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The “Missing” Leaf of the Skeireins under Ultraviolet Radiation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William H. Bennett
William H. Bennett*
Affiliation:
The Mediaeval Institute, Notre Dame, Indiana
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Extract

FIVE LEAVES of the Skeireins (I, II, V, VI, VII) are in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, where they form Cod. E 147 parte superiore, 4° maj. Leaf VI, which bears the Arabic page numbers 309–310, disappeared from the codex at some time in the course of World War II, probably in 1943. In August of that year Milan underwent three successive nights of heavy bombing, in which thirteen halls of the Ambrosiana were destroyed, ten others damaged, and some 80,000 volumes burned beyond recognition. Fortunately, the Ambrosian Gothic palimpsests were rushed to safety and so escaped the fate of the Giessen document. In 1948 the Ambrosiana provided the writer with fluorescent type ultraviolet photographs of I, II, V, and VII but reported that VI was missing or misplaced. In 1950 a decipherment of I, II, V, and VII was published, followed in 1954 by a reading of the Vatican leaves (III, IV, VIII), but the absence of VI still precluded any attempt to complete the study of the manuscript. Finally, in 1955 it became possible to examine the Skeireins fragments in Vatican City and Milan, and, at the same time, to look for the missing leaf. Leaf VI proved to be misplaced in Cod. Ambros. A. How it came there is a matter for conjecture, but the haste and confusion produced by the 1943 bombing may well account for the misplacement.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1957 , pp. 555 - 562
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

1 The present investigation has been made possible by a grant from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society. I am also indebted to Msgr. Enrico Galbiati of the Ambrosiana staff, whose efforts greatly expedited the recovery of the missing Skeireins leaf, and still more to Professor Fernand Mossé of the Collège de France, who died on 10 July 1956. He suggested and encouraged the project but did not live to see it completed.

2 “The Milanese Leaves of the Skeireins under Ultraviolet Radiation,” PMLA, LXV (Dec. 1950), 1263–1281, and “The Vatican Leaves of the Skeireins in High-Contrast Reproduction,” PMLA, LXIX (June 1954), 655–676.

3 Only one side of the missing leaf (p. 310) had been photographed, and then very poorly, for the frontispiece of Ernst Dietrich's complete edition, “Die Bruchstucke der Skeireins,” Texte und Untersuchungen zur altgermanischen Religionsgeschichte, II, ed. Fr. Kauffmann (Strassburg, 1903).

4 For the present purpose, codex readings will be identified by means of abbreviations: B = W. Braun, “Die Mailander Blatter der Skeireins,” ZfdPh., XXXI (1899), 429–451; C = C. O. Castiglione, quasi facsimile of VI verso in Castiglione and A. Maj, Uiphilae partium ineditarum… specimen (Milan, 1819), p. 24, with later readings of some individual words as reported by H. C. von der Gabelentz and J. Löbe in Ulfilas, II (Leipzig, (1843–46); M = H. F. Massmann, facsimile in Skeireins aiwaggeljons pairh Iohannen (Munich, 1834), with additional comments and corrections from his 2nd edition in Ulfilas: Die gothischen Sprachdenkmaler (Stuttgart, 1857); U = A. Uppström, Fragmenta gothica selecta (Upsala, 1861), with corrections from his Codices golici Ambrosiani (Stockholm, 1864–68).

5 See Hugo Andersson, App., Codex Argenteus Upsaliensis Iussu Senatus Universilatis phololypice editus (Upsala, 1927), pp. 119–125 and reff.; L. Bendikson, “A New Type of Ultra-Violet Light Source for Documentary Photography,” Lib. Jour., LIX (1934), 690–692, and “A Cycle of Ultra-Violet Light Sources for Various Uses,” ibid., LXI (1936), 16 f.; Niel F. Beardsley, “The Photography of Altered and Faded Manuscripts,” tom. cit., 96–99 and reff.

6 Line negatives and contact prints have been made by Paul Chamberlain with the following equipment: a large commercial copying camera using a Zeiss Apo-Tessar lens 1:9 (f = 45 cm.) and f 22 and a scale of 2:1 with exposure ranging from 20 to 120 seconds; 2 arc lamps using 220 V at 25 amp.; Eastman Kodalith Film, Type 2, and Fine Line Developer; nos. 3–5 AZO single w eight (or Kodalith A) paper printed from 30 to 180 seconds with lighting of 100–160 w.; and Kodak D 72 (or Kodalith Fine Line) Developer.

7 See Klara Hechtenberg-Collitz, “Syllabification in Gothic,” JEGP, VI (1907), 72–91; also W. Schulze, “Wortbrechung in den gotischen Handschriften,” Sitzungsberichte d. Königl. Preuß. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Kl., I (1908), 610–624, and “Zu dem Aufsatz ‘Wortbrechung in den gotischen Handschriften’,” KZ, XLII (1919), 327–329.

8 “The Troublesome Passages of the Skeireins,” Annates Universilalis Saraviensis (1955), T. IV, 73–88. This article was written before the missing sixth leaf had been located and makes no provision for the new readings reported in the present study.