Medieval Parchment Repair

I have just finished conserving a 12th century manuscript belonging to the Wren Library at Trinity College. Its parchment pages show the signs of a rather hard life.

Discolouration and veining across the parchment (left), and working around holes and blemishes in the manuscript (right).

This copy of Constantini Pantegni was made from a rather motley selection of parchment at Bury St Edmund's Abbey. The parchment quality varies considerably throughout the text block; the bifolios are uneven- certainly not all the same size- and there are scars and blemishes on many of the skins. It is bruised, veined, keratinous or too soft, speckled with the remains of hair, and dotted with holes, but in contrast to this, it has some of the most elegant contemporary repairs I have ever seen. The finest repair is about 60mm long, and very finely sewn. The sinew forms a flat and discreet line- a beautiful scar across the page.

Opening of the conserved manuscript (left), and a beautiful sewn repair (right).

Several other beautiful medieval parchment repairs have appeared in the workshop recently. This patch repair is on the verso of a very fine illuminated page in Fitzwilliam manuscript 36-1950, a mid-13th century psalter from Breslau, Silesia (now situated in modern day Poland).

It is a very different manuscript to the one from the Wren Library. It is lavishly illuminated throughout, with blank pages left on the verso of full-page illuminations, so the use of parchment which had already been subject to repair seems somewhat out of place. However, the care that has been taken to integrate these patch repairs discreetly(!) is just as delicate as the attention that was paid to the full page illuminations.