The way cutting-edge technology lets us see into the distant past is so cool. Recently, a technique called “photometric stereo workflow” enabled Medieval historian Jessica Hodgkinson take a fresh appraisal of the pages of a manuscript written in south-east England in the first half of the 700s. The historian discovered that the name of a woman had been traced into the parchment 15 times.
The manuscript’s technical name is MS Selden Supra 30, and it is a record in Latin of the Acts of the Apostles from the New Testament. The 3-D photography method allowed Hodgkinson to detect tracings that were less than a fifth of the width of one human hair. As you can see in the highlighted blue on the second slide, “Eadburg” was the woman’s name. The writing looks childlike, and there are doodles of figures that Hodgkinson found that look similarly clunky and abstract.
The identity of Eadburg is unknown, but there was an Abbess from that time period known to have lived in the general area. More importantly is the fact that a female name is associated with a book from this time. Books were fabulously luxurious objects, costing a great deal due to the sheep- or calf-skin needed to make the pages, the cost of the ink and colored markings, and the cost of the book covers, which frequently were adorned with precious jewels. Their value was further heightened because of the specialized and rare skill of the scribes. For the wealthiest of Medieval Christians, putting so much effort into a Biblical text was worth it, because it emphasized their faith.
The fact that Eadburg literally made her mark in this manuscript testifies to the existence of women’s literacy, during a period when this was very rare.
Source: _Smithsonian Magazine_, “Woman’s name and doodles found hidden in 1,200-year-old religious manuscript,” Sarah Kuta, Dec 6, 2022. Images courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford
