Material Restoration is a riveting scholarly detective
story that traces the history of an Echternach manuscript
fragment.
Material Restoration follows the journey of a parchment
bifolium, which was first used in the binding of a manuscript
produced in Echternach around the year 1000, and then removed from
its original container-codex after it was appropriated by the
French during the Napoleonic wars. By tracing the creation,
interpretations, and migratory life of the parchment until its
eventual incorporation within a nineteenth-century codex, this
analysis presents the bifolium as an illustration of ‘new
philology’, and as an essential material and cultural element
of the different codices that contained it. Material
Restoration also analyses the texts inscribed on the bifolium,
which include a charter, two poems, and verbal and musical glosses.
By considering these texts within the context of the networks that
produced and used them, the book offers an intriguing insight into
the monastic and literary communities of eleventh-century
Echternach. Material Restoration is a riveting and
satisfying scholarly detective story that combines both erudition
and new discoveries, and adheres to the standards of both classical
and new philology.
CONTENTS
Preface
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: The Modern Age
Chapter 1. The Fragmentation of Modern Scholarship
Chapter 2. Dispersal and Restoration in the Nineteenth Century
Appendix: The Lists of the Manuscripts Taken from Luxembourg to Paris
Part II: The Beginnings (900–1000)
Chapter 3. The Charter
Chapter 4. The Poems and the Glosses: Edition and Translation
Edition of Musical Glosses by S. J. Barrett
Chapter 5. ‘Salue abba mitissime’: Two Kinds of Spiritual Food
Chapter 6. ‘O sacrata dies’: Poetry as lectio divina
Chapter 7. The Glosses
Conclusion. ‘Habent sua fata libelli’
Bibliography
Manuscript Index
General Index
"[Franklin's] work is a model case study that convincingly demonstrates the importance - and the potential payoff - of considering context and provenance alongside text and codex. Every manuscript, no matter how fragmentary, has a story to tell, and Franklin tells this one vividly and with imposing scholarship."
(Lisa Fagin Davis, in Speculum 86/3, July 2011, p. 756)
"Le mérite majeur de ce travail, outre son intérêt intrinsèque et ses aspects d'enquête policière, est d'avoir surmonté la fragmentation des savoirs, presque inévitable, mais préjudiciable à la compréhension intégrale d'un document."
(P.-M. Bogaert, dans Revue Bénédictine, 2011/1, p. 232)
"(...) ces quelques détails ne doivent aucunement faire oublier le grand mérite de cet ouvrage, rappelé dans la conclusion (...), et qui est de replacer, de manière très convaincante, trois textes (une charte et deux poèmes) dans un contexte matériel, historique et culturel sans lequel on ne saurait en percevoir pleinement le sens et la portée."
(François Ploton-Nicollet, dans:
Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, 170/1, 2012, p. 251-255)