Insular Manuscripts – Some New Approaches to Some Old Questions

More than 600 manuscripts survive that were written between c. 600–850 in the Irish or Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, or in continental monasteries founded by missionaries from the islands of Britain or Ireland in the seventh or eighth centuries. Defined by characteristic script, as well as decoration, these manuscripts are graphic testimony to the contribution of the islands to post-Roman European culture. Digitisation has now reached critical mass, facilitating comparative analysis in ways not previously possible. Other new methods, including biocodicological analysis (proteomics, aDNA, microbiomes) and new visualisation techniques, open up exciting new avenues for research around mobility (of people / books / cows), methods of making, as well as the reading and reception of Insular manuscripts in the age of Charlemagne.