Recycled Parchment
Despite their reverence for Scripture, medieval readers did not worship
the physical book– at least, book-owners had no qualms about tearing
up an old Bible and reusing the parchment in bindings. The three fragments
from a ninth-century copy of the Bible on display have been arranged according
to their disposition in the binding of a book, where they were used as
pastedowns and as backing in the spine. A leaf from another manuscript,
which offers a chapter-by-chapter summary of the four Gospels, was used
as a cover for a 16th-century printed book.
[top] Bible fragments, Book of Numbers and Book of
Daniel. France (Tours), ninth century. [bottom] Adam of Bremen.
Historia Ecclesiastica. Leyden: Plantin Press, 1595.
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Copyright
© 2002 Division of Rare & Manuscript
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