High-Tech Imaging Allows Researchers to Read Handwritten Medieval Arthurian Tales Hidden in the Binding of a Property Record
The stories are part of a French sequel to Arthurian legend, and its binding was repurposed in the 16th century
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Some 750 years ago, a medieval scribe copied stories of a knight and a wizard into a manuscript. The knight was Sir Gawain and the wizard was Merlin, two mythical characters of Arthurian legend—the tales of Britain’s legendary King Arthur and his Round Table. In the 16th century, the manuscript’s binding was repurposed to hold a Tudor-period register, and for centuries, the Arthurian story was lost.
Eventually, the register ended up in the collections of the Cambridge University Library, and in 2019, researchers discovered an unreadable handwritten fragment hidden inside its binding, which triggered a yearslong restoration project.
Now, after deciphering the text with high-tech imaging, Cambridge researchers have concluded it’s a part of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin, a French sequel to the legend of King Arthur. This “medieval bestseller” was distributed via handwritten manuscripts in the 13th century, and today, less than 40 copies survive, per a statement by the University of Cambridge.
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“The Suite Vulgate du Merlin tells us about Arthur's early reign, his relationship with the knights of the Round Table and his heroic fight with the Saxons,” Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, the library’s French specialist, tells the BBC’s Donna Ferguson. “It really shows Arthur in a positive light. He's this young hero who marries Guinevere, invents the Round Table and has a good relationship with Merlin, his advisor.”
When the manuscript’s cover was repurposed—to hold the 16th-century property record of a wealthy family’s Suffolk mansion—the Arthurian pages were “folded, torn and even stitched into the binding of the book,” making it nearly impossible to read without damaging, per the statement. So, library researchers enlisted the University Library’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory to virtually unfold and digitize it. They employed multispectral imaging—a technology that photographs multiple layers deep—and computed tomography scanning, which created a 3D model.
“This project was a fabulous opportunity to employ all possible advanced imaging techniques from our photographic arsenal,” says Maciej Pawlikowsk, head of the Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory, in the statement. “This resulted in the creation of a set of unique digital objects which placed the original fragment in a whole new context and has transformed our understanding of it.”
Every existing copy of the Suite Vulgate is different, writes the New York Times’ Alan Yuhas. The newly discovered, “carefully executed” example, containing decorative red and blue letters, was likely made between 1275 and 1315, per the statement.
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“Each manuscript copy of a medieval text, handwritten by a scribe, is going to be changed little by little,” Fabry-Tehranchi tells the Times. “As the copies come along, each scribe imposes his own taste.”
This text—written in Old French—contains two stories from the Lancelot-Grail cycle. As the Times reports, the first stars Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain, a knight who faces off with Germanic Saxons invading from mainland Europe and disloyal English nobility—including his father. Gawain wields the sword Excalibur and, drawing strength from the sun, defeats his father alongside King Arthur.
The second tale takes place at a feast hosted by King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. A blind harpist interrupts the meal, escorted in by a white dog, and charms Arthur with music. The harpist then asks to hoist the king’s flag, or “standard,” in battle, which is essentially a death wish. But the musician is actually the disguised wizard Merlin, who transforms the standard into “this magical dragon who blows fire on the battlefield,” Fabry-Tehranchi tells the Times.
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This story was still popular centuries after the manuscript was made, but by the 1500s, British readers were mainly consuming Arthurian legend in English, not French, Fabry-Tehranchi tells the BBC. Since this text had lost its appeal, its owners, the Vanneck family of Suffolk, reused its binding.
The Elizabethan bookbinders “saw it as a piece of rubbish,” chief photographic technician Błażej Władysław Mikuła tells the BBC. “It could never have crossed their minds what we would do to it.”
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This isn’t the first Merlin-centered story to be recovered after centuries-old misuse. As Smithsonian magazine reported in 2021, researchers in Bristol discovered seven parchment fragments telling the story of Merlin’s encounter with the Lady of the Lake pasted into several different volumes.
As Fabry-Tehranchi says in the statement, the recent imaging process was done in situ, which helps researchers prevent damage and learn about the archival practices of the era in which the book was rebound.
“This project was not just about unlocking one text—it was about developing a methodology that can be used for other manuscripts,” Fabry-Tehranchi says in the statement. “Libraries and archives around the world face similar challenges with fragile fragments embedded in bindings, and our approach provides a model for non-invasive access and study.”
