THE SEARCH FOR PROOF

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Looking at similar Medieval leaves at Vassar College

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Looking at a medieval Spanish gradual at Vassar College

Early on in the project, Jamie Cantoni, Assistant Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at WCSU, first contacted a medieval manuscript expert with whom she was familiar, Lisa Fagin Davis. Dr. Fagin Davis received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 1993 and suggested some leads for us to follow-up in attempting to identify our manuscript. She, and Jamie, thought we had a leaf from a gradual from the late 1500s that appeared perhaps to be Italian in origin. We also made a trip to Vassar to talk to Ronald Patkus - Vassar's Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections and an adjunct associate professor of history

"I'd say that when trying to identify a particular manuscript, we need to consult a variety of sources. These may include any surviving provenance information, one's own knowledge and experience, the knowledge and experience of others (scholars, librarians, dealers), and finally scholarly works."
Ron Patkus, Vassar College Library

Determining the provenance, general contents and purpose of the WestConn Leaf, we had followed fairly standard document identification proceedures used generally in the archives profession (see: http://www.teacharchives.org/articles/document-analysis/). Our leaf had no real identifying features, such as a colophon, that would help to immediatly set it apart from other manuscripts. We mostly had to rely on the translation of the text combined with extensive searching of manuscript databases to find similar looking manuscripts from which to draw our conclusions. Meeting with professor Patkus was a rewarding experience as he was able to lend legitimacy and credibility to our assumptions based on his own experiences and knowledge.

Otto Ege (right), a 20th century teacher, was also known as the first Book-Breaker. This meant that he would buy manuscripts for the express purpose of separating them into individual leaves in order to distribute them to a variety of libraries and institutions in an effort to make manuscripts available to everyone, not only the wealthy. Whether this was the right or wrong thing to do is not my place to say. The action of book-breaking, however, has great bearing on my project. Since we only have a single leaf of a manuscript, we are seeing a victim of book-breaking.  While we found that it is unlikely that the WestConn Leaf is a product of Otto Ege's actions (based on our searches through inventories of his holdings), the market that Ege found for selling pieces of manuscript led others to see a financial benefit in breaking books.  At some point, someone took a knife to a Spanish gradual and cut out the WestConn leaf.  The leaf ended up in Danbury, CT, where it continues to be carefully stored in the WCSU Archives.

Our final identification of the WestConn leaf: it is likely Spanish; the text and music are written on sheepskin parchment; it was taken out of the middle of a gradual; the music and text (psalm 102 or 103) are for Michaelmas;  and it dates from the late 1500s. 

Other resources

A list of sources and blogs that can assist medieval manuscript identification:

THE SEARCH FOR PROOF