An Echo of the Remanent

Abstract

Thousands of medieval manuscripts have survived to the present day only as literal fragments of their former selves: cut up for binding scrap in the early modern period, initials and miniatures trimmed for framing by collectors and dealers in the Victorian era, and entire codices cut up leaf by leaf by modern biblioclasts. There are at least thirty-thousand fragments in North American collections and exponentially more in Europe and elsewhere. The potential for discovery, pedagogy, scholarship, and public engagement is enormous, and the work has only barely begun. Recent developments in data modeling and image service are making it possible for scholars to digitally reconstruct these broken books, enabling important outcomes for research and teaching. The essays in this volume will engage with medieval manuscript fragments and fragmentology in different ways. This introductory essay surveys the history of fragmenting, fragments, and fragmentology.