When she was tidying up, she came across parts of a medieval manuscript that she thought she had lost – this is how Cornelia Schneider made a lucky find last summer.

The now retired curator of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz came across a previously unnoticed box while looking through the museum's collection.

Inside were six pieces of medieval parchment with richly decorated initials.

Now they complement the permanent exhibition of the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.

The colors and filigree patterns give an idea of ​​how complex the decorative letters were to produce.

Cobalt blue shines there with delicate lime green and gold leaf illuminations, chessboard pattern and artistic tendrils form the background.

The decorative letters had obviously been cut out of a Bible manuscript, for they still showed the opening sentences of the Old Testament books, which they marked the beginning of.

Like many medieval documents, they fell victim to a booming trade in elaborate illuminations.

Often any trace of their whereabouts was lost.

However, the initials that have now been discovered could be clearly assigned to a Bible manuscript from the fifteenth century, which first belonged to the Mainzer Stephansstift and is now stored in the Scientific City Library of Mainz.

But there are still a number of other blank spaces with parchments that are still missing.

The former librarian Franz Joseph Bodmann (1754 to 1820) was probably behind the systematic robbery.

It was already known during his lifetime that he had plundered the holdings of the Mainz city library on a large scale during the Napoleonic era.

But Bodmann returned only a fraction of what was stolen.

The history of writing before the printing press

The rediscovered initials were in all probability made in a painter's workshop in Mainz, because their design is very similar to book decorations from the Central Rhineland and Mainz.

The provenance of the associated manuscript also suggests that it was made in Mainz.

Two letters found with the initials from the former museum director Aloys Ruppel to the librarian Edmund Will from 1954/55, who specializes in medieval initials, point to the stylistic parallels to the so-called Göttinger Musterbuch.

This fifteenth-century manuscript, originally from Mainz and now preserved in Göttingen, included various templates for initials and decorations.

At the time, it was quite common practice

to adopt the patterns of other artists as a source of inspiration.

The painter of the Mainz initials, for example, adopted his red-green tendrils and colorful checkerboard pattern from the Göttingen pattern book.

After the tedious process of writing the manuscript was completed and the rubricator (Latin "rubrum" for red) had written the headings and structures in red, a specialized illuminator, also known as an illuminator, decorated the still unbound parchment pages with magnificent capital letters and illustrations.

In doing so, he often oriented himself to templates from other painters.

Only then did the bookbinder bind the manuscript.

From around the twelfth century, the cheaper paper was used more and more frequently in Europe as writing material - the valuable books, such as Bibles and other religious manuscripts and chronicles, were still written on more durable parchment.

Interactive mediation methods

The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz is famous for its two Gutenberg Bibles and, as a "world museum of printing art", deals in particular with the groundbreaking invention of printing with movable type, but also extensively addresses the history of writing before book printing.

As testimonies to the art of painting and writing in the Middle Ages, the rediscovered initials under the title “Cut and Paste” successfully round off the Gutenberg Museum’s permanent exhibition.

The administrative connection between the Scientific City Library and the building as municipal institutions made it easier to borrow the exhibits after careful restoration.

In addition to the showcase with the precious pieces of parchment, a new exhibition element with interactive mediation methods such as short film, quiz and drawer invites you to

The new finds are scheduled to be presented to the public until at least the end of 2023, when the museum is expected to relocate and the initials will return to the city library.

The competition phase for a long-planned new building, currently estimated at around sixty million euros, ran until mid-May.

An interim exhibition is planned in the Natural History Museum until they move in.

In addition to a new location and possibly a changed sponsorship model, the Gutenberg Museum is also facing a change in personnel.

From April 1, Ulf Sölter, previous director of the cultural-historical Gustav Lübcke Museum in Hamm, will take over the management.

Sölter succeeds Annette Ludwig in this office, who has been at the head of the museum since 2010 and made a decisive contribution to the current orientation and the current new building project.

A first plan for a new building (the "Bible Tower") was stopped in 2018 by a referendum.

Ludwig leaves Mainz in favor of the renowned management of the 21 museums of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

Cut and paste.

In the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz;

until the end of 2023. Brochure for 1 euro.