1 00:00:10,570 --> 00:00:15,580 So hello, everybody, and welcome to this webinar, Meet the Fragments. Thank you very much for being here. 2 00:00:15,580 --> 00:00:21,220 My name is Helen. I'm the Education Officer at the Bodleian Libraries. The Meet the Manuscripts online event series was 3 00:00:21,220 --> 00:00:27,430 inspired by the project to digitise manuscripts from German-speaking lands funded by the Polonsky Foundation. 4 00:00:27,430 --> 00:00:30,370 And we will be looking at two of those manuscripts today. 5 00:00:30,370 --> 00:00:35,920 The events have proved very popular, so we are delighted to be continuing the series in the autumn. 6 00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:38,980 Just to let you know a few practical things before we start. 7 00:00:38,980 --> 00:00:45,610 We are recording the event, but as this is a Zoom webinar, your video and audio are turned off and you won't appear in the video. 8 00:00:45,610 --> 00:00:49,270 We will share a link to the film a week or so after the event. 9 00:00:49,270 --> 00:00:55,330 Today's event features two of our wonderful Bodleian colleagues in conversation over some fascinating manuscripts. 10 00:00:55,330 --> 00:01:02,200 And we'd like you to join the discussion. So if you would like to ask a question, please type it in the Q&A window throughout the event. 11 00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:08,860 Please do check now that you can find the Q&A. You could also vote for questions you are interested in by clicking on the thumbs up. 12 00:01:08,860 --> 00:01:13,090 And I will put your questions live to our experts during the session. 13 00:01:13,090 --> 00:01:18,430 In your booking email, we've shared links to the manuscripts where available so you can take a look for yourselves. 14 00:01:18,430 --> 00:01:23,890 This is the first event in the autumn Meet the Manuscript series. The next is on Monday, the 8th of November. 15 00:01:23,890 --> 00:01:29,830 Do you sign up to the Bodleian newsletter and check the Bodleian website for details of all our upcoming events. 16 00:01:29,830 --> 00:01:34,030 We really value your feedback, so please do fill out the short questionnaire after the webinar. 17 00:01:34,030 --> 00:01:37,360 The link is in your booking email and we'll share it again at the end. 18 00:01:37,360 --> 00:01:41,710 This helps us to continue to offer and improve free events like this for everyone. 19 00:01:41,710 --> 00:01:48,050 So once again, welcome. The plan for today is to focus on the fragments in manuscripts which are often ignored. 20 00:01:48,050 --> 00:01:53,470 Our speakers are Matthew Holford, the Tolkien curator of Mediaeval Manuscripts, and Andrew Honey. 21 00:01:53,470 --> 00:02:00,610 Book Conservator, Research and Teaching. Matthew and Andrew are both in the Weston Library on Broad Street in Oxford, but in different rooms, 22 00:02:00,610 --> 00:02:07,990 and they will be examining the manuscripts together to consider the physical function of fragments and what they contribute to book history. 23 00:02:07,990 --> 00:02:13,510 As I said, we'll pause during the session for questions. So please add these to the Q&A box throughout. 24 00:02:13,510 --> 00:02:20,920 If we don't have time to answer all your questions today, we'll collate the most popular ones and do our best to answer them in our follow up email. 25 00:02:20,920 --> 00:02:26,840 So I'll hand over now to Matthew and Andrew. Thank you very much, Helen. 26 00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:36,440 Welcome, everybody. It's great to have you. It's great to be carrying on with the Meet the Manuscript sessions after our digitisation project is finished. 27 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:42,290 Although this session we are looking at some rather different material to the items we covered in earlier sessions. 28 00:02:42,290 --> 00:02:46,880 We were looking in earlier sessions at some of the library's treasures, complete codexes. 29 00:02:46,880 --> 00:02:59,130 And today we're going to focus on little, well, often rather dirty and stained bits of manuscripts that were used to bind other codexes. 30 00:02:59,130 --> 00:03:05,870 So why are we doing this? It's because we need to to fully understand mediaeval book culture. 31 00:03:05,870 --> 00:03:15,380 We need to pay attention to fragments as well as to complete codexes. No one really knows how many mediaeval fragments of codexes survive, 32 00:03:15,380 --> 00:03:22,790 but it's probably at least as many as the number of complete codexes, and probably rather more. So 33 00:03:22,790 --> 00:03:28,550 it's a very important part of the evidence for mediaeval culture and book history that we need to evaluate. 34 00:03:28,550 --> 00:03:37,490 It's also, in many cases, the only contact that people have with mediaeval manuscripts is in the form of leaves or fragments. 35 00:03:37,490 --> 00:03:41,960 So it's important to understand how we go about studying them and interpreting them, 36 00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:47,660 and in particular the sort of double life that they have as evidence of one 37 00:03:47,660 --> 00:03:53,390 codex that has been dismembered and then reused in a different context. 38 00:03:53,390 --> 00:04:04,970 We're going to start off by looking at this fabulous and perhaps also slightly frightening volume, which is one of the Bodleian Library's Guardbooks. 39 00:04:04,970 --> 00:04:10,640 So that's a collection of fragments removed from bindings of printed books or 40 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:17,260 manuscripts in the Library from the second half of the 19th century onwards. 41 00:04:17,260 --> 00:04:24,530 Now, it sort of pains me to say that before that period, the Library didn't have a policy of retaining these fragments. 42 00:04:24,530 --> 00:04:32,690 So if a book went to the Bodleian bindery before about 1850, any fragments that were in it were unlikely to be retained. 43 00:04:32,690 --> 00:04:35,090 They weren't considered of interest. 44 00:04:35,090 --> 00:04:45,240 Fortunately, that policy did change from the second half of the 19th century and the fragments were gathered in volumes like this. 45 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:52,510 So we're going to turn to one of these fragments and Andrew is going to help us think about 46 00:04:52,510 --> 00:04:58,200 what we're looking at and how to how to understand the evidence of 47 00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:07,880 stains and other features to understand how the fragment's been reused and what that can tell us about its history. 48 00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:17,300 Thank you, Matthew. Well, if I can jump in now with one of the first things to just observe is, as we're looking at these fragments, 49 00:05:17,300 --> 00:05:22,260 they're all arranged, as we might expect a book to be arranged. 50 00:05:22,260 --> 00:05:31,920 So we've got lines of text that run across the page and which you can read. However, 51 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:36,480 I'm intrigued and we're looking at, the first group we're going to look at are these four leaves here, 52 00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:43,950 folios four to seven, which we've got these sort of strange brown stains on. 53 00:05:43,950 --> 00:05:49,530 But we've got four leaves from a manuscript that have been preserved in this case. 54 00:05:49,530 --> 00:05:54,180 But here, so this is folios five and six. It's a lovely example. 