Copying and Illuminating the Bible at the Grande Chartreuse in the Early 12th Century

Among the 267 manuscripts currently preserved from the library of the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, no fewer than 137 date from the 12th Century, forming one of the richest collections of illuminated works from this period. However, this ensemble has long remained unstudied. Few works based on codicological analyses, have shown the profusion of the production and its artistic richness. They question how a very small community of monks, a priori subjected to strict conditions of silence and solitude, could have produced such a large number of manuscripts. With a cross-disciplinary approach, this study aims to clarify the Cartusian organization around the activity of copying manuscripts. Based on the physico-chemical analysis of inks and pigments, we seek to determine recipes and know-hows, making it possible to reconstitute the material, intellectual and human modalities which presided over the origin of this collection. Three volumes of one of the main Bibles (the so-called Notre-Dame de Casalibus) were investigated with hyperspectral imaging and portable X-ray fluorescence and powder diffraction. Because of the geometric constraints of diffraction in reflection mode and the fragility of the bookbinding, we have developed a specific support for the analysis of large books. The first results have helped to identify the pigments of the decorators' palette. According to codicological studies, five decorators have contributed to this manuscript, the complementarity of the non-invasive techniques used allowed to highlight the differences and similarities between them. Among the five colors used, the blue stands out and results from a mixture of azurite and lazurite that varies significantly between the decorators. Moreover, the study of the inks revealed the use of a pure iron gall ink for the copyists against a contaminated one for the decorators (containing As, Cu) and seems to confirm their distinct intervention.

Affordance · Complementarity (molecular biology) · Copying · Parchment · Reflection (computer programming) · Silence · Conservation Techniques and Studies · Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis · Pigment Synthesis and Properties

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