A biocodicological analysis of the medieval library and archive from Orval Abbey, Belgium.

Royal Society Open Science
Nicolas Ruffini-RonzaniOlivier Deparis

Abstract

Biocodicological analysis of parchments from manuscript books and archives offers unprecedented insight into the materiality of medieval literacy. Using ZooMS for animal species identification, we explored almost the entire library and all the preserved single leaf charters of a single medieval Cistercian monastery (Orval Abbey, Belgium). Systematic non-invasive sampling of parchment collagen was performed on every charter and on the first bifolium from every quire of the 118 codicological units composing the books (1490 samples in total). Within the genuine production of the Orval scriptorium (26 units), a balanced use of calfskin (47.1%) and sheepskin (48.5%) was observed, whereas calfskin was less frequent (24.3%) in externally produced units acquired by the monastery (92 units). Calfskin was preferably used for higher quality manuscripts while sheepskin tends to be the standard choice for 'ordinary' manuscript book production. This finding is consistent with thirteenth-century parchment accounts from Beaulieu Abbey (England) where calfskin supply was more limited and its price higher. Our study reveals that the making of archival documents does not follow the same pattern as the production of library books. Although the fiv...Continue Reading

References

May 15, 2010·Analytical Chemistry·Martin StrohalmVladimír Havlícek
Nov 26, 2015·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Sarah FiddymentMatthew J Collins
Mar 17, 2020·Bioinformatics·Simon HickinbothamMatthew J Collins

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Software Mentioned

ZooMS
Bacollite
Scaffold
mMass
Proteome
MaSUN
Orval
Mascot
Falmagne

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