Chartres: The Municipal Library of Chartres

What happened?

During the tragic air battle on May 26th, 1944, Chartres was hit by American bombs, and the municipal library was almost entirely destroyed. On June 9th, 1944, the manuscripts that could be salvaged were sent to the Bibliothèque nationale de France for restoration work.1 Decades of careful work have been dedicated to repairing the damaged manuscripts and to analysing and identifying the surviving fragments.

An image of a manuscript that was heavily damaged.

An example of a manuscript that was heavily damaged in 1944. The manuscript is Chartres Bibliothèque municipale, 0139 (0157), vol. 1, fol. 6v. Image credit : L’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, 2013, Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0).

What was lost?

The Municipal Library of Chartres manuscript collection was of great value, containing a remarkable number of Carolingian manuscripts (more information about the significance of the collection is available here.

According to Dominique Poire of the IRHT, “of the 518 listed manuscripts, 45% were totally destroyed" (this means about 233 were destroyed).2 About 248 manuscripts survive, some of which have been heavily damaged.3 A list of destroyed manuscripts and their contents is available here.

Example: A Manuscript Lost from Chartres

One of the manuscripts that was lost from Chartres contained Guillelmus Peraldus’ Summa de vitiis. This work was a widely popular manual for priests about how to conduct confession by asking the penitent about various sins. It treats gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, pride, envy, wrath and the “sins of the tongue” (often in that order). Many other copies of the Summa de vitiis survive. This copy is fascinating because it was produced within decades of when Peraldus’ Summa de vitiis was written. Here are the details about this manuscript:
Shelfmark : Bibliothèque municipale de Chartres, MS 204 (228)4
Headnote : Guillelmus Peraldus, Summa de vitiis
Date: 13th century
Folia: 193
Material: Parchment
Size : 300 x 200 mm
Decoration: Red ink ornaments
Provenance: Chapter of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Chartres
Contents:
ff. 1-7: Table of contents (in a more recent hand)
Incipit: “Incipit moralis tractatus in VIItem viciis. Dicturi de singulis viciis..”
ff. 7v-198: Guillelmus Peraldus, Summa de vitiis
Incipit: “Pro XI francis, tractatus de VII visciis et remediis eorumdem usque ac (sic) XXti quatuor libros.”
Explicit:
“Explicit summa de viciis. / Explicit hic liber, sit scriptor crimine liber. /Explicit, expliceat, ludere scriptor eat.”
Note: More on Peraldus’ Summa de vitiis is available here.

The explicit of the text in this manuscript resembles one in the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection MS no. ljs216.

  1. “L'incendie et ses conséquences,” À la recherche des manuscrits de Chartres, 2022, https://www.manuscrits-de-chartres.fr/fr/incendie-et-ses-cons%C3%A9quences.
    2.
  2. Laure Cailloce, “Bringing the Chartres Manuscripts Back to Life,” CNRS News, March 26th, 2018. https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/bringing-the-chartres-manuscripts-back-to-life.
  3. “À la recherche des manuscrits de Chartres,” À la recherche des manuscrits de Chartres, 2022,https://www.manuscrits-de-chartres.fr/fr
  4. “Bibliographie,” À la recherche des manuscrits de Chartres, 2022. https://www.manuscrits-de-chartres.fr//fr/bibliographie#biblio, p. 182; https://www.manuscrits-de-chartres.fr/fr/manuscrits/chartres-bm-ms-204 and https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/jsp/index_view_direct_anonymous.jsp?record=eadcgm:EADC:D17011196 ; Ministère de l'éducation nationale, Le Catalogue général des manuscrits: Tome 11, Chartres (Paris: Librarie Plon), p. 104.