Animal DNA Will Show Manuscript Origins

Scholars have long argued the origins of many medieval manuscripts, but modern advances in genetics may provide important information, according to ScienceDaily.

Many medieval manuscripts were written on parchment made from animal skin. North Carolina State Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson is working to perfect techniques for extracting and analyzing the DNA contained in these skins with the long-term goal of creating a genetic database that can be used to determine when and where a manuscript was written.

"Dating and localizing manuscripts have historically presented persistent problems," Stinson told ScienceDaily, "because they have largely been based on the handwriting and dialect of the scribes who created the manuscripts ~ techniques that have proven unreliable for a number of reasons."

A Hundred Skins Per Manuscript

Stinson says genetic testing could resolve these issues by creating a baseline using the DNA of parchment found in the relatively small number of manuscripts that can be reliably dated and localized. Each manuscript can provide a wealth of genetic data, Stinson explains, because a typical medieval parchment book includes the skins of more than 100 animals.

Once Stinson has created a baseline of DNA markers with known dates and localities, he can take samples from manuscripts of unknown origin. He can then determine what degree of relationship there is between the animals whose skins were used in manuscripts of unknown origin and those used in the baseline manuscripts.

Click here for the ScienceDaily article.

Rare Medieval Manuscripts Going Online

A random page I downloaded this morning from a circa 980 AD collection of short hymns and songs. The images are easily enlarged for detailed viewing.

A vast collection of medieval books ~ many written and illustrated by hand earlier than 1000 AD ~ is going online. With the help of a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the books are being scanned to preserve them for posterity.

The effort to digitize contents of the wonderfully baroque abbey library, the Stiftsbibliothek in St. Gallen, Switzerland, is a reaction to 2002’s devastating floods in Dresden.

According to today’s New York Times, the Stiftsbibliothek collection includes material as varied as curses against book thieves, early love ballads, hearty drinking songs and a hand-drawn ground plan for a medieval monastery, drafted around A.D. 820, the only such document of its kind.

This morning, after reading the Times article, I visited the Stiftsbibliothek collection website, where there are now 144 manuscripts available for viewing. I selected one manuscript at random and then one page of it. Everything was easy and informative, after I found the little link in the upper right corner of the screen where I could select English for viewing the site.

My random page turned out to be from a 980 AD antiphonary ~ a collection of short hymns or songs ~ assembled by a monk named Hartker and now considered “an invaluable monument of music history.”

Click here for the New York Times article.

Click here to go directly to the Stiftsbibliothek manuscript website.

The magnificent Stiftsbibliothek library, founded in the 9th century in eastern Switzerland, houses one of the most valuable collections of medieval manuscripts in the world.