Medieval manuscript fragments discovered in Guernsey reveal island's literary life

Dating from between the 12th and 15th centuries, the fragments offer evidence of wide-ranging reading tastes, including an extract from a play, an Ovid poem, passages from the Bible, and a travel text. Until now, medieval Guernsey's literary culture had been a blank page in history books, with little known about its books and libraries.

The fragments had been hiding in plain sight, cut up and recycled into practical bindings for rent books and administrative records during the 16th and 17th centuries. They are held in the public collections of the Island Archives and His Majesty's greffier's strongroom. They were identified by Island Archives staff working alongside Dr David Rundle, a manuscript expert at the University of Kent, and Prof Tamara Atkin, a book historian at the University of Oxford.

Rundle told The Guardian: "Why Guernsey is exciting is [that] nobody's known of anything here. Elsewhere, the Reformation in England, the dissolution of the monasteries, often involved the breaking up of manuscripts. There are many more non-religious fragments in this Guernsey collection than you would expect." He added that while French as a literary language was declining in England at the end of the Middle Ages, "it looks to be continuing to be significant on Guernsey."

The fragments from French literature include a dramatic poem from L'Estoire de Griseldis, a secular play thought to have been written around 1395 by Philippe de Mézières. This version is exceptionally rare, and the fragment reveals that the manuscript play was being read beyond the French royal court circles where it probably first circulated. The Bible fragments include one in Latin dating from the late 12th century with an early 15th-century annotation possibly by a priest.

Research by Callum Tostevin-Hall, an archives assistant at Island Archives, led to the discoveries. He said: "This first began when I was asked to track down a 16th-century copy of Edward III's 1331 Extente of Guernsey and I noticed that the shelf mark contained reference to a vellum cover with Latin text... I checked this cover and was astonished to find that it was clearly a reused bifolium from a medieval manuscript."

Rundle said: "This collection is exciting in its variety, of subjects and of dates, and hint at a culture which has not even been imagined." The academics believe further fragments are waiting to be found in the Guernsey archives and elsewhere. Island Archives will host an academic study day on 10 September, supported by the University of Kent.