Lost for centuries: rare discovery of 13th-century King Arthur sequel buried in the most unexpected place

One day in 2019, an archivist in the Cambridge University Library came across a manuscript, as they were simply sifting through and cataloging a donation from an estate.

Among the collection, Sian Collins, told CNN, was sorting through something that looked very old, and the supporting documentation confirmed that hypothesis, labeled as a “14th-century story of Sir Gawain.”

But specific details didn’t line up for Collins, telling CNN that such a story from that time would not have been written in Old French, which, though “the language of the aristocracy [...] after the Norman Conquest,” would have fallen out of fashion close to three centuries later.

What the archival team would later discover was that the short manuscript handwritten on parchment was a sequel to one of the most famous legends in the country’s history: the story of King Arthur.

After a painstaking process of undoing centuries of wear and tear, fragments of the story were able to be identified and connected to other known stories. The accomplishment among the researchers has been described as a significant success in the field of archival research. It has inspired many to consider applying tools from other disciplines to their own.

How old is the manuscript?

Researchers were able to identify the story as the French-language, ‘Suite Vulgate du Merlin,’ and analysis to date the manuscript point to handiwork by a scribe who would have transcribed the piece onto parchment between 1275 and 1315. The team also believes that the manuscript was initially published in France and brought to England.

Cambridge Library published a blog post written by Jessica Keating on the historic discovery, which explained that the survival of the manuscript is due to the publishing practices of the past, which would seem ludicrous today.

In the 1500s, the authors explained that the manuscript was “recycled and repurposed [...] as the cover for a property record from Huntingfield Manor in Suffolk, owned by the Vanneck family of Heveningham.”

Among the records of the estate, the manuscript was preserved and is one of fewer than forty copies in existence today, according to Keating.

Archival research equipped with 21st-century tools

Though the team has been successful in identifying the manuscript, when they first began to examine its condition, it was impossible to distinguish, having been “folded, torn, and even stitched into the binding of the book,” (remember that the binding was repurposed to hold estate records).

New “cutting-edge digital techniques” including Computed Tomography scanning, which allowed the researchers to examine the x-rayed image of the book’s bind. “The scan revealed how the fragment had been stitched into the cover, providing insights into 16th-century archival binding techniques,” explained Keating. These images allowed for the specific areas to be taken care of carefully so as not to damage the manuscript. The team is excited by reports from other researchers that they are looking to apply the new methods to delicate manuscripts in their collections.

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