Mercurial monks

The perils of rubrication?

Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red. . .

Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-containing medicine had been administered to 79 percent of the interred individuals with leprosy and 35 percent with syphilis.

Since the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, did not have these diseases but contained mercury in their bones, scientists believe the monks were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books.

Misused term here: incunabula refer to printed books predating 1500. The books in question here were almost certainly manuscripts.

While working on the study, the researchers also noted that, due to different carbon signatures, some of the medieval individuals ate a mostly marine, fish-filled diet. Lund Rasmussen suggests that the others may have "preferred beer and meat, rather than fish and water." The Cistercians were, in principal, not allowed to eat meat from any four-footed animals, but the Franciscans do not appear to have always observed this practice.

From Discovery News. If a strong connection could be established between normal scriptorium practice and mercury ingestion, high mercury levels in monastic burials might help in establishing if certain hypothetical monastic scriptoria in fact existed.

Posted by David on June 30, 2008 12:15 PM