A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the Faddan More Psalter, a parchment codex containing the Psalms in Latin that was found in an Irish bog in 2006. John Gillis noted in the comments that he has a book coming out on the Psalter very soon.

Thanks to Stephen Goranson for alerting me that The Guardian has a wonderfully illustrated article out today by Lisa O’Carroll on this forthcoming book.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that “metallic inks can damage or destroy the parchment over time. But under the conditions of the bog, the ink of the Faddan More Psalter sometimes preserved the parchment, such that only the isolated letters survive while the surrounding uninscribed parchment has disintegrated.” The article has an incredible image of this “alphabet soup” phenomenon:

I’m very excited to see the forthcoming book, called The Faddan More Psalter, The Discovery and Conservation of a Medieval Treasure.