Abstract
This experiment demonstrates the large potential of macro-XRF imaging for the visualization of fragments of medieval manuscripts hidden in early–modern bookbindings. The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century made manuscripts obsolete and bookbinders started recycling their strong parchment leaves to reinforce bindings of printed books. One in roughly every five early-modern books contains a fragment of a medieval manuscript hidden underneath the bookbinding. Systematically investigating these fragments will provide scholars with valuable information about transmission and variant readings of medieval texts. Four case studies were scanned with a Bruker M6 Jetstream mobile XRF scanner. We were able to visualize hidden texts underneath black paint, paper and parchment at such a high resolution that they could be read and dated. One of the findings was an early twelfth-century excerpt of a text by the Venerable Bede in a sixteenth-century bookbinding. In addition, we were able to separately visualize the lower and upper text of a famous palimpsest. The main limitation of the current set-up is the scanning time, which took anywhere between 6 and 66 h. In order to systematically employ macro-XRF for researching medieval fragments, the scanning time needs to be decreased. Nonetheless, this experiment shows that the macro-XRF technique is extremely suitable for visualizing fragments of medieval manuscripts in a non-destructive way in order to read, date and localize them.
Highlights
The invention of the printing press in c. 1450 made the handwritten medieval book—or “manuscript”—obsolete
We propose Macro X-ray fluorescence scanning (MA-XRF) as an excellent technique to investigate hidden fragments in bookbindings, because of the following reasons
Case study 1—635 G 5 The back cover of this sixteenth-century book is covered by a black paint that obscures most of the underlying script
Summary
The invention of the printing press in c. 1450 made the handwritten medieval book—or “manuscript”—obsolete. The invention of the printing press in c. 1450 made the handwritten medieval book—or “manuscript”—obsolete. As Europe started to read the printed counterparts, handwritten books lost their value and many of them were destroyed. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, many thousands were boiled down for the production of glue. Many died a different death: their pages were cut out and recycled by bookbinders. These so-called “fragments” were usually cut from parchment books [1]. This material was strong and ideal for supporting the bookbinding of printed books. At present there are thousands of manuscript
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