20/4/2025

The newly discovered legend of a naked Merlin

The manuscript is part of something we call the Suite Vulgate du Merlin. This is a french sequel to the legend of King Arthur. Less than forty of these types of manuscripts have survived the age old tale of time. In the story, Merlin appears in Arthur's court as a harpist. Naked, the BBC joyfully added.

The story was most likely written by an unknown scribe around the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th. This is not unusual, as any part of The Vulgate was copied and added to by many different scribes. This is why when reading it, which you can partially here, many different translations and additions are noted.

The first part tells the story of the fight of Gauvain (and others) against several Saxon kings. The second part is much calmer, but not any less exciting. Merlin appears at Arthur’s court as a Harpist clad in silk, gold and precious stones. Later on he vanishes and shows again, as a balding child. He orders King Arthur around without wearing any underwear.

Incorrectly archived

The manuscript was most likely meant for nobles, the University of Cambridge writes. It was written in a northern french dialect, which was mainly understood by the English court. Noble women in particular enjoyed reading the Arthurian legends.

About two centuries later however, Old French was becoming less popular, and the work was reused as the book binding of an archival register. In medieval times this kind of recycling was common practice. Making parchment or papyrus was not a cheap endeavour. To create a complete bible you would need 400 sheepskins. To prevent that, people wrote without punctuation to save space or scratched off the previous writing (we call this ‘palimpsest’).

The recycling meant that the story was not discovered for a very long time. It was archived incorrectly. Scholars first thought it was a story of Gawain. Neither had they written down it was in french.

Scanning saved the story

The reason we can even read and translate the story at all, is mainly thanks to multispectral imaging (MSI). Not an entirely new technology, but new enough. Where scholars would previously have had to cut open the binding and damage it, they can now scan the piece in detail. The result is that the technique could even bring out the highlighted annotations in the margins.

MSI is several layers of the same scene, all on a different wavelength band across the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum goes from radio waves to light to x-rays. It lets us see the information from red, blue and green light. Or, what isn’t visible with the naked eye and by the usual camera lenses (see: ultraviolet or infrared). Instead of overlapping the colors and information as a camera would, MSI lets them exist as separate layers of wavelengths. This way you can see what effect each layer has on the image.

Besides MSI, the scholars of Cambridge also made a quick trip to the Zoology department. Their colleagues have an x-ray scanner they normally use for fossils, but came in rather handy for this manuscript. Their site has a beautiful 3D model of both the binding and the story itself.

The scholars hope that the new chapters and technology inspire more research into medieval manuscripts. Who knows what they will find next, in the lands of magic.