Paper engineering in 1259

Chronica Majora- used flaps and volvelles.

Saladin capturing the True Cross at the Battle of Hattin, 1187. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, St Albans.

Matthew of Paris (1200 – 1259) was a Benedictine monk who wrote the Chronica Majora in the scriptorium of the Benedictine community of St Albans during the mid thirteenth century. It is a vast universal chronicle of recorded history from the Creation until shortly before Matthew’s death.¹

The autograph text of the Chronica has survived into modern times. It is divided between three manuscripts.² Suzanne Lewis has produced a study of the art in the Chronica.³

Because the Chronica uses flaps and volvelles (moveable circles) it is considered one of the earliest examples of paper engineering.⁴ Paris accompanied his Chronica Majoraa with an original series of maps showing the paths and routes that, through major European cities, linked London to the most important destinations of religious pilgrimage, Rome and Jerusalem. ⁵

1. Greasley, Nathan. 2021. “Revisiting the Compilation of Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora: New Textual and Manuscript Evidence.” Journal of Medieval History, no. 2: 230-256.

2. Ibid. The first two manuscripts, housed at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, contain the chronicle from the Creation through to 1188; 1189–1253. The third located in London, British Library.

3. Suzanne Lewis: The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora. University of California Press, 1987 (California Studies in the History of Art) 

4. Georgia Tech. Basic Principles of Paper Engineering.

5. Crupi, Gianfranco. 2019. “Volvelles of Knowledge. Origin and Development of an Instrument of Scientific Imagination (13th-17th Centuries). (English).” JLIS.It, Italian Journal of Library, Archives & Information Science 10 (2): 1–27.