90% of Medieval Manuscripts of Chivalric and Heroic Lore Have Vanished
New research finds that, while the Knights of the Round Table have won global fame, most medieval English heroic or chivalric stories have been lost. Meanwhile, more than three quarters of medieval stories in Icelandic and Irish survive to the present, in an unusual pattern suggesting that island ‘ecosystems’ helped preserve culture.
The findings come from an international research team, including Oxford experts, which has applied models used in ecology to help estimate the loss and survival of precious artefacts and narratives from different countries and ancient cultures. Their findings are published in the journal Science, with Mike Kestemont (University of Antwerp) and Folgert Karsdorp (KNAW Meertens Institute) as the main authors.
We estimate that more than 90% of medieval manuscript copies of chivalric and heroic narratives have been lost….Moreover, we were able to estimate that some 32% of chivalric and heroic works from the Middle Ages have disappeared over the centuries
Dr Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, an Old Norse philologist and Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford, says, ‘By using statistical methods borrowed from ecology, we were able to add to previous scholarship.’
‘We estimate that more than 90% of medieval manuscript copies of chivalric and heroic narratives have been lost. Encouragingly, this corresponds roughly to the scale of loss that book historians had estimated using different approaches. Moreover, we were able to estimate that some 32% of chivalric and heroic works from the Middle Ages have disappeared over the centuries.’
Dr Kapitan continues, ‘Our study revealed significant differences in the survival rates of medieval works and manuscripts in different languages. Our estimates suggest that Irish tradition of medieval narrative fiction is best preserved, while English tradition suffered the most severe loses.
‘We know around 81% of medieval Irish romances and adventure tales, but only 38% of works in English. Similarly, around 19% of medieval Irish manuscript copies survive, but only 7% of English.’
The team used ‘unseen species models’ from ecology to gauge the loss of narratives from medieval Europe, such as the romances about King Arthur, or heroic legends about Sigurður the dragon slayer or the legendary ruler Ragnar lóðbrok, known to wider audiences from the series Vikings. The estimates of loss and survival they obtained are compatible with the scant historic evidence.
We found notably low estimated survival rates for English. It has the lowest survival rates in the study for both works and manuscripts.
