Europe loses 90 percent of Middle Ages' manuscripts: Where did the literary works go?

CAIRO – 28 February 2022: Europe lost about 90 percent of the medieval manuscripts that narrate important events and epics. The majority of this literature has suffered from deterioration and destruction.

In order to estimate the size of the European medieval group as a whole compared to what is still available, researchers in a recent study used the "invisible species" ecological model and applied it to the cultural domain.

The ecological model, according to the French website Actuality, aims to give users an accurate estimate of the number of species that live in an area, says Mike Kistimont of the University of Antwerp.

A Vulgate Bible in the 4th century - social media

Kistimont is the author of the research paper applying the model to medieval literature, to try and calculate the chances of the preservation of manuscripts in different European regions, in light of the environmental conditions, erosion factors, and the presence of living creatures and humans.

This approach allowed the researchers to estimate the works and manuscripts that could survive as well as the losses to the Dutch, French, Icelandic, Irish, English and German languages. It was found that there would have been 40,614 specimens (manuscripts) in the six vernacular languages, of which 3,649 are still alive, with a survival rate of 9 percent. As for literary works, 38 percent of them have survived. 

An illuminates psalter manuscript - social media

These findings confirm the findings of researchers using other data. Study co-author Matthew Driscoll from the University of Copenhagen said, "A lot of the literature has disappeared, and we don't know what it is, but using this method we can get an idea of, at least, the number of missing manuscripts." 

But then another question arises, what happened to the manuscripts of heroic deeds and gallantry that were lost?

While some certainly ended up in flames in library fires, others were certainly recycled as was often the case at the time.