BIBLIOCLASM

Destruction, dismemberment, illicit circulation and reconstruction of written heritage

 

BIBLIOCLASM is an international scholarly series and research programme published by Éditions Pigouchet, devoted to the study of biblioclasm and its consequences for the history, preservation and reconstruction of written heritage.

The term biblioclasm denotes the destruction or deliberate alteration of the physical integrity of a book. It encompasses a wide range of practices, extending across different historical periods and arising from very different circumstances: the reuse of manuscript material, the extraction of leaves or images for collecting and teaching, the breaking-up of books to create specimen collections, deliberate mutilation, theft, and the commercial dismantling of manuscripts and printed books.

BIBLIOCLASM approaches these phenomena historically and critically. The material result may be similar — the loss of the integrity of the original book — but the circumstances, motivations and responsibilities involved may be profoundly different. Establishing when, how, why and by whom a book was altered or dismantled is therefore fundamental to its study.

The programme brings together philology, codicology, palaeography, art history, provenance research, the history of collecting and the book trade, cultural heritage law and the digital humanities.

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From Foliophiles to biblioclasm for profit

One important chapter in the history of biblioclasm concerns the collecting and circulation of individual manuscript and printed leaves.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in North America, collectors, librarians, educators and booksellers created collections of individual leaves intended to illustrate the history of writing, illumination and printing. The history of the so-called Foliophiles belongs to this phenomenon and requires examination within its own historical, educational and collecting contexts.

Such practices could themselves result in the dismantling and dispersal of books. They should not, however, be automatically identified with biblioclasm for profit, in which the destruction of the book is governed primarily by the commercial value of its constituent parts.

In biblioclasm for profit, the economic mechanism is central: an intact or substantially intact book is dismantled because its leaves, miniatures, initials or other components are expected to generate a greater aggregate return when sold separately than the volume would command as a whole.

The distinction does not diminish the material consequences of earlier collecting practices. It allows instead the history of book dismemberment to be reconstructed with greater precision, distinguishing educational, antiquarian, collecting and institutional practices from the deliberate commercial exploitation of a book through its destruction.

 

Fragments and intentionally detached leaves

A further distinction concerns the objects produced by these different histories.

A historical fragment is the surviving portion of a book that has reached us through processes such as deterioration, accidental damage, early alteration, rebinding or the historical reuse of manuscript material.

An intentionally detached or excised leaf, by contrast, is a part deliberately separated from a book whose original identity may still be established.

The two should not be treated as interchangeable categories.

A leaf deliberately removed from an identifiable manuscript does not become a historical fragment merely because it subsequently circulates independently. Its separation is itself an event in the history and provenance of the parent book and should, whenever possible, be documented as such.

For BIBLIOCLASM, provenance research therefore concerns not only the succession of owners, dealers, collections and sales through which an individual object has passed. It also asks a prior set of questions: What was the parent volume? When did the separation occur? Under what circumstances? Who was responsible for it?

The market for detached leaves

The commercial circulation of detached leaves constitutes a major field of investigation within BIBLIOCLASM.

The programme examines the economic, scholarly and institutional structures through which leaves and miniatures separated from books acquire new identities and values as autonomous market objects. Research may address:

• dealers, antiquarians, auction houses and collectors involved in the circulation of detached leaves and miniatures;

• experts and cataloguers responsible for their attribution, description and presentation;

• the transformation of manuscript leaves and miniatures into autonomous collectible objects;

• incomplete, missing or obscured provenance;

• the international circulation of material belonging to identifiable manuscripts;

• theft or unlawful removal followed by reappearance on the art and antiquarian markets;

• the scholarly and patrimonial consequences of dismantling;

• legal, professional and ethical approaches to prevention, identification, recovery and restitution.

Language is itself part of this history. Describing every detached leaf as a “fragment” can conceal the circumstances in which the object became separated from its parent volume. Likewise, treating an isolated miniature solely as an autonomous work of art can obscure its textual context, its position within a quire, its relationship to the decorative programme and its function within the manuscript as a whole.

