Manuscript Cuttings: Devotion through the Ages

Manuscripts remained intact for centuries; they endured wars, the Reformation and being passed down through generations – only to meet their match at the hands of the Victorians. Why did the 19th century’s greatest art-lovers become history’s most notorious biblioclasts? Let’s uncover the truth…

How would you feel if I cut up this book? Probably shocked – possibly outraged.

This might be a common reaction now, but cuttings were a profitable and pleasurable pastime in the Victorian era, where keen collectors sliced out the beautiful decorative illustrations – called illuminations – from the manuscript in which they belonged. Victorians cut up manuscripts to collect and sell their beautiful illuminations, treating them as trinket pieces of art instead of sacred texts.

The pages left behind, following the cutting of illuminations out of medieval manuscripts, are still of value to museums and art collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds manuscript leaves in their collection that show the physical scars of the Victorian craze for cutting.

One striking example is a 15th-century leaf from a Book of Hours from the V&A collections. An obvious square hole gapes where an illumination was cut out, leaving only the text and a decorated initial ‘D’ on the parchment. This missing piece was likely sold as a ‘miniature’, a stand-alone artwork. For Victorians, the value wasn’t always in the text, but in the imagery. Essentially, it was medieval craftsmanship repurposed for decoration.

Compare this to an intact leaf in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts collection, seen here.

This manuscript cutting visualises the Biblical story of the ‘Flight into Egypt’ as recounted in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (2: 13-15). In a dream, an angel warns Joseph that King Herod is a grave danger to the infant Christ, so Joseph takes Mary and the newborn child to Egypt for safety. The scene remains whole, surrounded by detailed marginalia and opulent gold initials.

The difference between the two manuscript cuttings is stark: one page tells a complete story, while the other is a fragment, forever altered by Victorian hands.

Why did this happen? Two key reasons: profit and aesthetics. Dealers made fortunes auctioning off cuttings, while collectors framed them as art. Even famous figures like art critic John Ruskin justified cutting manuscripts for educational purposes. Meanwhile, the Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite and movements, led by William Morris and Birmingham’s Edward Burne Jones, celebrated medieval designs, and in referencing them in their own work, turned them into fashionable motifs rather than sacred texts.

Not everyone approved. Religious movements such as the Tractarian movement believed it was right to preserve the manuscripts as they were. However, most Victorians saw the books as relics of a romantic past – beautiful, but not untouchable.

Today, this decimation of artefacts — and their repurposing — poses difficult questions. Should we be grateful these cuttings survived at all? Or are we horrified by what was lost by the cutting process?
Modern museums now face their own ethical dilemmas. Digital reunification projects try to piece fragments back together virtually, while conservators debate whether to restore damaged pages or leave the cuts visible as historical evidence.

The Victorians weren’t alone in reshaping the past to fit their present. We still grapple with the same tensions: Is it preservation when we digitise manuscripts, or just another kind of alteration?

The story of these illuminated manuscripts continues to evolve: from the medieval world that made them, through the Victorian hands that cut and reframed them – to the present-day where we display, digitally manipulate, film and re-present the cuttings and manuscripts. Every generation that has interacted with the manuscripts has left its mark – this exhibition explores their legacy.