55 00:05:54,180 --> 00:06:01,560 You see these sort of unusual brown stains around the edges and right at the bottom near Matthew's finger there, 56 00:06:01,560 --> 00:06:09,020 there's another stain with a couple of holes in it which is telling me I mean, 57 00:06:09,020 --> 00:06:15,090 as a book conservator and someone who's used to handling bindings, how this was used, its second use. 58 00:06:15,090 --> 00:06:20,370 So how this was sort of reused and recycled within a binding. 59 00:06:20,370 --> 00:06:28,380 And once you start to think about those brown stains and so on, with my kind of Book Conservator hat on, 60 00:06:28,380 --> 00:06:30,240 I'm thinking, well, actually that's the wrong way round. 61 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:38,550 It's not in a way that you could read, but actually was once in a different position within a book. 62 00:06:38,550 --> 00:06:43,170 So to try and explain this, I have a mini model here. 63 00:06:43,170 --> 00:06:51,600 So this is more or less what we see. And if we open it up, you can see these brown stains which stop characteristically here. 64 00:06:51,600 --> 00:07:00,690 And then we've got a white area. And anything where you've got these sort of discontinuous stains makes you think something's happened. 65 00:07:00,690 --> 00:07:03,330 So actually, if we, there's also a fold towards the top. 66 00:07:03,330 --> 00:07:11,970 If I fold that down and you'll see on the other side of it, there's a, there's a bit of broun stain that matches up. 67 00:07:11,970 --> 00:07:19,220 And this is telling me that actually what we have here was once a paste down, 68 00:07:19,220 --> 00:07:26,660 so a piece of parchment that was stuck to the inner face of a binding and was used to 69 00:07:26,660 --> 00:07:32,150 strengthen and also for the mechanical properties of parchment within the binding. 70 00:07:32,150 --> 00:07:40,970 Now, it's lucky in this case that we've got a shelf mark written on it and we know that it was removed from 71 00:07:40,970 --> 00:07:52,670 a book that was printed in 1565, in Venice, but that was bound in Oxford at around 1600. So, 72 00:07:52,670 --> 00:07:56,330 the interest in fragments is not just what may be written on them, 73 00:07:56,330 --> 00:08:05,090 but actually when when this became a material that was sort of recycled and available for reuse, 74 00:08:05,090 --> 00:08:11,710 and we might think of this as a waste material, but in many ways it wasn't. 75 00:08:11,710 --> 00:08:19,220 It was always material. But the binders who were using it were very conscious of the qualities of parchment. 76 00:08:19,220 --> 00:08:23,890 So in this case, that 77 00:08:23,890 --> 00:08:34,950 we might think of it just as a piece of waste material stuck inside a board, but it was actually helping the binding to function, to allow 78 00:08:34,950 --> 00:08:40,500 the ability of the parchment as it sort of, the tensions, as it dries to create sort of tension within the binding, 79 00:08:40,500 --> 00:08:45,810 that as the board opens, that the whole book begins to move. 80 00:08:45,810 --> 00:08:53,150 So from it, from a kind of bit of binding history, this jumps out at me as, 81 00:08:53,150 --> 00:09:01,040 from my point of view, mounted the wrong way round, but also telling us something about the afterlives of these things. 82 00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:01,700 And then finally, 83 00:09:01,700 --> 00:09:12,770 just one little bit of Bodleian history, that mark that I showed you at the bottom right hand corner is actually the stain from the chain staple, 84 00:09:12,770 --> 00:09:21,410 which I've drawn on here. So this is where the book had a metal clip with a ring attached to it. 85 00:09:21,410 --> 00:09:26,060 And because of its position, we know that this was the front or the left board of the binding. 86 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:40,920 So we can tell just from the stains and the position of the chain staple that this was at the front and pasted down to the inner face of this binding. 87 00:09:40,920 --> 00:09:48,780 That's such an important point, I think isn't it, about how these have been curated in the Guardbook, but these fragments and how the, as you say, 88 00:09:48,780 --> 00:09:53,310 the intention is to recreate what the original manuscript would have looked like, 89 00:09:53,310 --> 00:09:58,980 and that's assumed to be the focus of interest and not the context of reuse, 90 00:09:58,980 --> 00:10:05,790 even though that is just as interesting in a way, because what these fragments are telling us is not just about, you know, 91 00:10:05,790 --> 00:10:13,090 we can look at the script and work out when and where it might have been written, but what's just as important as is when and where it was reused. 92 00:10:13,090 --> 00:10:24,930 So when this book was no longer thought worthy of preservation, when it was given up for free use in this context, which, as you say, we can use. 93 00:10:24,930 --> 00:10:30,240 If we didn't have the shelfmark, we might be able to use some of this evidence to put it in an Oxford context, 94 00:10:30,240 --> 00:10:44,820 just from the nature of the the structure of the binding. Yes it's, but yes, a lovely example. 95 00:10:44,820 --> 00:10:53,440 But our next example is a much stranger looking structure, isn't it? 96 00:10:53,440 --> 00:11:02,910 Not really recognisable in a way, as a leaf - let me zoom in. 97 00:11:02,910 --> 00:11:16,090 So this. This sort of holey, holey structure here, so can you, can you talk us through how this would have fitted into a binding? 98 00:11:16,090 --> 00:11:19,300 Yes, so this is a, yes, 99 00:11:19,300 --> 00:11:31,060 an odd looking sort of strange H shaped fragment that originally came from a single leaf or a leaf cut out of the manuscript. 100 00:11:31,060 --> 00:11:36,240 But again, luckily, with my kind of sense of binding history, 101 00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:42,390 what we might think is, where on earth was this? And if we think of the last fragment, would have been on the inner face of the board, 102 00:11:42,390 --> 00:11:46,710 very visible, this would have been hidden within the binding. 103 00:11:46,710 --> 00:11:57,660 So what we have here is something that was helped to reinforce the connection between the text block spine of the binding and the boards. 104 00:11:57,660 --> 00:12:05,730 And actually what's now being mounted as one piece in use was actually cut in two. 105 00:12:05,730 --> 00:12:14,520 So I think in the middle sort of comb, we can see the edge of where the two things have been joined. 106 00:12:14,520 --> 00:12:19,260 And again, but I've got a model here of what it would have looked like. 107 00:12:19,260 --> 00:12:21,940 And I think that's an odd thing as well. 108 00:12:21,940 --> 00:12:29,670 But we know from other examples that this is what's known as a comb spine lining and would have been used, 109 00:12:29,670 --> 00:12:38,160 you would have had two layers stuck to the spine of the of the binding with two sets of sewing supports. 110 00:12:38,160 --> 00:12:43,530 And then these extensions would have been pasted either to the external face or the inner face of the board. 111 00:12:43,530 --> 00:12:50,220 And just, just to show you one in. So here we've got one as a sort of model stuck. 112 00:12:50,220 --> 00:12:58,170 You can see this double layer of spines that would have been stuck to the spine of the book and then the extensions on the inside. 