Other manuscript fragments in the group include saints lives, biblical texts, homilies, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Bede s Ecclesiastical History of the English People . Although the 19th-century restoration was a masterful accomplishment, many of the manuscripts remain quite illegible. Few modern scholars have attempted to read them, much less edit and publish them. The inaccessibility of the texts stems primarily from damage sustained in the fire and its aftermath, including the water used to extinguish it. For example, in many instances, the scorching and charring of the vellum render letters illegible or invisible in ordinary light.
Words frequently curl around singed or crumbled edges.
Holes, gaps, and fissures caused by burning obliterate partial and entire letters and words. In some cases, the letters of a single word are widely separated from each other and individual letters are frequently split apart. Shrinkage of the vellum often distorts once horizontally aligned script into puzzling undulations. And, of course, much of the vellum has been totally annihilated, the text written on it gone forever. In many cases, the earlier attempts at preservation have themselves contributed to the illegibility and inaccessibility of the texts.