Ruffini-Ronzani Nicolas, Nieus Jean-François, Soncin Silvia, Hickinbotham Simon, Dieu Marc, Bouhy Julie, Charles Catherine, Ruzzier Chiara, Falmagne Thomas, Hermand Xavier, Collins Matthew J, Deparis Olivier
Research Centre 'Pratiques médiévales de l'écrit', University of Namur, 61 rue de Bruxelles, Namur 5000, Belgium.
BioArCh, Department of Archaeology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Jun 2;8(6):210210. doi: 10.1098/rsos.210210.
Biocodicological analysis of parchments from manuscript books and archives offers unprecedented insight into the materiality of medieval literacy. Using ZooMS for animal species identification, we explored almost the entire library and all the preserved single leaf charters of a single medieval Cistercian monastery (Orval Abbey, Belgium). Systematic non-invasive sampling of parchment collagen was performed on every charter and on the first bifolium from every quire of the 118 codicological units composing the books (1490 samples in total). Within the genuine production of the Orval scriptorium (26 units), a balanced use of calfskin (47.1%) and sheepskin (48.5%) was observed, whereas calfskin was less frequent (24.3%) in externally produced units acquired by the monastery (92 units). Calfskin was preferably used for higher quality manuscripts while sheepskin tends to be the standard choice for 'ordinary' manuscript book production. This finding is consistent with thirteenth-century parchment accounts from Beaulieu Abbey (England) where calfskin supply was more limited and its price higher. Our study reveals that the making of archival documents does not follow the same pattern as the production of library books. Although the five earliest preserved charters are made of calfskin, from the 1230s onwards, all charters from Orval are written on sheepskin.
对手抄书籍和档案中的羊皮纸进行生物编码分析，能让我们对中世纪读写材料有前所未有的深入了解。我们使用动物线粒体DNA测序（ZooMS）来识别动物种类，对一座中世纪西多会修道院（比利时的奥尔瓦勒修道院）几乎整个图书馆以及所有保存下来的单页宪章进行了研究。我们对构成书籍的118个编目单元中的每一份宪章以及每册书的第一对开本进行了系统的非侵入性羊皮纸胶原蛋白采样（总共1490个样本）。在奥尔瓦勒缮写室的真品制作（26个单元）中，观察到小牛皮（47.1%）和羊皮（48.5%）的使用较为均衡，而在修道院获取的外部制作单元（92个单元）中，小牛皮的使用频率较低（24.3%）。小牛皮更常用于高质量的手稿，而羊皮往往是“普通”手稿书籍制作的标准选择。这一发现与英国博利厄修道院13世纪的羊皮纸账目一致，在那里小牛皮的供应更为有限，价格也更高。我们的研究表明，档案文件的制作与图书馆书籍的制作模式不同。尽管最早保存下来的五份宪章是用小牛皮制作的，但从13世纪30年代起，奥尔瓦勒的所有宪章都是写在羊皮上的。
