[MR] Archaeology News: Medieval Female Scribes

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today Archaeology News reported on a study which identified female scribes
as the copyists of surviving medieval manuscripts created between 800 and
1600 CE.

The scholars looked first in the most obvious place, colophons. These are
inscriptions which recorded the names of scribes, and often details about
the scriptoria or religious houses in which they worked. The conclusion is
that 254 colophons from 23,774 books examined were definitely written by
women, approximately 1.1%. Other data found in signatures on the margins of
pages suggests an even wider female authorship.

The study was conducted by the University of Bergen in Norway. It was not
clear from the story if their sample was drawn just from manuscripts in
Scandinavian countries, or included works from collections across Europe.

So ask yourself, "What else were these nuns supposed to do to support
themselves when they weren't praying?" Monastic houses didn't run on air,
and scriptoriums were an obvious source of income. It seems remarkable that
this wasn't noticed before.

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆
Continuing a crusade to keep the original Merry Rose relevant and in
business.