Letter by Letter: Manuscript Transcription and Historical Imagination

Summary

This essay explores the dynamic of combining slow ‘traditional’ methods of scholarship with emerging technological tools, focusing on the digitization of palaeography, as well as exploring the role of historical imagination that comes from slow, deep immersion in the sources. Instead of either passively allowing digital tools to displace good scholarship or, on the other hand, actively resisting technology and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I argue that medieval scholars are uniquely positioned to leverage these digital tools to demonstrate the relevance of the humanities in a STEM-dominated academic environment, and to reach a wider audience in the general public with the fruits of our studies. In practice, that means engaging in an intentional and continual process of assessing the usefulness and efficiency of the tools we use in our research, writing, and teaching in relation to the values and standards of academic scholarship. But make no mistake: scholarly values are the standard by which we should measure the efficacy of every new technology that comes our way.

These reflections are based on my current research project transcribing a medieval manuscript that has led to some surprising diversions into imagined realms. Durham, Cathedral Library, MS A.IV.19 is an early tenth-century English collectar with materials added in the late tenth century by the community of St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street, the home in exile of the Lindisfarne bishopric from 883 prior to its move to Durham in 995. Aldred, the priest who glossed the Lindisfarne Gospels around 950, also glossed in his Northumbrian Old English most of Durham A.IV.19's original collectar and the additions, including his own, dated by his colophon to 970 when he was provost of the community. I am also writing a novel about Aldred. The manuscript transcribing and historical fiction writing interweave in a slow dance with each other.

The tedious business of transcribing, letter by letter, Aldred's Northumbrian Old English gloss of the original collectar in Durham A.IV.19 follows from having already edited the additions to the manuscript in a recent monograph. My purpose now is to create a fully digital edition associating each Latin word with its Old English gloss word to be able to search either direction. In the process of transcribing from the manuscript facsimile, I notice things I would not if I just read it in a print edition.