113 00:12:58,170 --> 00:13:04,920 Now, this is a sad, sad example that we've got no, no knowledge of where it comes from. 114 00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:15,810 However, this kind of spine comb, spine lining can be localised to certain bits of Europe and at different periods. 115 00:13:15,810 --> 00:13:20,790 And we know that they continue to be used much longer in France than anywhere else in Europe. 116 00:13:20,790 --> 00:13:34,020 So even if we can't say which book or binding it came from, we can tell it's a small binding which would have had two or three sewing supports. 117 00:13:34,020 --> 00:13:42,800 So a small format book. We have some indication of where it may have been used. From the adhesive on it, 118 00:13:42,800 --> 00:13:48,130 we can say that it would have been an inboard binding rather than a limp structure. 119 00:13:48,130 --> 00:13:54,290 So there's various clues, but but sadly, very little to go on. 120 00:13:54,290 --> 00:13:56,960 But it does... no, so can we. 121 00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:05,420 I mean, one thing perhaps is this, the comb binding structure not being something that we'd expect to find in a British binding. 122 00:14:05,420 --> 00:14:09,140 Is it so we might. Yes. 123 00:14:09,140 --> 00:14:16,490 More likely to be a continental French or Italian, but. 124 00:14:16,490 --> 00:14:27,860 Yes. And then we've got that rather shocking but rather wonderful additional stain on it. 125 00:14:27,860 --> 00:14:31,850 The last example we saw, which we know was lifted in 1901, 126 00:14:31,850 --> 00:14:36,950 and there's a pencil inscription on it and and on the host binding 127 00:14:36,950 --> 00:14:44,030 this one just has this rust stain in a characteristic mark of a paperclip. 128 00:14:44,030 --> 00:14:48,790 So we can tell that for some, 129 00:14:48,790 --> 00:14:55,840 presumably considerable, period in the 20th century, these two bits which have been removed from a binding, were clipped together. 130 00:14:55,840 --> 00:15:07,180 Now, whether they were removed from a Bodleian binding or whether they were removed and then brought in for an opinion or were a donation, 131 00:15:07,180 --> 00:15:15,270 we don't know. But it's yes, there was perhaps less care taken with, 132 00:15:15,270 --> 00:15:20,640 with noting where they came from. Yes, it's very tantalising, this example, isn't it, because I mean, 133 00:15:20,640 --> 00:15:29,160 not only is there the fact that we don't know where it was removed from, it just emphasises how important recordkeeping is in these contexts. 134 00:15:29,160 --> 00:15:38,910 And so, so important not just to keep records, but really to keep records with the fragment themselves of, of where it's been removed from. 135 00:15:38,910 --> 00:15:44,190 But also the text of this hasn't been identified, at least so far. 136 00:15:44,190 --> 00:15:50,850 So the first example we looked at was quite well-known patristic text of Gregory the Great's Homilies on the Gospels. 137 00:15:50,850 --> 00:15:58,380 But this is a sort of theological distinctions, but we haven't identified the text itself. 138 00:15:58,380 --> 00:16:02,250 So it's, so it's tantalising in all sorts of ways. Yes. 139 00:16:02,250 --> 00:16:09,270 And even though we have these Guardbooks, I presume there's there's still so much work to be done on them. 140 00:16:09,270 --> 00:16:15,150 Yes, yes, exactly, because these were I mean, they've been put together over the 20th century, 141 00:16:15,150 --> 00:16:22,350 catalogued mostly in the 1960s and as we'll, we'll say a bit later, 142 00:16:22,350 --> 00:16:28,950 the identification of texts has got so much easier since then that I'm sure there are all sorts of discoveries 143 00:16:28,950 --> 00:16:37,410 waiting to be made in these sorts of albums of texts that have yet to be identified or possibly new texts. 144 00:16:37,410 --> 00:16:42,090 And that's I mean, that has historically as I think we will again talk about later, 145 00:16:42,090 --> 00:16:50,760 that has been one of the main reasons for people to go hunting after fragments in hope of exciting new discoveries. 146 00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:58,050 So we've got one last item to look at in this volume, which is another, a different structure. 147 00:16:58,050 --> 00:17:07,140 Again, looking rather like a sort of a kit that you might get to just sort of fold something and and make a boat or something. 148 00:17:07,140 --> 00:17:13,650 But clearly, that's not what's going on here. But perhaps Andrew, you could explain to us what is going on. 149 00:17:13,650 --> 00:17:20,940 Yeah, well, here we've got this sort of strange, almost bat-shaped piece of parchment with the characteristic cuts and folds in it. 150 00:17:20,940 --> 00:17:28,680 And we might think bat-shaped for Halloween. But no, what we have here is the cover of a binding. 151 00:17:28,680 --> 00:17:36,180 So this was a parchment, piece of parchment that was recycled and folded around in the binding of a thing. 152 00:17:36,180 --> 00:17:40,890 So what we, what we're looking at at the moment is the inner side of the parchment. 153 00:17:40,890 --> 00:17:54,210 Again, if I look at my handy model, you can see as we start to fold in these flaps, it turns into something that's far more book shaped. 154 00:17:54,210 --> 00:18:02,910 And you can imagine this folded around. This is life size, real size, a relatively small format book. 155 00:18:02,910 --> 00:18:08,370 And again, we're fortunate to have a shelf mark for this. 156 00:18:08,370 --> 00:18:15,960 So we know that this is a 1561 small format book printed in Lyon. 157 00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:26,190 And we know that the, this manuscript fragment was lifted in 1932 at the instigation of the then keeper of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian. 158 00:18:26,190 --> 00:18:31,290 So here the other side, we can see what would have been on the outside of the binding. 159 00:18:31,290 --> 00:18:37,540 So what what, was what was observable in 1932 160 00:18:37,540 --> 00:18:46,740 and that's why it's got a sort of darker area on the spine where there's been more light damage and so on over the years. 161 00:18:46,740 --> 00:18:58,500 But again, it's an early accession into the Bodleian and would have come in, small format book, coming in, a binding put on it, 162 00:18:58,500 --> 00:19:07,390 probably near Lyon where it was first 163 00:19:07,390 --> 00:19:12,730 produced and presumably where the first binder was, first owner was, 164 00:19:12,730 --> 00:19:21,250 and it would have come into the Bodleian as a second hand book, 50 odd years old at that point. 165 00:19:21,250 --> 00:19:26,980 Yes, you can see why, why someone might have been interested in it can't you, this tantalising, 166 00:19:26,980 --> 00:19:32,920 obviously rather early script that they perhaps weren't able to to make a great deal of. 167 00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:36,070 It's a copy of Augustine The City 168 00:19:36,070 --> 00:19:45,700 of God, an early copy from the first half of the 19th century and geographically localised to France, northern France. 169 00:19:45,700 --> 00:19:49,240 So that that fits pretty well with the later provenance. 170 00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:57,580 And it's one of the manuscripts that the great German paleographer Bernard Bischoff included in his catalogue of all the 9th century manuscripts. 