Only 9% of European medieval tales are known

European medieval literature is widely known through the adventures of King Arthur, his knights and Merlin. Stories that have survived to this day also include tales around Charlemagne as well as novels by chivalry with iconic characters such as Beowulf. It is however certain that these medieval tales are not the only ones to have been invented in the Middle Ages.

Many œworks of medieval literature have disappeared due to several devastating library fires over the last century, the destruction of manuscripts as well as due to the reuse of books. One example of such a practice is the making of a bishop’s miter from the remains of a chivalric romance.

So what about all tales missing today? While it is impossible to determine what the content of these writings was, a research team has determined what proportion of medieval European literature may have been saved until today. The results of this study were published in the newspaper Science.

A parallel between ecology and medieval literature

The transmission of artefacts from the past to the present day is a recurring problem for people who study medieval literature, but also for archaeologists and paleontologists. This problem is known as “survivor bias” and means that only a fraction of the stuff from the past is known today.

This truncated view can therefore lead to an underestimation of the diversity of cultural or biological production in societies and ecosystems old. Survivorship bias is also a very well-known concept in ecology current.

This discipline is particularly interested in the biodiversity and therefore the number ofspecies different in one ecosystem. However, it is impossible to assess with certainty the number of species present in an environment because some are very rare and others are extremely difficult to observe. the unseen species model allows in ecology to correct this bias of unobserved species compared to those that have actually been listed in an environment.

The authors of the study of medieval literature thus had the idea of ​​applying this method to their data. They considered that the œworks were analogous to species and that the different manuscripts were comparable to a number of observations.

Using this model, the authors were able to determine that 9% of medieval European manuscripts that related to stories of chivalry or heroic tales have survived to the present day. They were also interested in œEnglish, French, German, Dutch, Icelandic and Irish works. They explain that the lowest literary loss rates are observed in Ireland and Iceland, compared to œworks from the continent.

They explain this trend by the fact that the number of copies per œLiterary work was more homogeneous in these islands compared to the mainland. However, when elements (or species) are in similar proportions, their fragility in the face of environmental and societal hazards is lower than for very rare elements. If the link between ecology and medieval literature opens up doors hitherto unknown, the fact remains that 91% of medieval chivalric literature remains unknown.