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Reconstructing dismembered books

The reconstruction of dismembered books is one of the central methodological objectives of BIBLIOCLASM.

Digital reconstruction does not materially restore a destroyed or mutilated volume. It can, however, identify its membra disiecta, establish relationships among dispersed elements and, where the evidence permits, recover the textual, iconographic and codicological organisation of the original book.

Reconstruction is not simply the digital aggregation of images of dispersed leaves. It requires the formulation and verification of hypotheses concerning the structure of the parent volume.

Evidence may include:

• textual content and sequence;

• dimensions of leaves and written spaces;

• layout and ruling;

• historical and modern foliations;

• scripts and scribal changes;

• decoration and iconographic programmes;

• quire structure;

• traces of binding;

• ownership and institutional marks;

• provenance documentation;

• inventories and collection catalogues;

• auction and dealer catalogues;

• archival photographs and historical reproductions.

These elements must be considered in relation to one another. A proposed reconstruction is meaningful only insofar as the surviving evidence supports the relationships established among the dispersed parts.

The objective is therefore not to create a digital collection of isolated leaves, but, wherever possible, to recover the book as a material, textual and historical structure.

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From the 2025 OProM seminar to BIBLIOCLASM

The programme builds upon research developed by the OProM, which in 2025 organised an international seminar devoted to biblioclasm for profit.

The seminar examined the commercial dismantling of manuscripts and illustrated books, the market for detached leaves, the cultural construction of the “fragment” as an autonomous collectible object, the legal implications of manuscript dismemberment and methods for reconstructing dispersed codices.

The research presented on that occasion provided one of the foundations for the broader BIBLIOCLASM programme now developed by Éditions Pigouchet.

 

Open-access publications

A first group of studies arising from the seminar was published in:

Theory and Criticism of Literature and Arts, vol. 9, no. 2 (2025).

Antonella Ippolito
“Un manoscritto miniato del XV secolo e le sue membra disiecta: il codice Gruuthuse della Legende saincte Katherine (1470–1480)”, pp. 134–166.

Carla Rossi
“Biblioclastia a scopo di lucro: le implicazioni legali dello smembramento dei manoscritti miniati medievali occidentali”, pp. 167–179.

Raffaele Pinto
“Il ‘culto feticista’ delle immagini”, pp. 180–195.

Biagio Gamba
“La biblioclastia a scopo di lucro dei libri a stampa illustrati”, pp. 196–203.

OPEN-ACCESS VOLUME
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17285061

An international research programme

BIBLIOCLASM extends this investigation through an international programme of publications, case studies, workshops, lectures and digital reconstruction projects.

The programme welcomes research concerning manuscripts, early printed books, illustrated books and archival materials, with particular attention to cases in which the original object can still be identified or reconstructed.

Its aim is to combine the study of the historical phenomenon of biblioclasm with the investigation of its modern commercial manifestations and with the development of rigorous methods for documenting and reconstructing dispersed written heritage.

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Other publications (2023-2026):

Digital Reconstruction of a Dismembered Book of Hours Illuminated by Robert Boyvin, CSP, 2023

By: Carla Rossi, Alex Martin

Isabelle Boursier's Book of hours, a dismembered manuscript from Mary Benson's collection, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP), 2024

By: Carla Rossi

The 1879 Theft of Royal Ms 16 E VIII from the British Museum. Wars and Tolkien’s Teacher’s Role, CSP, 2024

By: Carla Rossi

The Madruzzo Book of Hours, a Dismembered Manuscript Illuminated by Marie Vrelant, CSP, 2025

By: Jordi Puig

Biblioclasm for Profit: The Legal Implications of Dismembering Western Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Harvard Art Law Review 1, 1, 97-167, 2025

DOI:
https://zenodo.org/records/19033689

From Sotheby’s to Character Assassination: The Case of Turin MS E.V.5 Provenance Research, Market Expertise, and Institutional Responsibility, in Theory and criticism of Literature and Arts, Vol. 10, Nr. 5, 2026, pp. 4-27

By: Carla Rossi

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22045401