Claire Monson and Dr. Roger Mcfarlane, Department of Classics and Comparative Literature

The purpose of my application for an ORCA Grant was to collaborate with Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 950: Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, located in Hamburg, Germany. Using their resources and the expertise of Professor Roger T. Macfarlane, we were able to make important movement forward in the research surrounding a medieval manuscript in the holdings of BYU’s Special Collections.

The manuscript fragments found in Special Collections, referred to by call number 091 G811, vol. 1-3, were purchased by BYU in the mid-1970s from the New York bookseller H. P. Kraus to help create a teaching collection within Special Collections, but very little scholarly work was done on them after their acquisition. Since their recent rediscovery, Prof. Macfarlane and I have been working on the manuscripts; our efforts largely included the transcription of the text, the identification of said texts, and the retracing of the document’s ownership history, in an attempt to find its source. Using the resources of Special Collections, which include various catalogues of nineteenth century manuscript collections, we were able to trace the ownership history back a considerable distance. Ms. BYU 092 G811 once was part of the large library of Frederick North, fifth earl of Guilford (1766-1827). North was a famed hellenophile, president of the Philomousos Society of Athens among other distinctions, and the Ionian University was founded chiefly due to his efforts.¹ We believe that Ms. BYU 092 G811 was a part of the teaching library North compiled for the use of that university, and returned to England following North’s death in 1827 and sold shortly thereafter to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1801-1867).² Following his death, his collection was broken up and sold slowly by his estate, and our manuscript eventually fell into the hands of the bookseller Kraus and company. However, we have not yet been able to divine from where North purchased the manuscript, or the date and location of the document’s origin. The few clues we have are from the record given by Kraus at the time of BYU’s acquisition of the artifact: fragments ranging from the 10th to the 14th century, written in Greek.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the piece, however, is the fact that it is a palimpsest. Since the production of vellum was at the time of the manuscript’s creation a long and costly process, scribes would often take books that were no longer useful to the library, deconstruct them and scrub the ink off the pages in order to repurpose them for future projects. Ms. BYU 091 G811 is one such example. Although the overtext (the newer, second use of the pages) is one continuous document, the pages were sourced from various texts, meaning the undertext (the older, scrubbed away text) contains sections of several differing pieces of literature. Professor Macfarlane has been able to read enough of the undertext to determine that the majority of the pages were a part of a text of Loci Communes attributed to Maximus the
Confessor (c. 580-662). Furthermore, our manuscript contains some textual variations which differ in interesting ways from the traditional cannon. However, it is extremely difficult to read the undertext with the naked eye, as the original ink was scrubbed away and covered by a new ink. This need of assistance necessitated the trip to Germany.

Although the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures located in Hamburg, Germany, was our primary destination, we began our research in Berlin, using the large and valuable resources of the Staatsbibliothek there. Professor Macfarlane focused his energies comparing our manuscript to samples and transcripts found in the Berlin collection, while I researched the ownership history of our manuscript. The Staatsbibliothek holds an important biography of Sir Phillipps by A. N. L. Munby. The five-part series includes: The catalogues of manuscripts & printed books of Sir Thomas Phillipps, The family of Sir Thomas Phillipps, The formation of the Phillipps library up to the year 1840, The formation of the Phillipps library from 1841 to 1872, and The dispersal of the Phillipps library.³ My research there was able to confirm our theories concerning Phillipps’ acquisition of part of North’s collection and gave us an exact date of the sale, which will aid us in finding a sale catalogue with more detailed information concerning the manuscript and its origins. Munby also informed us concerning North’s association with the Ionian University, which led us to the conclusion that Ms. BYU 091 G811 was purchased for the library there.

In Hamburg we were able to use the expertise of Drs. Daniel Deckers and Christian Brockmann as well as the equipment of the Centre for Manuscript Studies to create multispectral images of each page of the manuscript. Multi-spectral imaging involves photographing the artifact using lighting throughout and beyond the visible spectrum and combining the images in order to make the ink of the undertext more visible and to highlight other details which may escape the notice of the naked eye. The Ancient Textual Imaging Group (ATIG) at BYU has used this same technique on papyri, most notably the Didymus Papyrus, a rare palimpsestpapyrus. However, since the Hamburg group works with more manuscripts than the ATIG, they are in possession of more ultraviolet (UV) equipment. UV radiation (350–625 nanometers) is more suited to working with manuscripts than papyri, which requires infrared (IR) radiation, a much higher frequency. The ATIG’s equipment goes up to 1050 nanometers to provide the IR illumination needed to work with papyri, but we needed the resources of the Centre for Manuscript Studies for the necessary UV rays for our manuscript. The needed images were taken and will be of great use in further study of Ms. BYU 091 G811.

X-ray ink analysis was a last minute and welcome addition to the activities in Hamburg. Professor Macfarlane and I met with Ira Rabin, a collaborator with Hamburg’s Centre for Manuscript Studies and a member of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –prüfung in Berlin. With her help and equipment, we were able to use x-ray fluorescence to determine the chemical makeup of the various inks found on the manuscript. As a palimpsest, the manuscript has varying layers of writing stemming from various periods and sources. Dr. Rabin is creating a database categorizing spectral profiles of inks found on medieval manuscripts, so this analysis may help in tracing back the source of the manuscript in its varied incarnations. The x-ray analysis revealed that one ink used on the manuscript contains no iron, which is found in most medieval inks, and the red ink found on the undertext of one page contains no potassium, also uncommon for that period. This sets Ms. BYU 091 G811 apart as an unusual example of medieval manuscripts and worthy of further study.

The opportunity that the ORCA Grant afforded me to travel to Germany with the manuscript and work with Prof. Macfarlane of BYU and German scholars Drs. Deckers, Brockmann and Rabin is extraordinary. I am grateful for the support they provided, and for the allowance given by the HBLL’s Special Collections to travel abroad with the medieval artifact.

References

1. M. C. Curthoys, “North, Frederick, fifth earl of Guilford (1766–1827),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., May 2009); Eric Glasgow, “Lord Guilford and the Ionian Academy,” Library History 18.2 (2002): 140-142.
2. D. T. W. Price, “Phillips, Sir Thomas (1801–1867),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
3. A. N. L. Munby, Phillipps Studies, Nos. I-V, (Cambridge UP, 1951-1960).