171 00:19:57,580 --> 00:20:01,990 And a lot of those are fragments. And it just illustrates, as we were saying before, 172 00:20:01,990 --> 00:20:11,200 how much fragments can have to contribute to our understanding of the written culture of Europe as a particular time. 173 00:20:11,200 --> 00:20:17,200 Yes, it would be interesting to know how much could have been, you know, could it have been left in situ? 174 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:24,880 I mean, yes. Anyway. Shall we, shall we break for questions then? 175 00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:29,200 Thank you both, Matthew and Andrew, that's brilliant. Yes, we've had a number of questions come in, 176 00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:38,110 so if we start with some of the more general ones about the kind of practicalities of looking after the manuscripts and how the bindings were created, 177 00:20:38,110 --> 00:20:45,760 we've had a question. Do you know what kind of glue was used in the binding, in the kind of putting together of the manuscripts? 178 00:20:45,760 --> 00:20:55,770 One for you Andrew maybe? Well, a mixture. So we have both protein glue, so sort of animal glues, but we also see a lot of paste. 179 00:20:55,770 --> 00:21:06,860 So wheat flour, often wheat flour with a lot of bran in so cooked up, almost like wallpaper paste and used. 180 00:21:06,860 --> 00:21:16,940 And yes, you'll see, you'll see predominantly paste used, but sometimes a mixture of animal glue and and paste and sometimes animal glue, 181 00:21:16,940 --> 00:21:27,680 particularly used on the spine of books where they wanted it very - kind of - a lot of grab and very sticky adhesive. 182 00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:35,370 Thank you and a very general question, how the manuscripts are archived - in places with a special temperature, presumably. 183 00:21:35,370 --> 00:21:41,730 So just kind of generally how you look after these things in the Bodleian I guess. Yes, we have, 184 00:21:41,730 --> 00:21:44,460 I mean, these are kept within the stacks here at the Weston Library. 185 00:21:44,460 --> 00:21:52,650 And we've got both climate control to control the temperature, which is, you know, 186 00:21:52,650 --> 00:21:58,800 it's a comfortable range, but on the cool side, but more importantly, to control the relative humidity. 187 00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:06,930 So the amount of moisture in the air. Brilliant, thank you. And so moving on to the fragments, specifically, a question, 188 00:22:06,930 --> 00:22:11,010 do you know how many fragments, those fragments have been identified within the collection? 189 00:22:11,010 --> 00:22:14,970 Is it possible to even put a number on it? 190 00:22:14,970 --> 00:22:24,510 Well, in this particular book, I don't think I could tell you off the top of my head, but maybe maybe two thirds, I suppose, perhaps. 191 00:22:24,510 --> 00:22:27,570 And in general, of the fragments in the, in the library, 192 00:22:27,570 --> 00:22:35,100 it would be a much smaller figure because many of them are still in situ, in manuscripts and in early printed books. 193 00:22:35,100 --> 00:22:40,800 We don't even know about all the ones that exist in manuscripts and early printed books. 194 00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:45,540 So there's there's a lot of work to be done on our fragments. Excellent, a lifetime's work. 195 00:22:45,540 --> 00:22:54,270 And one participant has asked whether we have any Hebrew fragments amongst the binding fragments in the Guardbooks or in any of the manuscripts, 196 00:22:54,270 --> 00:23:06,180 I suppose. Yes, indeed, we do not in this Guardbook, which has been stored sort of thematically by both language and subject. 197 00:23:06,180 --> 00:23:11,460 So they're all Latin and they're all theological. 198 00:23:11,460 --> 00:23:16,080 However, we do have Hebrew fragments and they're interesting. 199 00:23:16,080 --> 00:23:24,870 There's one I know of that is, was removed from another 16th century Italian book printed in Latin. 200 00:23:24,870 --> 00:23:35,490 So those, yes, the cross-cultural fertilisation of where fragments were used, where they were available is a fascinating subject. 201 00:23:35,490 --> 00:23:43,710 And then, also are there any fragments of unknown old English poetry that you've come across maybe. 202 00:23:43,710 --> 00:23:51,480 No, no. And I think that that's one area where if you, if you did find that, 203 00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:57,580 you would tell someone who was an expert in this and fairly quickly it would be published and everyone would know about it. 204 00:23:57,580 --> 00:24:06,330 So, no, if anyone does find a fragment of old English, do do tell people as soon as you can, because everyone will be very excited. 205 00:24:06,330 --> 00:24:12,420 But no, no fragments that we know of, of old English. 206 00:24:12,420 --> 00:24:16,710 There may well be fragments of middle English that identify (the lights are going off 207 00:24:16,710 --> 00:24:25,860 so I need to pace around). But you never know what you might find, things do, things do turn up. 208 00:24:25,860 --> 00:24:29,310 Lovely. Thank you. So we'll come back to some of the other questions a bit later on. 209 00:24:29,310 --> 00:24:41,420 But I think we'll move on to our next manuscript now, please. I might just say, as I close that one up, that we added to it very recently, 210 00:24:41,420 --> 00:24:50,150 so fragments that we have from various sources or fragments that are purchased 211 00:24:50,150 --> 00:24:56,060 as well do do still go in these Guardbooks, that they are actively maintained. 212 00:24:56,060 --> 00:25:00,710 But our next volume is something a little bit different. 213 00:25:00,710 --> 00:25:10,910 So the fragments that we've been looking at up til now have come out of, as far as we know, mostly 16th century bindings, 214 00:25:10,910 --> 00:25:17,840 and that perhaps is what most people would think of as being the great age of manuscript recycling when there 215 00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:25,130 were lots of new printed books that need to be bound and there was a lot of manuscript waste available, 216 00:25:25,130 --> 00:25:32,750 either because libraries were deaccessioning as their books became became outmoded in the face of printed books, 217 00:25:32,750 --> 00:25:44,120 or as with the Protestant Reformation's manuscripts, monastic libraries were being dissolved and manuscripts came onto the market that way. 218 00:25:44,120 --> 00:25:48,470 But we do find manuscript recycling in mediaeval bindings as well 219 00:25:48,470 --> 00:25:53,150 and it's very interesting to think about who was deaccessioning, as it were, 220 00:25:53,150 --> 00:26:02,320 books from mediaeval libraries in the mediaeval period itself and what that can tell us about reading habits and intellectual history. 221 00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:08,500 So we're going to look at an example of that now, this is a 15th century book and maybe, 222 00:26:08,500 --> 00:26:12,910 Andrew, you want to sort of admire the binding a bit before we before we dive in? 223 00:26:12,910 --> 00:26:22,180 Yes. I mean, it's beautiful to see this sort of 15th century German binding, but what's for me so interesting is it maintains various scars. 224 00:26:22,180 --> 00:26:25,900 So we've got bosses that have been removed, clasps that have been removed. 225 00:26:25,900 --> 00:26:37,330 So showing us that the books to continue to be used as their sort of shelving in storage changed, have had things removed or added to. 226 00:26:37,330 --> 00:26:41,950 So the kind of scars and stains we've seen with fragments are also found on bindings 227 00:26:41,950 --> 00:26:49,090 and part of our job is to interpret these tantalising kind of glimpses of their past history. 