Marc H. SMITH, Vice-Président du Comité international de paléographie latine

1 February 2010

Dear Professors Trainor and Palmowski,

I was stunned at the announcement that King's College London intends to "disinvest" itself of its Chair of Palaeography, and the current incumbent, Professor David Ganz. All I could imagine initially was some sort of mistake, a typographical error by a secretary. Palaeography at King's College London is a world-class position, and has had a series of very distinguished holders of the chair: Francis Wormald, Julian Brown, A. C. de la Mare, and now David Ganz. These are people who have formed not only generations of students but the very thinking of the discipline itself.

I first met Professor Ganz some sixteen years ago, when I was running a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities here at Columbia to catalogue our medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. At the time I only knew of Professor Ganz, of his stellar reputation in the field. I asked him to assume the function of the one outside Consultant on the grant, to judge and advance my own work, and to formally catalogue our manuscripts in caroline minuscule. Since then, and now that I know him as a person, Professor Ganz continues to both judge and advance my work, and to give definitive appreciations of the manuscripts of his specialization.

If you will go online, to the Digital Scriptorium website (http://www.digital-scriptorium.org), and search on Professor Ganz's name, you will see that he has contributed to our knowledge of manuscripts in from coast to coast. The precise localization and dating of these primary sources are the sine qua non step in integrating the knowledge from the source into the pool of our received knowledge. It is only by precise tracking of the surviving evidence that we can watch ideas bloom and grow across Europe and through the ages. Palaeography is the foundation of every discipline that traces its history to a pre-print era; without it, at best we guess, at worst we build castles on sand. Historians of all disciplines have asked Professor Ganz's help in this crucial area; we have all looked to King's College for guidance. How is it possible that King's College itself so undervalues what the rest of us admire so greatly at King's College?

The simplistic answer from you is, I know, financial constraints. But we've all faced financial constraints in the past several years, and some institutions have dealt with the problem in more flexible or imaginative ways. Block all new appointments? Freeze all salaries? Institute furloughs? whereby the entire institution or building is closed for X number of days, even consecutively, in order to pare down salaries (of professional, janitorial, security staff), and also to slash heating and electrical bills? I know of some places where the combined staff met and agreed to salary reductions by X% in order to arrive at the overall institutional rate of reduced income. Agree to longer summer hours (when lighting and airconditioning is less onerous) and to shorter winter hours? Offer inducements to the staff as individuals for flex time in their appointments: aspiring novelists, mothers of small children, theater devotees as well as academics writing books all have reasons to find more time for personal pursuits a greater reward than a high salary.

I don't imagine that either of you relished the task set to you: reduce the overall budget by X amount. But I also don't imagine that you understood the prestige and the power of the Palaeography position and of Professor Ganz. Please try to find a different solution to the financial crisis-the which will, after all, only last so long, whereas the loss of the Palaeography position and of Professor Ganz will harm King's College – and the rest of us – permanently.

Sincerely,

Consuelo DUTSCHKE, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Digital Scriptorium
Curator, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts

Paris, le 31 janvier 2010

Monsieur le Principal et Cher Collègue,

J'apprends avec une vive émotion qu'il est envisagé de supprimer la chaire de paléographie de King's College. Je ne peux pas, je ne veux pas croire à cette information.

Il ne m'appartient pas de juger des impératifs économiques et autres considérations qui motiveraient cette décision. Mais nous savons tous qu'une mesure prise en raison de circonstances factuelles se révèle tôt ou tard catastrophique. Vous avez le privilège de posséder dans votre institution une chaire, unique, où se sont succédé jusqu'à nos jours des savants de renommée internationale et où des générations d'étudiants ont été formés dans une discipline-clé.

Quelle que soit l'évolution des technologies, la paléographie demeure l'élément de base incontournable non seulement pour la recherche historique entendue au sens large, mais aussi pour la conservation et la compréhension du patrimoine écrit. La suppression de son enseignement signifierait d'ici peu l'effondrement de grands pans de ce qui a fait, aux yeux de la communauté scientifique internationale, l'honneur et la réputation de l'école historique britannique.

