The chances of a medieval book making it to the safety of a modern library are dazzlingly small. Relatively few did. Imagine the challenging journey across centuries of wear and tear, fire and water, and perhaps worst of all, fickle readers. Why keep a book from the past that is handwritten on yellowish animal skin if the printer around the corner offered a perfectly white vegan option on paper?
It is an utterly unbalanced fight, book survival. What is to survive must be kept one hundred percent of the time, while a single discarding gesture made the book disappear forever. A medieval codex easily had ten or more owners and for this survival thing to work, each one had to care as much as their predecessor. A weak link in the provenance chain may undo a rare book’s existence. Not that we would necessarily know, because books that vanish, usually vanish without a trace. We think.
I find myself pondering all this when I open a battered manuscript in the library and observe its attention-seeking imperfection: bright purple mould stains mark the tough journey the book is recovering from. Made it, crossed the finish line! This is probably why I like imperfections in rare books so much. It feels as if an old book in perfect condition has missed the chance to grow a personality: it sneaked through history without absorbing any of it—it is not perfect yet.
Image: Leiden, University Library, BPL 2896 (Glossed Psalter, Italy, 12th century), digitized here. Large photo my own.
medievalbooks 
Remove the last few characters to forward slash and it works
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oops, make that,
thank you for the reddit link, but it’s broken. Did you perhaps mean,
https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalCreatures?
that’s the closest I could find.
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oh, I’m glad to hear from you again, I’ve missed you! RSS for the win, hurrah!
Karry Jones thank you for the reddit link!
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You are welcome!
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That’s the best thing to hear, that they are used in the classroom; thanks for reaching out!
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I had no idea, thanks for heads up!
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Hi there from America,
Was wondering if you were still posting, glad to see that you are. You probably already know about this, but just in case, I’m passing along a link to a subReddit call Medieval Creatures. Mostly it’s the mods posting illuminated manuscripts (or similar) focusing on weird creatures and creating funny captions, but others join in as well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MedievalCreatures/ r/MedievalCreatures reddit.com
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Thanks for writing again! Your posts are always very interesting, I use many information from them in the classroom…
Maria Cristina Cunha
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Good to hear from you!
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one of the few emails I’m glad I got Putteth me on the list for all articles.
rickpinner@ mail.com
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Hello, Erik, and thank you.
Mary-Jo
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Thank you for this very moving article.
You have put into words my humble perception of old books. They make me travel into the magic and inspiring world of frail humanity.
They have a soul, with all the imagination and creativity they inspire.
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