228 00:26:49,090 --> 00:26:57,370 But it was also interesting as you opened up, Matthew, just to see here we have, so here we have a fragment that's in situ still. 229 00:26:57,370 --> 00:27:06,130 So this is a very similar, was once a space down, was once stuck to the inner face of this board, as we can see that that's been lifted. 230 00:27:06,130 --> 00:27:15,460 But for me, the thing that that I find lovely about this is it's upside down and, and makes you think about the earlier, the 231 00:27:15,460 --> 00:27:21,610 person who commissioned this binding, and the binder who put it in, had no worry about this thing being upside down. 232 00:27:21,610 --> 00:27:25,480 The idea, it didn't jar with them. 233 00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:37,240 And again, the sense of things in motion really and how we might view fragments, must be so different to how they were viewed at the time. 234 00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:44,620 They were clearly seen as an important functioning part of the binding and, and, 235 00:27:44,620 --> 00:27:48,400 again, these sort of parchment paste downs, and I've got a model here, 236 00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:54,100 but they just as you can see, as you open the book, it, the whole thing begins to move. 237 00:27:54,100 --> 00:27:59,770 And this, the importance of the function and the use of parchment within this, would have been so 238 00:27:59,770 --> 00:28:07,060 important to the binder that they are clearly selecting it for that rather than which way up it was, 239 00:28:07,060 --> 00:28:14,280 or I'm sure they have no thought at all about what the text was. 240 00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:21,070 That's an interesting point to think about the structure, isn't it, because we might think that doing this with a paste down, 241 00:28:21,070 --> 00:28:26,010 so lifting the paste down from the board so that both sides are legible, 242 00:28:26,010 --> 00:28:33,930 you know, that might seem like having our cake and eating it in that way of making the text available without disturbing the binding too much. 243 00:28:33,930 --> 00:28:38,640 But from what you're saying, we really are actually disturbing the blinding when we do that. 244 00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:48,320 I mean, this one's in, luckily in good condition, but quite often where we see that elements of the binding have been lifted, certainly fragments, 245 00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:55,830 you get this chain reaction, that the stresses which were once shared across many parts of the, you know, 246 00:28:55,830 --> 00:29:03,150 beautifully balanced structure of the mediaeval binding becomes lopsided and then the sewing support start to break down. 247 00:29:03,150 --> 00:29:07,960 The covering letter breaks down. So the hunt for fragments 248 00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:19,460 in many ways, causes, has caused, so much damage to the total mediaeval object of manuscript and binding. 249 00:29:19,460 --> 00:29:21,650 I'll say a bit about what the text is, 250 00:29:21,650 --> 00:29:31,490 because this is one of the interesting cases when fragments do tell us something really quite new and exciting that we might not have known otherwise. 251 00:29:31,490 --> 00:29:39,860 So when we, this is one of the books that Helen mentioned that were digitised for the Polonsky Project recently, and when we were cataloguing it, 252 00:29:39,860 --> 00:29:46,250 the fragment leaped out to a certain extent because of the sort of formal grade of script and the very expansive layout, 253 00:29:46,250 --> 00:29:50,740 which was fairly unusual things to see on fragments. Often they're, 254 00:29:50,740 --> 00:29:53,360 they're not such a high grade. 255 00:29:53,360 --> 00:30:00,800 And we knew there was a fragment in there and it had been described as having a theological text, but the text hadn't been identified. 256 00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:09,410 And as I said, it was much harder to identify texts until relatively recently when electronic databases became available. 257 00:30:09,410 --> 00:30:17,300 And nowadays it's often fairly straightforward. So it was quite easy to identify this text as a copy of one of Dante's texts, 258 00:30:17,300 --> 00:30:25,700 not one of his vernacular poems for which he's most famous but his Latin treatise, Monarchia, on papal and imperial government. 259 00:30:25,700 --> 00:30:32,690 And that in itself is quite an exciting discovery because they were not very many manuscripts known of the Monarchia, only 20. 260 00:30:32,690 --> 00:30:37,160 So to add a new one is, it's quite interesting in itself. 261 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:43,550 And one written in this rather formal way of script is also quite unusual for Monarchian manuscripts. 262 00:30:43,550 --> 00:30:51,700 So this was probably a high grade manuscript, is telling us something we didn't know before about the audience of that text. 263 00:30:51,700 --> 00:30:58,000 And because of its position in a German binding, it's also telling us something about where the text was read. 264 00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:08,740 So the main book is a paperwork dated 1445, and the binding is roughly contemporary, we know, from the stamps used on it. 265 00:31:08,740 --> 00:31:14,530 So we know that the book was written and bound in Erfurt in Germany in the mid 15th century. 266 00:31:14,530 --> 00:31:21,580 And so we know that was somewhere where the Dante text was circulating and that hadn't again been known before. 267 00:31:21,580 --> 00:31:30,820 So there were no copies that we knew of from Germany. So, again, that's adding something significant to the story of that text circulation. 268 00:31:30,820 --> 00:31:38,740 And we also have, even more interestingly, this sort of marginal commentary, which, again, only survives in two other manuscripts. 269 00:31:38,740 --> 00:31:44,620 So we've got, again, another witness to what's in fact, a very rare and unusual text. 270 00:31:44,620 --> 00:31:55,710 So this this fragment turns out to be potentially pretty important for the understanding of all those texts. 271 00:31:55,710 --> 00:32:01,610 Yes, that concludes my discussion of that fragment, so maybe that would be a good time for questions, Helen. 272 00:32:01,610 --> 00:32:08,130 Thank you Matthew. Yeah, just to pick up on your point, Andrew, about the structure of books and how important fragments were, 273 00:32:08,130 --> 00:32:12,120 we've had a question about the kind of general rules that are followed by the Bodleian at the moment. 274 00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:17,760 So is there a policy of always leaving fragments in situ or trying, or can they sometimes be removed? 275 00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:26,040 Or what are the guidelines that you work to now? I mean, as with everything in the Bodleian, we don't have hard and fast guidelines. 276 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:34,500 So what we would do is in most cases, yes, we would like to leave fragments in place. Occasionally during conservation 277 00:32:34,500 --> 00:32:40,230 it becomes necessary to lift certain things with spine linings occasionally. 