Veuillez croire, Monsieur le Principal et Cher Collègue, à l'expression de ma considération la plus distinguée.

Marie-Clotilde HUBERT

professeur honoraire de paléographie
à l'Ecole nationale des chartes

Paris, le 3 février 2010

Monsieur le Principal,

En tant que responsable de la principale formation de recherche française spécifiquement vouée à la paléographie, j’estime de mon devoir de joindre ma voix aux innombrables cris de stupeur qui s’élèvent à l’annonce de l’imminente suppression de la chaire de paléographie à King’s College.

Avec l’ensemble de mes collègues, je m’afflige de voir retirée à ce savant exceptionnel qu’est le professeur Ganz la possibilité de transmettre son immense savoir aux jeunes générations, et de ce fait irrémédiablement compromise la survie de ce qui constitue l’indispensable clé des études classiques et médiévales.

Je souhaiterais toutefois situer mon intervention sur un plan moins personnel et souligner à quel point cette décision me paraît non seulement préjudiciable à la recherche, mais surtout en total désaccord avec le contexte scientifique actuel.

Cette décision et les motivations dont elle est assortie laissent en effet l’impression que la paléographie a été regardée comme une discipline confidentielle et désuète – voire oiseuse et moribonde.

Une telle appréciation est catégoriquement démentie par les faits. Au cours de ces trente dernières années, on a assisté au contraire à un développement sans précédent des études paléographiques, puissamment stimulé par les possibilités qu’offrent de nouvelles techniques pour la diffusion des reproductions des documents originaux, tant par l’usage des microfilms que par le recours à l’imagerie numérique. La vitalité des intérêts suscités par ce vaste domaine a même amené l’émergence d’une branche nouvelle, connue sous le nom de « codicologie », dont l’expansion ne s’est jamais ralentie tout au long de la même période.

Cette efflorescence s’est traduite très concrètement par une multiplication phénoménale des publications et des réunions scientifiques (colloques internationaux ou journées d’études d’intérêt local); les sites Internet consacrés aux manuscrits ont fleuri de tous côtés; les bibliothèques, grandes et petites, ont rivalisé d’initiatives pour faire partager la connaissance de leurs fonds; plusieurs nouvelles revues ou publications en série ont été lancées; le vénérable Comité international de paléographie latine a triplé ses effectifs; une association internationale s’est formée pour réunir tous ceux qui souhaitaient participer à ce grand mouvement de progrès.

Un chiffre précis peut, à lui seul, rendre objectivement compte de l’appétit croissant du monde savant pour les travaux paléographiques: en l’espace de vingt ans, le nombre de pages que la Gazette du livre médiéval consacre à rendre compte de l’activité scientifique sous ses différentes formes a été multiplié par cinq.

Tous ces symptômes concourent à montrer que le monde n’a jamais autant eu besoin de paléographes qu’aujourd’hui.

Je vous prie donc, Monsieur le Principal, de bien vouloir prendre ces faits en considération avantde rendre votre décision effective.

En souhaitant que vous puissiez vous montrer sensible à ces arguments, je vous prie d’agéer, Monsieur le Principal, l’expression de ma respectueuse considération.

Chicago, 3 February 2010

Dear Professor Trainor,

It was with shock and disbelief that I learned your intention to preside over the “disinvestment” in Latin Palaeography at King’s College and, in effect, the sacking, of the present, highly distinguished incumbent of the Chair of Palaeography, Professor David Ganz.

This scheme is, to my mind, a deeply flawed “investment decision,” and there is no question of its having any possible intellectual merit. My own classes, including formal and informal offerings of Latin Palaeography (my Classics colleagues also like to use me for other things), at the University of Chicago burgeon with Asian students avid to learn the groundwork and instruments of Western technical culture, wherein the Written Word and Books have reigned supreme and do, in fact, underlie all the other mechanical innovations in the ascendant today. Meanwhile, the prime individual focus of palaeographical learning and activity in the West stands under threat of elimination. This is no rational economy. The Chair and Professor Ganz’s activities attract numerous students, both formally and informally to London and Britain, in the Summer Palaeographical Workshops and otherwise to consult, absorb, and appropriate in new, unsuspected ways the Culture that we purport to foster or at least to safeguard in our universities. I have no doubt that the active tuition given, in various guises, by Professor Ganz attracts far more paying students and colleagues to Britain in a year than his “costs” amount to in several. Even if the synergies of Professor Ganz’s “intellectual capital,” as our Chicago economists would rightly term it, haven’t been assayed in detail, they are certainly real.

