Many fantasy fans are roughly familiar with the tale of King Arthur—in one form or another. There is no one single Arthurian narrative, but a cluster of tales, written across centuries, that make up the Matter of Britain. And now there’s a little bit more to the story: At Cambridge University Library, in the UK, an archivist found a bit of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin, a French sequel to the story of Arthur, that “survived the centuries after being recycled and repurposed in the 1500s as the cover for a property record from Huntingfield Manor in Suffolk, owned by the Vanneck family of Heveningham.”
The Cambridge website has a fascinatingly detailed account of just how the 13th century manuscript—which could not be removed from its recycled home without possibly being damaged—was digitally scanned and photographed and recreated. As Cambridge says:
Dr Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, French Specialist in Collections and Academic Liaison at Cambridge University Library, was among those who first recognized the importance of the find. “It was first thought to be a 14th century story about Sir Gawain but further examination revealed it to be part of the Old French Vulgate Merlin sequel, a different and extremely significant Arthurian text.”
The fragment includes two episodes, one about the Battle of Cambénic and one about Merlin appearing at Arthur’s court, disguised as a harpist and “the most handsome man ever seen in Christian lands.”
Using multispectral imaging, computer tomography scanning, and 3D modeling, a team created a digital version of the text that could be digitally unfolded, and you can watch that nifty process here. The process used to recreate this document, researchers say, may be used in other libraries and archives to uncover even more fragile fragments from centuries past.
You can explore the manuscript for yourself at Cambridge Digital Libraries.