278 00:32:40,230 --> 00:32:42,330 So some things might be lifted, 279 00:32:42,330 --> 00:32:53,730 but we would now ensure that we restore them with the original manuscript or the host volume and document where they came from. 280 00:32:53,730 --> 00:33:04,610 So, yes, in my time I have lifted a few, but not many. And I think the days of sort of hunting and lifting 281 00:33:04,610 --> 00:33:11,210 in a more sort of active way, we've moved beyond that and actually some, some recent projects have been looking at 282 00:33:11,210 --> 00:33:17,480 trying to catalogue what we have within some of our collections of Incunabula, 283 00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:23,180 so early printed books. But I think Matthew hopefully will will back me up on this, 284 00:33:23,180 --> 00:33:28,880 that I think the realisation is that it's good for the fragment to have the context of 285 00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:34,880 where it was used and it's good for the host volume to have the fragment left with it, 286 00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:39,600 if at all possible. Yes, I think 287 00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,510 because when you remove the fragment, 288 00:33:42,510 --> 00:33:52,710 you never really know what evidence you're sort of damaging do you, because you even, you might sort of document everything you can, 289 00:33:52,710 --> 00:33:56,910 but there may be something you don't document that emerges in 20 years time to be a very 290 00:33:56,910 --> 00:34:01,050 important feature of the binding structure that will tell us a lot about the provenance. 291 00:34:01,050 --> 00:34:04,830 And that might be something that was lost by the removal of a fragment. 292 00:34:04,830 --> 00:34:11,130 So, yes, I think the trend is very much just to not intervene at all if we can avoid it. 293 00:34:11,130 --> 00:34:21,390 And we do have, we do have modern techniques that will let us see much more fragments without, without acting invasively. 294 00:34:21,390 --> 00:34:27,920 But that's a very welcome development of modern technology over the last couple of decades. 295 00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,370 Thank you. And one more question just on this specific text. 296 00:34:31,370 --> 00:34:38,180 Do you know why such a high status text like Dante's would have been chosen for use in a binding? 297 00:34:38,180 --> 00:34:43,790 Well, it's a real mystery in a way, isn't it and a great question. 298 00:34:43,790 --> 00:34:49,820 I mean, I think we have to assume that it wasn't in demand or it wouldn't have ended up there. 299 00:34:49,820 --> 00:34:53,930 One possibility is that it was, it was a sort of controversial text 300 00:34:53,930 --> 00:35:00,470 I suppose. It had, offered a very particular view of the papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor. 301 00:35:00,470 --> 00:35:09,040 And it's possible that that wasn't, you know, acceptable intellectually, perhaps in the environment where it ended up. 302 00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:10,060 Thank you. 303 00:35:10,060 --> 00:35:17,050 I'm aware of time, so I do want to move on to our final manuscripts and there are a few questions that we'll pick up again on the end, at the end. 304 00:35:17,050 --> 00:35:36,130 So thank you. I'll pass back to you. 305 00:35:36,130 --> 00:35:43,060 We're cheating a bit from Andrew with this last manuscript, because it's not in fact, it doesn't have any fragments in it itself, 306 00:35:43,060 --> 00:35:49,380 but it shows the process of fragmentation and sort of going on all the way through it 307 00:35:49,380 --> 00:35:55,680 which people can perhaps see if I try turn the pages and zoom back a little bit. 308 00:35:55,680 --> 00:36:00,340 And this is, this is a manuscript that, again, has recently been digitised. 309 00:36:00,340 --> 00:36:06,340 And it came up to conservation ahead of digitisation, ahead of photography, 310 00:36:06,340 --> 00:36:16,790 because it's in this fragmentary state and had so many cuts and so on that some of the leaves were curling and folding over themselves. 311 00:36:16,790 --> 00:36:23,290 So one of my colleagues, Alice Evans, worked to relax some of those so that could be digitised. 312 00:36:23,290 --> 00:36:30,460 But as I started looking at it, I got more and more excited because, you know, we're used to seeing fragments from the other side. 313 00:36:30,460 --> 00:36:35,680 So we're either in still in bindings or in Guardbooks and so on and collections. 314 00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:43,210 But here I thought, wow, have we got the kind of quarry, the mine where fragments were coming from? 315 00:36:43,210 --> 00:36:53,230 And I got very excited thinking, could this have been in the corner of a binding workshop or something like that? 316 00:36:53,230 --> 00:37:00,230 And have we seen something that was being chopped up? And then at some point somebody said, hang on, no, let's hold onto that, that manuscript. 317 00:37:00,230 --> 00:37:12,340 And that's sort of an intriguing thought for me. But what's been so interesting talking to Matthew is that it's, it's an even more complex story 318 00:37:12,340 --> 00:37:27,230 it's got to tell than that. We have, we know it came into the Bodleian Library in the 1620s or 1630s with Archbishop Laud's gift of manuscripts. 319 00:37:27,230 --> 00:37:34,600 Yeah, and I'm just zooming in on the bottom here where we can see whoever it was that did the slicing to 320 00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:42,800 to take off the very ample margins sometimes got a bit carried away and cut off some of the text. 321 00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:48,920 And what's particularly interesting is that you can see the text has been rewritten above, 322 00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:54,020 so showing that the volume was still in use after the parchment was removed. 323 00:37:54,020 --> 00:38:00,860 So, as you say, the sort of natural assumption is that this was just sort of lying in a corner and no one was really interested in it. 324 00:38:00,860 --> 00:38:07,460 But it does it does still seem that where, where the text has been damaged like this, it is usually overwritten. 325 00:38:07,460 --> 00:38:14,420 So the volume can still be used. And it does still seem to have been an active use, sort of later marginal notes as well, 326 00:38:14,420 --> 00:38:24,340 you can see. And we have, I mean in places some of these leaves have then been repaired, and it's interesting, once you start going through it, 327 00:38:24,340 --> 00:38:35,470 you see they're carefully going for blank bits of parchment and avoiding the natural flaws and manufacturing marks that we find on some skins. 328 00:38:35,470 --> 00:38:46,180 So where there's a natural flaw, there's been a - I mean that's been left in place, where the leaves either side have got the blank areas removed. 329 00:38:46,180 --> 00:38:52,720 And that's an interesting thought. So we've got carefully you know removal of blank parchment here. 330 00:38:52,720 --> 00:38:57,890 So the chances of us ever finding these fragments 331 00:38:57,890 --> 00:39:01,400 with evidence that it came from this manuscript is is virtually nil 332 00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,600 one would imagine. If they've survived, who knows? 333 00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:13,310 I presume they were used for writing either small documents or notes or perhaps by 334 00:39:13,310 --> 00:39:18,140 the institution that had this this manuscript at some point in the Middle Ages. 335 00:39:18,140 --> 00:39:25,520 Yes, I suppose it just reminds us that parchment, parchment was an expensive and sometimes scarce commodity. 