A surprising number of medieval scribes were women

During the Middle Ages, every book was a laborious project, with more than a few of them penned by women, as revealed by a first-of-its-kind quantitative review.

Between 400-1500 CE, medieval scribes produced over 10 million manuscripts, each meticulously copied, illustrated, and bound by hand. While only around 750,000 survive today, there is still much to learn from these artifacts and the artisans behind them. Although most books were typically written by monks in monastery scriptoriums, there were exceptions to this norm. Recent historical findings by researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, shed light on this revision.

Previous studies had focused on gender roles in monastic scriptoria, but none had attempted to quantify the contributions of women to these monumental tasks. The research team began their investigation by analyzing colophons, a common section in most medieval manuscripts that often included details about the scribe, such as their name, date of production, and a reflection statement.

The researchers examined an existing catalogue of Benedictine colophons, comprising 23,774 entries, to identify female scribes based on linguistic cues. They found 254 entries linked to women, with 204 specifically naming the women themselves, accounting for approximately 1.1% of the Benedictine database’s manuscripts.

Based on existing estimates of manuscript production and loss, the researchers extrapolated that at least 110,000 manuscripts were copied by female scribes, with around 8,000 still in existence today.

While the number may seem modest, the researchers acknowledged that their estimate could be lower than the actual figure. Many women may have omitted their gender or name in colophons, and varying manuscript survival rates across regions may have skewed the data.

The study strongly suggests the presence of unidentified female book-producing communities, indicating that there may have been many more female scribes than previously thought.

The authors emphasized that their research is a preliminary step towards uncovering new perspectives on the role of women in medieval manuscript production.

 

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