Medieval manuscript fragments discovered in Bristol that tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend, have been identified by academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham as some of the earliest surviving examples of that section of the narrative.
The analysis also uncovered how the hand-written documents ended up in Bristol, differences in the text from previous versions of the story and by using multi-spectral imaging technology, the researchers were able to read damaged sections of the text unseen by the naked eye and could even identify the type of ink that was used.
The seven parchment fragments were spotted by chance in early 2019 by Michael Richardson from the University of Bristol's Special Collections Library. They were pasted into the bindings of four early-modern volumes, published between 1494-1502 and held in Bristol Central Library's rare books collection.
The fragments contain a passage from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, which dates to the early 13th century. Parts of this Cycle may have been used by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) as a source for his Le Morte Darthur (first printed in 1485 by William Caxton) which is itself the main source text for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend in English.
phys.org
The analysis also uncovered how the hand-written documents ended up in Bristol, differences in the text from previous versions of the story and by using multi-spectral imaging technology, the researchers were able to read damaged sections of the text unseen by the naked eye and could even identify the type of ink that was used.
The seven parchment fragments were spotted by chance in early 2019 by Michael Richardson from the University of Bristol's Special Collections Library. They were pasted into the bindings of four early-modern volumes, published between 1494-1502 and held in Bristol Central Library's rare books collection.
The fragments contain a passage from the Old French sequence of texts known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail Cycle, which dates to the early 13th century. Parts of this Cycle may have been used by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) as a source for his Le Morte Darthur (first printed in 1485 by William Caxton) which is itself the main source text for many modern retellings of the Arthurian legend in English.
Bristol manuscript fragments of the famous Merlin legend among the oldest of their kind
Medieval manuscript fragments discovered in Bristol that tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend, have been identified by academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham as some of the earliest surviving examples of that...