336 00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:29,510 And I mean, you can see they've got a great deal of if this book, haven't they? 337 00:39:29,510 --> 00:39:33,690 So we're just going to finish with something very similar. 338 00:39:33,690 --> 00:39:40,880 But where we have some actual evidence of when the slicing and dicing took place. 339 00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:49,920 And it's it's not mediaeval, though, a little spoiler. It's worryingly more recent than that. 340 00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:59,730 So I'll just need to zoom in a little bit. 341 00:39:59,730 --> 00:40:04,740 If we look at this little book of cookery recipes, 342 00:40:04,740 --> 00:40:19,490 you can see how very similarly the mostly blank margins at the side here to begin with and then later on at the bottom have all been cut out. 343 00:40:19,490 --> 00:40:26,170 In a very similar way to say that German manuscript we just looked at, but we know, don't we, Andrew, 344 00:40:26,170 --> 00:40:30,510 what was, what was going on here because of a later note at the beginning? 345 00:40:30,510 --> 00:40:41,450 Yes. And we've almost caught it mid-dismemberment, which is, you know, that we don't get this evidence very often. 346 00:40:41,450 --> 00:40:44,540 I don't know if people can read that, but I'll read it out. 347 00:40:44,540 --> 00:40:55,370 It says 'to the possession of this curious manuscript, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr Smith, apothecary of Chertsey, 348 00:40:55,370 --> 00:41:00,050 who rescued it from the hands of the keeper of a chandler shop in that town, 349 00:41:00,050 --> 00:41:07,550 who had begun to cut it in shreds to make labels'. So that is what was going on. 350 00:41:07,550 --> 00:41:15,440 And yes, it looks like this, this is the point at which Francis Douce the collector who gave it to the Bodleian, 351 00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:21,470 got hold of the manuscript and saved the remainder of its margins. 352 00:41:21,470 --> 00:41:24,680 And that I mean, it's interesting, 1787. 353 00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:31,820 I mean, it's surprising to me, I would have thought there'd be an antiquarian interest and value to the manuscript at that point, 354 00:41:31,820 --> 00:41:39,860 but clearly still being used in a chandler's shop, possibly to wrap up candles or whatever. 355 00:41:39,860 --> 00:41:46,190 And important to us, I mean, fragments survive in a library context within bindings, 356 00:41:46,190 --> 00:41:55,700 but this gives us some hint as perhaps the last manuscript does, that so much must have been used, for what we know was used for other purposes. 357 00:41:55,700 --> 00:42:03,440 The vast majority of which don't survive. So what we have within book structures is a sort of tantalising evidence. 358 00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:09,740 And they're in libraries with the kind of scholars who are interested in identifying them. 359 00:42:09,740 --> 00:42:18,400 But yeah, who knows? Who knows where late 18th century chandler shop labels might be found today. 360 00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:25,840 Yes, very striking, isn't it, that, as you say, 1787, you'd think a book like this would have been would have been worth a fair amount, 361 00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:33,870 but obviously it was acquired cheaply enough to make its reuse an economical thing to do. 362 00:42:33,870 --> 00:42:42,000 Lovely, thank you both so much. It's been fascinating to see the fragments in different places and being used in different ways. 363 00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:50,490 We've got a few questions to finish off with just about the particular idea of people taking the blank sections, sections of parchment. 364 00:42:50,490 --> 00:42:59,280 We've had a question. Might someone have been trying to eliminate marginal glosses by taking out those strips? 365 00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:05,280 Well, I suppose that's possible if they'd been very controversial glosses, 366 00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:13,200 but I think it's probably unlikely because we do have pages where there were annotations left which weren't removed. 367 00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:23,330 And it's, it's also not the sort of manuscript where you would expect to find extensive glosses and on the pages that we have. 368 00:43:23,330 --> 00:43:26,210 And there's a clarification, apologies, sorry there's a clarification, 369 00:43:26,210 --> 00:43:31,960 apologies, that their comment was relating to the Laud manuscript rather than this specific one. 370 00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:37,190 But I think probably, I think probably the same, the same factors apply in that it would be very 371 00:43:37,190 --> 00:43:42,740 unusual to have a sort of a lot of dense annotation all around the page in that sort of manuscript. 372 00:43:42,740 --> 00:43:52,340 That would explain why so much of it has been removed, because on so many pages, it has taken the parchment completely up to the edge of the text. 373 00:43:52,340 --> 00:43:58,790 And indeed that would probably not be necessary if it was a question of removing the the occasional annotation. 374 00:43:58,790 --> 00:44:06,750 OK, that makes thank you. And so a few more general questions and one about looking after the manuscripts. 375 00:44:06,750 --> 00:44:18,310 I've got a question. How do you relax a manuscript? I'm not quite sure what that means. It sounds like a trick question, but one for Andrew, I think. 376 00:44:18,310 --> 00:44:27,610 Well, the old joke is, how do you relax a parchment? With alcohol or water, just like the conservator! If we do have sort of creases or pleats, 377 00:44:27,610 --> 00:44:38,180 you can gently humidify parchment either along the crease or over it, and then as it dries, restrain it slightly. 378 00:44:38,180 --> 00:44:50,020 So, yes. So if occasionally we have to dis-bind an entire parchment manuscript to repair it and then before rebinding it and for those, 379 00:44:50,020 --> 00:44:59,500 we sometimes just relax with gentle humidity and then pin out to dry - tension them, the retension them as they dry. 380 00:44:59,500 --> 00:45:05,710 And another question, how do you start searching for the original text on a fragment? 381 00:45:05,710 --> 00:45:08,350 That must be a tough thing to do. 382 00:45:08,350 --> 00:45:18,640 Well, I mean, the honest answer is you, these days, you just put it into a search engine and you've got a pretty good chance of finding something. 383 00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:23,270 If that doesn't work, there are quite a few specialised databases that you can search. 384 00:45:23,270 --> 00:45:34,300 So all the the sort of works of mediaeval theology up to the sort of early 13th century are all available in online databases. 385 00:45:34,300 --> 00:45:41,020 And those are quite easy to search so that there's just a lot of electronic text that can be quite quickly searched these days. 386 00:45:41,020 --> 00:45:43,630 Of course, the thing with fragments is you don't have the beginning of your text, 387 00:45:43,630 --> 00:45:47,710 which is what people usually use to identify where you've got a sort of random chunk. 