Conclusion

Summary

The Firework Book, and in particular Royal Armouries manuscript I.34, provides a unique insight into fifteenth-century gunpowder technology. Among the written manuals available, it emerges at a pivotal point in the first decades of the fifteenth century. While, by the end of the fifteenth century, gunpowder technology had become omnipresent in society, the speed and format of the dissemination of the technology are not very clear. There are still many questions and enigmas arising from a lack of research findings in gunpowder technology. This book has added a valuable piece to the much bigger jigsaw.

Firework Books were produced within a short period of time by different scribes in the early part of the fifteenth century; their texts provided a comprehensive range of instructions which practitioners of gunpowder technology could follow step by step. While we cannot explain the purpose of the Firework Book with much certainty, this study and analysis point towards likely answers to the questions with which we began – who made the book, for what audience, who kept it, and what happened to the manuscripts after they were written.

Based on all the evidence presented we can be certain that the Firework Book is likely to have been written two or three generations after gunpowder technology had spread across Europe. It was felt by the author or authors to be a necessary tool to pass on to a new generation of gunners, and to showcase to any potential employers that the owner of a Firework Book knew about the basics of gunpowder technology, and how to handle it safely and effectively. This reinforces the theory of several types of users/readers, as summarized by Pamela Long:

The Feuerwerkbuch […] addresses a double readership – gunners and the princes and nobles who supported them. The author offers advice concerning how members of each group should comport themselves to their mutual advantage. Undoubtedly this anonymous author was himself a gunner seeking patronage. He offered a written text that could enhance an image of learning and technical competence of gunner and patron alike.

Royal Armouries I.34 turns out to be a truly exceptional manuscript. It is a rare example of a copy which was seemingly not taken apart in the post-medieval period, and thus provides us with a glimpse of the use of the Firework Book in its originally bound format: as a compendium, and as a notebook to be added to.