The Scribe of Östgötalagen (Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, MS B 50) in Latin missal fragments. Observations on Gothic textualis in fourteenth-century Sweden
Abstract. This presentation newly identifies the scribe of a well-known fourteenth-century Swedish vernacular manuscript in two Latin missals, preserved in fragments in the National Archives of Sweden. It examines the context in which these books were produced and analyses the variation seen in the script as it was used to copy the two different languages. It also seeks to place the scribe and the script in the broader palaeographical context of fourteenth-century Gothic textualis, as it appears in Swedish book production.
The first generation of surviving manuscripts in the Swedish vernacular comprises approximately fifteen books that can be dated to the first half or middle of the fourteenth century. The majority of these are law codes, and all are copied in textualis script. The scribes of these manuscripts have attracted much less palaeographical attention than those of later Swedish manuscripts, written in cursiva and hybrida scripts. This is in part because each manuscript appears unique by its handwriting. It has not been possible to identify the same scribe in several books, group any of the books stylistically, nor to recognise features of script particular to all of them. Expanding the comparison to complete Latin codices from the same period is also not helpful due to the scarcity of such books with a likely Swedish origin.
There exists however a corpus which has not been previously exploited in contextualising the vernacular manuscripts palaeographically. These are the Latin fragments of the National Archives of Sweden, mostly coming from liturgical books and predominantly copied in textualis. This collection, which consists of altogether ca. 22 000 fragments, contains ca. 4900 fragments coming from ca. 2150 codices (according to the present state of their reconstruction) dated to the fourteenth century.
Making use the fragment corpus, this presentation newly identifies a scribe who copied both Swedish and Latin books. This scribe wrote the finest of the fourteenth-century law manuscripts, the often reproduced Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket, MS B 50, which is also the only complete representative of the text of Östgötalagen. As will be argued, the same scribe was involved in the production of two fragmentarily preserved missals, intended for use in the Diocese of Linköping. With help from these Latin books, the Östgötalagen manuscript can be more firmly set in its historical context.
In addition to showcasing and analysing the handiwork of the Östgötalagen scribe in two languages, the presentation will seek to place the scribe in the broader palaeographical landscape of fourteenth-century textualis as it appears in the Swedish sources. More specifically, it will explore whether the handwriting shows any features which could be seen as typical for either Gothic textualis as it was used in (Eastern) Sweden at large or for some more local context of book production, such as Linköping cathedral.