Page Two The Brunswick Codex
If the maker of the vellum was lucky, he could perhaps get two sheets of the size needed for this book out of one sheepskin.  If we then take into account the number of pages originally in the book, perhaps as many as 130, the number of animals slaughtered for the making of this codex is surprising.  Between 70 and 80 sheep (goat skin would probably have been too small) would be a reasonable estimate.  Each skin had to be specially treated to render a sheet of vellum.  The many colored inks had to be concocted, often from rare imported ingredients.  Gold leaf had to be made and applied.  Several monks spent endless hours in an intemperate scriptorium lettering the text, notating the music, and creating the sumptuous illuminations which gave the books their inestimable aesthetic value.  The quires of pages were then sewn together and bound.  All this work was done by hand. 
Books were extremely costly to produce, and were considered rare and prized possessions owned only by the wealthiest people and institutions.  They were commonly chained to their lecterns or shelves (the Brunswick codex even had its own lock forming part of the binding), and anyone caught spiriting one away was subject to heavy, even brutal, punishments.  Unfortunately, the pages missing from this manuscript are as irrecoverable as any of the fingers or hands which may or may not have been chopped off in punishment for their theft.
Now, if you will, picture in your mind a poor monk working in a cold stone workshop.  It is perhaps mid-morning, sometime after Matins.  Our humble brother is scribbling away with his quill, bored out of his mind after the painstaking work of lettering in a page.  His mind wanders as he contemplates a suitable decoration to match the capital of the last line of the page.
It seems unbalanced to his eye, yet he can�t think of an acceptable design to counter it.  He has already penned in an effusion of bees, flowers, tiny saints, animals of all description�even some not seen in Europe. 
Had his superior scolded him for daydreaming, or maybe for complaining because of the monotony of his work?  Perhaps, as a way of showing that he was indeed dedicated to his task, despite his superior�s reprimand, he penned his protestation in Arabic and made it part of the decoration.  Mujahed, faithful servant.
As Spain was under Moorish, and thence Arabic language domination for nearly 800 years, that a Christian monk might know some Arabic is not a stretch of the imagination.
Whatever the explanation for the scrolling decoration around the bottom of this letter, the preceding is only one of limitless possibilities.  The curious curving lines have succeeded in drawing attention to the chant dedicated to arguably the most important personage in Roman Catholicism; namely Peter, the traditional founder of Christianity in the West.
Although the origins of the manuscript remain in some doubt, what is certain is that it served a useful purpose for many years as a service book for a monastic choir.  Philip II of Spain, after Elizabeth I�s restauration of Protestantism in England, ordered the production of many liturgical books which were to be smuggled into England along with Roman Catholic priests.  The Brunswick Codex, however, contains some marginal notes, called glosses, in Spanish, which suggest that it was used in Spain.  If, as is suspected, the book was produced and used in Spain before making its way to England after the Protestant Reformation, then it has been useful three times over; as a liturgical book for the Spaniards, a holy relic for the Counter-Reformation in England, and today, as a window into the arts, religion, and fanciful meanderings of our forefathers.

John David Eaton
Brunswick, Georgia
4 March 2004
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