Professor Ganz is personally active in myriad ways at the heart of a considerable worldwide network of scholars. His influence cannot simply be measured in head-counts or word-counts. It reflects a deep and long commitment to study, that makes it possible for Professor Ganz to envisage plausible connections across a vast range of materials, isolated in origin and now place of conservation, but all in a living cultural connection. Professor Ganz regularly provides needed answers and stimulating questions in reply to medievalist-Classicist scholars like myself and also to scholars working in histories and literatures of the most varied sorts, both Western and non-Western. His particular play of mind and deep personal learning allow for essential connections made inconspicuously, but thanks to him, in the work of many others, from scholars of Law to practitioners, in my classroom experience, of Classical Chinese calligraphy.

David Ganz is in no sense a fungible commodity, and it is inconceivable to me that London would willingly lose a man of his singular capacity and world-wide intellectual importance. I know that others have written of the importance of “training” in Palaeography. That is the most obvious and real need that the looming choice discounts and disregards. It is plain to me, and to anyone who reflects for a moment, that the living tuition rooted in familiarity, intimacy, and experience that Professor Ganz brings to his students are immeasurably important. Where the loss of that would eventually end for history and literature, if the scheme goes forward, seems a horrible and ominous cultural prospect.

I can only hope that good sense and circumspect reason will prevail. People on the market place often don’t see beyond their wicket. This is a matter of national and international reach and significance, and I cannot see how an act of wanton capital destruction will rate as a rational choice.

Yours truly,

Michael Idomir ALLEN

Associate Professor of Classics
(Medieval Latin and Palaeography)

Dear Prof. Trainor,

I write as chair of the British Library Project Board for the on-line Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. Prof. Ganz has been a member of this Board for six years (I calculate), during which time the Project has gained major funding from the Getty Trust and AHRC. David has given of his time and unrivalled expertise most generously in substantial editorial work to assure the scholarly standing of the Catalogue.

David may be a somewhat unworldly person, but his reputation internationally would make any faculty grateful to have him on board. His subject, palaeography, contrary to appearances, is distinctly worldly: it provides the indispensable scholarly foundation on which most of our knowledge of the pre-modern world is based. Palaeography has long been a jewel in the crown of history teaching and research in London, a jewel which our non-London-based and international colleagues regard with admiration.

In my judgement a decision to terminate Professor Ganz’s contract, and to abandon the chair of palaeography, will not only damage humanities teaching and research internationally as well as nationally, but will specifically gravely damage the academic standing of King’s College.

I would ask you, therefore, to reconsider the action which I understand you have proposed.

Yours sincerely

Prof. John LOWDEN

Courtauld Institute of Art

Dear Professor Trainor,

I am writing to protest the cutting of funding for the Chair in Palaeography. This action is eerily reminiscent of a common occurrence in a paleographer's life: seeing materials that have been discarded because their owners could not read them or understand their worth.

The nature of the materials of our field, the variable characteristics of hand-written books, means that paleography is not a mechanical field: scholars of different backgrounds and training will approach the materials differently. It is the combined efforts, over time, of scholars from varying intellectual traditions that yield understanding as complete as it can be. This is why the loss of even one center for training paleographers is a disaster for the field: there isn't one standardized approach that consistently applies always and everywhere.

By eliminating this position, you are saying, "Our understanding of the past is complete. We know everything about the materials we have discovered, and no new materials will be discovered. Existing interpretations are correct and sufficient, and will never need reconsideration. Great Britain's role in interpreting the past has ended."

This short-sighted action at King's College will have a world-wide impact on the field far into the future.

Sincerely,

Laura L. WILLIAMS

Falmouth, Maine (USA)