetrate the gloves to wind up on the books. Ew!"
AdamN
Apparently archivists had a realization that clean and dry hands are the most precise for handling delicate objects and that actually mistakes are made with any sort of glove. It's only dealers using white gloves at this point to give a sense of mystique to what they're selling and to give the buyer the sense that only the owner can really touch the object.
TheAceOfHearts
To clarify, the use of gloves depends a lot on the item. Books are made to be handled by people and are usually resilient to contact with clean human hands. However there are other museum pieces that are far more sensitive to oil which still merit the use of gloves. For example, here is a video [0] of Adam Savage discussing a piece from the Met Museum which is handled using gloves because they want to preserve it.
Oarch
I believe this is no longer encouraged.
jrimbault
From what I understand the gloves are only used on case-by-case basis. For some items they are more damaging than the oils from our (washed and dried) hands.
IncreasePosts
I feel like you should give the presumption of confidence to the archivist at one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
DC-3
Yeah bro I'm sure you know more about handling precious manuscripts than a Cambridge University archivist.
JoeAltmaier
Was this 'unfolding' similar to how the burned library at Pompeii had some ashen scrolls revealed?
zombot
Too bad all the photos in the article are all so small. I would have enjoyed them in larger size.
TheAceOfHearts
Friend, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page they include a link to Cambridge Digital Library which allows you to look at the full resolution images:
> The digital results of the project are now available for everyone to explore online via the > Cambridge Digital Library. [0]
dartos
The page refreshes when I scroll 80% down….
sema4hacker
I find these modern web page layouts, with peek-a-boo sections, independently scrolling columns, and other unnecessary fancy features to be frustrating to read, which is somewhat ironic since the story is about a difficult to read 13th century manuscript.
graemep
I suppose it is appropriate to a site with discussing medieval manuscripts - a lot of them prefer aesthetics to readability!
A cynic might say something about it being a university website and appropriateness to academia. Not me of course!
luhsprwhk
Disappointment alert: It wasn't fireball scrolls or a recipe for healing potions. It's a medieval rom-com.
riffraff
I interpreted the title as a manuscript by Merlin rather than about Merlin and was deeply confused for a bit.
barotalomey
Okay. Merlin is a medieval work of fiction. He's not a historical figure.
alexey-salmin
Or so he was until we've found that manuscript of his!
Apocryphon
Hey, audiences have been hungry for that sort of lost work:
I believe one of the early maps of the americas by Amerigo Vespucci was found in a similar way. Re-using paper to hand making the binding, padding the covers, wrapping the bound signatures before the outer leather or board was added was surprisingly common. John Le Carré uses it in "the perfect spy" as a mechanism to pass secret information to an amateur book binder.
It speaks to me of Robert Grave's fictitious account of Claudius deciding rather than hiding them, to leave his (fictional) autobiographical scrolls just lying around, let history decide what to keep and what to dispose of.