My name is Carl Garris, and I am
beginning my second semester at the University of South Carolina, majoring in history. As a
mere freshman walking into an honors course discussing Medieval Manuscripts
last August, I could not have expected to receive a research grant involving
priceless medieval manuscripts. Now, several months later, my colleague Aaron
Sanders and I are doing that very thing. In this first blog post, I will
explain how we reached this point.
One day in early autumn, Dr. Gwara showed the class the
Breslauer Bible, a medieval “Pocket Bible” which contains an erased ownership
inscription. You could barely make out the faint remnants of two lines of text
on the margin of one of the first pages. Dr. Gwara explained that he had used
ultraviolet light in order to read part of the inscription, but the rest
remained indecipherable. Part of the readable text, he explained, read Frater Ricardi, Latin for
“Brother Richard.” Such a title, Dr. Gwara continued, could indicate orginal
monastic ownership of the text. English monastic manuscripts are very rare;
Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, and the scattering or destruction
of their vast manuscript libraries, saw to that. Proving Monastic ownership of the Breslauer
Bible, he concluded, would make it a priceless connection to pre-dissolution
English monasticism. He then asked, somewhat to my surprise, for volunteers to
apply for a Magellan Grant (a type of student research grant offered to
University of South Carolina students) to work on a project devoted to reading
the rest of the inscription using advanced technology. I asked to join in.
Aaron, a junior and fellow history major, also volunteered.
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The erased ownership inscription inside the Breslauer Bible
After a few meetings spread
over the course of a week, Aaron and I began to work on the Magellan proposal.
We used earlier grants for inspiration and read up on appropriate sources on
our research. On such source was The
Archimedes Codex, a book about the team which deciphered the Archimedes
Palimpsest, a medieval copy of a text by Archimedes which had otherwise been
lost. This particular text had not only been erased, but a Byzantine monk had
also written prayers over the original writings! However, using X-rays from the
Stanford Synchrotron, the team managed to decipher the original inscription
through a map of the iron contained on the vellum of each page. Dr. Gwara
believed that the same synchrotron could be used to read the inscription in the
Breslauer Bible.
Aaron (right) and I with the Breslauer Bible in Thomas Cooper Library
Over the course of several
weeks, Aaron and I met numerous times over coffee, in the Thomas Cooper
Library, and even once or twice (accidentally) inside elevators in order to
discuss our proposal. We divided the work, with Aaron writing the historical background
information on the Breslauer Bible and with me writing about the scientific
procedures we planned to use. We worked together on our budget, making sure to
follow Dr. Gwara’s instruction to include great detail, including everything
down to the estimated taxi prices in Palo Alto. After exchanging our proposal
with Dr. Gwara to make the edits which he suggested, we submitted it almost a
day before the deadline.
I spent a good portion of the
past two months taking the appropriate steps to request beam time with the
Synchrotron. When I called the director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation
Lightsource, she did not seem very confident that our proposal would receive
time as it was very different from most of the work (typically advanced
physics, chemistry, and materials science) which scientists conducted there.
However, Dr. Gwara encouraged me to apply anyway, and by quoting the support of
the appropriate people from the Archimedes Palimpsest team with whom Dr. Gwara
had spoken and worked with before, as well as by explaining the small amount of
time which our project would require from the Synchrotron, we were able to make
a convincing enough case in our letter of intent that we received beam time,
which we tentatively scheduled for this upcoming June.
Aaron and I are both very excited
about this project, and now we will begin the extensive background reading required
for us to prepare for potential analysis of the ownership inscription. We will
also begin designing an apparatus with which to isolate the inscribed page of
the manuscript.
Check in for further reports
of our progress; we are looking forward to sharing the project with you!