388 00:45:47,710 --> 00:45:53,170 So your chance of finding in a list of works is much smaller than they would be if you had the beginning. 389 00:45:53,170 --> 00:45:59,500 But because there are these databases, it still is fairly straightforward often to find a text. 390 00:45:59,500 --> 00:46:03,400 That's not to say you can find everything but you can find a lot. Yes. So we've had a question. 391 00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:08,410 Do you ever find a fragment you cannot identify - I expect the answer's yes. Yes, absolutely. 392 00:46:08,410 --> 00:46:13,650 So that the comb binding that we looked at. I did, I spent half an hour, 393 00:46:13,650 --> 00:46:20,030 I mean, I didn't spend very long with it, but I spent half an hour with it yesterday trying to identify it and didn't get very far. 394 00:46:20,030 --> 00:46:27,350 So absolutely. Yes. And coming back to the specifics of the most recent ones we've been looking at, we've had a suggestion, 395 00:46:27,350 --> 00:46:36,400 could it be possible that the fragments of parchment were used to reliquary, labels thinking of the mediaeval context, so to label relics? 396 00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:49,580 Well, I suppose there might have been, yes. OK, I say, yes, I think yes, possibly label, labels as to the Douce thing, that's a plausible usage, 397 00:46:49,580 --> 00:46:53,860 I guess they would have needed a lot of reliquaries to use up all the parchment from the Laud. 398 00:46:53,860 --> 00:46:58,390 Yes, but that's, that's the sort of thing one could imagine that being used for. Absolutely. 399 00:46:58,390 --> 00:47:01,270 And then a question more generally about the fragments in the collection. 400 00:47:01,270 --> 00:47:07,990 Have you come across any ancient Greek manuscripts in the fragments that you found? 401 00:47:07,990 --> 00:47:17,860 That's a good question, and I don't, I'm sure that we do have some I, I don't know them very well personally. 402 00:47:17,860 --> 00:47:24,850 It's possible that and I also don't know very much about the sort of Greek binding tradition, 403 00:47:24,850 --> 00:47:28,930 but it's possible that they didn't make so much use of manuscript waste. I don't know if 404 00:47:28,930 --> 00:47:36,040 Andrew, you can comment on that. I can actually a little, not necessarily from the Bodleian's collections, 405 00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:42,370 but I did some work, conservation work, in the monastery of St Catherine's in Sinai, 406 00:47:42,370 --> 00:47:48,250 which has a fantastic collection of manuscripts, most of which are in early bindings. 407 00:47:48,250 --> 00:47:59,440 And yes, we see the same sort of thing. So and leaves, repair patches, quite a lot of spine fold used for sort of repair. 408 00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:03,820 So, yes, that same recycling. So yes, that's been the same sort of interesting. 409 00:48:03,820 --> 00:48:09,610 And of course palimpsest, so parchment that has been erased, 410 00:48:09,610 --> 00:48:15,160 its first text erased and then written on again and some of that used and then recycled as fragments. 411 00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:25,330 So you get layers and layers of them. And a question, what is the most interesting fragment you've ever come across? 412 00:48:25,330 --> 00:48:33,370 I asked you first Matthew and then Andrew. I think for me it's that Dante fragment that I showed you, 413 00:48:33,370 --> 00:48:37,510 which I mean with the recent things tend to sort of stay in your mind anyway. 414 00:48:37,510 --> 00:48:43,620 But I think that is still the the one with the most sort of textual and historical significance. 415 00:48:43,620 --> 00:48:55,510 What about you, Andrew? Well, for me, I've just been working on a manuscript that was re-covered in black velvet as it entered Henry VIII's library, 416 00:48:55,510 --> 00:49:04,570 and it has fragments with music on from Worcester that were lifted some point around about 1900. 417 00:49:04,570 --> 00:49:14,330 And are now in another Guardbook. And the order of them is it has been sort of put into the order that they may have been in the original manuscript. 418 00:49:14,330 --> 00:49:22,570 So I've been trying to work out how they were used as end leaves within this binding, trying to work out how to repair it, conserve it. 419 00:49:22,570 --> 00:49:29,890 So there I've spent quite a lot of time trying to match up wormholes, going through the damage through them. 420 00:49:29,890 --> 00:49:36,190 So, I mean, not even looking at the text, just the holes through them to try and work out which order they were in, 421 00:49:36,190 --> 00:49:42,430 which one was closest to the wooden board, where did the worm come out or what did it chew. 422 00:49:42,430 --> 00:49:51,200 So that's maybe an unknown. Yes, an odd favourite, but an enjoyable activity anyway or whodunnit. 423 00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:58,610 Fantastic. Thank you. And so we've had one final question. Are external visitors to the Bodleian able to see these collections of fragments? 424 00:49:58,610 --> 00:50:03,370 I think you've inspired everybody to want to see not the complete manuscripts, but the fragments. 425 00:50:03,370 --> 00:50:08,170 Is that possible, too? Well, yes, they are. 426 00:50:08,170 --> 00:50:12,790 They are mainly, they're classed as manuscripts, they're part of our normal manuscript collection. 427 00:50:12,790 --> 00:50:17,230 So anyone with a, you need an 'A' category reader card, 428 00:50:17,230 --> 00:50:24,370 which you sort of get by applying to the admissions office for and by explaining why you want to consult special collections material. 429 00:50:24,370 --> 00:50:31,540 But once you've got that 'A' card, you can come in and you can order any material from our collections, including these Guardbooks. 430 00:50:31,540 --> 00:50:35,650 And and you can absolutely get to work on them. 431 00:50:35,650 --> 00:50:44,450 And just I mean, if you're, if you don't want to come and do that, I do know that our next major exhibition at the Bodleian includes some fragments. 432 00:50:44,450 --> 00:50:48,260 I had a look at some that's going to be in our North Sea Crossings exhibition. 433 00:50:48,260 --> 00:50:52,340 So there will be some on display from later this year. 434 00:50:52,340 --> 00:50:56,450 Brilliant. Thank you very much. So I think that brings us to a good place to finish. 435 00:50:56,450 --> 00:51:02,150 So let me thank everyone for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure to be able to connect with the friends of the Bodleian from 436 00:51:02,150 --> 00:51:06,710 all over the world and share your curiosity and enthusiasm from afar. 437 00:51:06,710 --> 00:51:12,530 Thank you, Matthew Holford and Andrew Honey and our behind the scenes technical team, Karen, Neil and Rebecca. 438 00:51:12,530 --> 00:51:15,470 Do you look out for an email with a link to the session recording 439 00:51:15,470 --> 00:51:20,000 and please do take a moment to fill out the quick feedback form so that we can continue to offer free 440 00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:25,280 events like this in the future and do sign up to the newsletter to find out about upcoming events. 441 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:31,490 We've got a very exciting series on textiles and libraries, which will be going live on the Bodleian website to book soon. 442 00:51:31,490 --> 00:51:49,652 We hope to see you again soon. So have a good evening and thank you again.