Findling Lost Medieval Manuscripts

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A gap in knowledge - both of stories and artefacts - provides a frustrating block when looking into the past. But, a new report, based on the use of statistics, is hoping to shine a light on some of these hidden mysteries. This week Matt is joined by Dr Katarzyna Anna Kapitan from the University of Oxford who talks Matt through her fascinating research, from finding out that medieval romance manuscripts were recycled into Bishop's mitres to the masses of Icelandic manuscripts discovered preserved across Europe.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered why one of Ruan Cathedral's towers is called the Tower of Butter, or what
0:06.2	animals have faced trials in courts for, or even how the black country got its name?
0:12.4	Well, you can find the answers to questions like these and hundreds more in our new book,
0:18.4	The History Hit Misscellanie. It's the perfect present for any history fan.
0:23.3	It's available to buy now from your favourite bookshop or by visiting historyhit.com forward slash
0:29.8	book.
0:48.0	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm Matt Lewis. A recent report
0:53.6	has looked into the survival of medieval manuscripts and chivalric stories,
0:59.0	using a new and perhaps surprising technique. We all know some variation of the story of King Arthur
1:05.9	that began to take solid form in the 12th century and texts like Bayer Wolf
1:11.2	are the stuff of legend both the story and the manuscript itself.
1:15.6	Manuscripts in English fared particularly badly compared to some of the languages
1:20.1	according to the study's findings and I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr. Katazina
1:25.3	Anna Kapitan, one of those involved in the new study to talk a little bit about their methods
1:30.5	and what they found. So thank you very much for joining us this morning.
1:33.2	Thank you Matt for the invitation and thanks for having me.
1:36.2	Can you tell us first a little bit about why medieval manuscripts have only survived in such small
1:41.7	numbers? What are the factors that mean there aren't that many of them that survive to today?
1:46.6	Yes, this is very important question for our research because our research focuses on this idea
1:53.2	that the sample we have today is not complete and what factors contributed to preservation as well
2:01.1	as to laws. There are two main reasons why manuscripts can go missing. One is library fires as
2:08.4	the recent library fire in Cape Town and the other one is recycling of manuscripts.
	...

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