The study of ancient cultures is hindered by the incomplete survival of material artifacts, so we commonly underestimate the diversity of cultural production in historic societies. To correct this survivorship bias, we applied unseen species models from ecology to gauge the loss of narratives from medieval Europe, such as the romances about King Arthur. The estimates obtained are compatible with the scant historic evidence. In addition to events such as library fires, we identified the original evenness of cultural populations as an overlooked factor in these assemblages’ stability in the face of immaterial loss. We link the elevated evenness in island literatures to analogous accounts of ecological and cultural diversity in insular communities. These analyses call for a wider application of these methods across the heritage sciences.

In one of the five Middle Low German manuscripts containing, among others, the text Flos unde Blankeflos, five drinking requests occur. This article discusses the performative character of this version and its manuscript context with respect to the Middle Low German Flos unde Blankeflos adaptation in general. In determining the reception mode of the narrative, arguments will be put forth on three different levels: text, codex and context. Successively, the article deals with the direct textual context of the requests, the paleographical and codicological features, the relation to the other texts within the manuscripts and the sociohistorical context.

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The emphasis will be on printed romances from the 15th and 16th centuries, though attention will also be given to the manuscript transmission, themes and structure of many of the narratives; to woodcuts, the afterlife of some stories into the 19th century, the importance of the romances for our cultural heritage, the European scope of certain subject matters, the invention of printing and Antwerp as a printing centre. Even though the promised loans of the Library of Congress in Washington are still pending due to the pandemic, the recently purchased romances from the Heritage Library as well as loans of rare books from many European institutions are well worth a visit.