Behind the Scenes: Establishing a Scriptorium in the Eleventh-Century Monastery of Saint-Sépulcre, Cambrai

Abstract

Little work has thoroughly examined the problems that faced startup scriptoria in the High Middle Ages. This article examines the scriptorium of Saint-Sepulcre in the first decades after this Cambrai monastery was founded in 1064. A man who called himself Fulbertus Peccator (Fulbert the Sinner) led the scriptorium during those years. He wrote at least 1,100 folios of foundational texts, but could not single-handedly fill the entire library. Fulbert therefore encouraged most, if not all, of Saint-Sepulcre's monks to participate in the production of hagiographical manuscripts, even if those monks were wholly unqualified. This article demonstrates that Fulbert's unusual decision not only helped fill the library with the hagiographical texts it needed, but also changed the significance of the resulting manuscripts for the monastic community. Much more than the sum of their parts, these manuscripts were created as objects that represented the communal spirit and the vibrancy of the newly founded monastery of Saint-Sepulcre.