Lost, Then Found in Canada: Stories Behind Some Medieval Manuscript Fragments that Have Journeyed Across the Ocean

Although hundreds of dispersed leaves from dismantled medieval manuscripts have been located outside of Europe, there are likely many hundreds or thousands more that remain known only to their owners.While working on Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, 1 I began to suspect that in Canadian institutional collections and private ownership there were more items lost than found.Following a number of email inquiries from members of the general public who were hoping we could tell them something about their medieval music fragments, as well as anecdotal accounts from colleagues who could tell stories about spotting parchment leaves in the back rooms of libraries, my curiosity was piqued as to the number of both catalogued and uncatalogued medieval chant manuscript fragments that might be part of public, institutional, and private collections in Canada.What do these leaves contain?Why were they dismantled from their books?How did they make it to Canada?And, who knows that they are here?There are many reasons for the existence of fragments of medieval chant books.Not only was it a long time ago when these books were originally used, but liturgical reforms, the adoption of polyphony which replaced at least some of the chant, changes in the style and technology of musical notation such as the introduction of staff lines, and the advent of printed books led to both adjustments in the contents and discontinued use of chant manuscripts throughout the later Middle Ages and the early modern period.Recycling of the parchment from older books was a licit activity and it produced necessary materials for new book bindings, such as pastedowns, flyleaves, and spine linings, both visible and hidden.It is, however, the seemingly-illicit book-breaking that has occurred in recent centuries that has provided the most numerous and most intact remnants from medieval chant books.These pieces have often been preserved because of their illuminated initials or the inherent decorative quality of their neumatic notations.Much could be written about modern attitudes toward medieval objects now considered art despite their original functional nature; even so, these items have value to their contemporary owners, whether monetary as highly-sought auctionable pieces or sentimental as treasured historical artefacts from centuries ago.Loose medieval manuscript leaves have been travelling around the world for years, passing among collectors, institutions and private citizens through auctions, as gifts or inheritances, and sold in antiquarian bookshops.They now reside in archival cases, in library filing cabinets,

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