Read the whole fascinating story here.
In August 1995, professor Ralph Mathisen was on a road trip from Vienna to Oxford when he took a spur of the moment detour that changed his life.
Shortly after crossing the border into Switzerland, he saw a sign pointing to St. Gallen, where the only known copies of the letters of Ruricius, Bishop of Limoges (ca. 485-510), were housed in the Stiftsbibliothek (Abbey Library) in a manuscript known as the Codex Sangallensis 190.
Mathisen didn’t know then that the Sangallensis contained the only surviving copies of letters written by religious leaders and two anonymous women in Southern Gaul (South France) during the late Roman Empire. But he had written about Ruricius’ letters in his dissertation and was intrigued by the opportunity to see them in person.
Making a decision that he describes as “brazen,” he showed up unannounced at the St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek and began his 30-year journey to study the last letter collection assembled during European Late Antiquity.
He recently published the results of his research in a new book, The Codex Sangallensis 190 and the Preservation of Letter Collections in Gaul during Late Antiquity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing), which analyzes the text, but also studies it as a physical object.
Going beyond a strict textual analysis and studying the materiality of the manuscript—like the handwriting of the scribes, their marginalia and drawings, and how the manuscript was assembled—has given Mathisen a deeper understanding of the Sangallensis and fresh insights into its creation, its life, and the people who put it together. It’s also given him insights into the manuscript’s many mysteries.