Breton Palaeography

Project Information

BretPal

Grant agreement ID: 101109873

DOI

10.3030/101109873

Project closed

EC signature date 3 May 2023

Start date 1 October 2023

End date 30 September 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 211 024,40

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BretPal (Breton Palaeography)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Previously seen as a ‘Celtic backwater’ during the expansion of the Carolingian empire, early medieval Brittany flourished as a hybrid region, blending cultural and intellectual traditions from Ireland, Britain, and Carolingian Europe. Annexed into the Carolingian empire in c. 792, early medieval Brittany continued to seek independence throughout the ninth century, ultimately establishing itself as an independent region in c. 840, while maintaining important connections with Britain and Ireland. Brittany was, thus, a thoroughfare for ideas and cross- cultural exchanges between the ‘Insular’ world (i.e. Britain and Ireland) and Carolingian Europe. These cultural exchanges are most visible in the surviving written evidence attributed to Brittany, which remains largely understudied. Most manuscripts attributed to this region display a hybrid script, which has been labelled Breton Caroline minuscule but has not yet been systematically defined. This script reflects the region’s cultural hybridity, since it displays characteristics of both the Insular script system and Caroline minuscule, the supranational script developed in late-eighth century Francia and adopted beyond the Carolingian empire. A focused study of BCM will define what this script is, initiate a corpus of manuscripts written in this script, and advance our understanding of what can be identified as ‘Breton’. This will yield a much deeper understanding of the cultural expressions of identity within the political and cultural landscape of early medieval western Europe.
The Breton Palaeography project (BretPal) will provide the first palaeographic study of the early medieval manuscripts attributed to Brittany (c. 780‒1100). With its cross-cultural, interdisciplinary approach, BretPal is a unique project designed to address the questions of what is BCM, who wrote it, and where? The answers to these questions will determine future identification of Breton manuscripts and resituate early medieval Brittany within the wider scribal and intellectual traditions of early medieval western Europe, upon which Brittany drew and to which it greatly contributed.
The overall research objective of BretPal is to establish an evidence-based set of scientific criteria for the identification and analysis of the hybrid script (BCM) that was used in Brittany or by Breton scribes c. 780‒ 1100. This project will provide the first-ever focused study to reach conclusions about surviving written evidence from early medieval Brittany. Core innovation objectives will guide this ultimate aim:
• O1: To establish, for the first time, definitive criteria for what constitutes BCM according to palaeographic features, so that materials of Breton origin can be defined.
• O2: To initiate further analysis of other manuscripts with an attributed but not certain Breton origin with the intent to define more precisely the corpus of what can be considered ‘Breton’.
• O3: To facilitate this research through a new, unique, open-access database with an accompanying Descriptive Handbook of manuscripts that can be definitively identified as Breton.
So far, definitions of what constitutes ‘Breton’ have tended to be restricted; acute palaeographic analysis of key case studies will establish strict criteria against which future analyses of manuscripts can be made. These combined objectives will therefore initiate new investigations into the wider impact of Breton intellectual and material culture throughout early medieval western Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Since analysing all 225 manuscripts attributed to early medieval Brittany would not have been feasible in only two years, I decided to focus my research on three research questions: When can we identify a shedding of Insular features from Breton script? Can we identify the influence of Breton script further abroad? And what happens when we focus on the concept of Schriftprovinz and coining a new term, Schriftbund? With the first question, I focused on three manuscripts that can be accurately located and dated: Angers, BM, MS 477; New York Public Library, MS De Ricci 115; Paris, BnF, Lat. 7418A. These three manuscripts additionally provided a spread of genre. For the second question, I focused my research on scribal connections between Brittany and southwestern Britain. The two manuscripts included are the Cambridge Juvencus, which has traditionally be ascribed a tenth-century Welsh origin, and Orléans 221, which is one of the only surviving Breton manuscripts that is written in Insular half-uncial. For the last case study, I wanted to focus more on the term Schriftprovinz, which refers to more of a regional approach to script rather than a definitive single scriptorium. In this analysis, I explored those manuscripts that were written in a Breton fashion, but not specifically in Brittany. This analysis will result in another article that focuses on the Breton Diaspora following the Viking sack of Landévennec in 913. Additionally, these three case studies will be the foundation of a forthcoming monograph about Insular Caroline hybrid scripts. All of these palaeographic analyses will also be available on the Ircabritt website.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

My research has established parameters for Breton Caroline minuscule, as seen in a forthcoming article specifically comparing the New York and Paris manuscripts, since both of them are ascribed to Landévennec, meaning that one can observe scribal developments at a single centre over a century. The Angers 477 analysis will result in a forthcoming co-written book (with Dr Jacopo Bisagni and Prof. Pierre-Yves Lambert) that will provide, for the first time, a thorough palaeographic, linguistic, and historical analysis of this incredibly important manuscript. The analysis of the Cambridge Juvencus and Orleans 221 has resulted in a groundbreaking article (forthcoming) in which I argue for an extensive change of the current scholarly narrative regarding the origins of Insular script. The third case study has resulted in a completely novel palaeographic approach. Most of palaeographic analysis involves as precise dating and localising data as possible. In many cases, modern geopolitical entities are laid on top of these assessments (e.g. northern France). Yet, such terminology and ascriptions do not necessarily reflect the wider variety and variegated experience of early medieval scribes who did, indeed, move. The term Schriftprovinz refers to more of a regional approach to script rather than a definitive single scriptorium. Using this term provides a more flexible view of the many different influences that a single scribe might have encountered, rather than other analyses that provide too rigid of an approach (e.g. 'house style'). Dr Bisagni, a philologist and Indo-European linguist, informed me of the German term Sprachbund, which is used in linguistics to denote a group of languages that share features resulting from geographical proximity and prolonged language contact. In turn, I am working on developing the term Schriftbund to connote those scripts that might display more influence from each other given their relative geographical proximity (e.g. Rennes in the early medieval period and northern Francia). Further research needs to continue, since these are groundbreaking case studies that completely change our understanding of not just script in Brittany itself, but the entire Insular script system as a whole. As a result, I have begun working on an ERC application to continue my research on the history of writing in the early Insular world.