Benjamin VICTOR (Montréal)

• Simultaneous copying of classical texts 800-1000:
  Techniques and their consequences.

I have lately surveyed classical manuscripts copied in teams during ss. IX-XI, with attention to two rival techniques: copying from a single exemplar, unbound and divided into quires, and copying from multiple exemplars. Philological analysis shows that the multiple exemplar technique was confined to poetical texts, whose division into verses simplified calculation of link-ups. Apart from their interest for the history of texts, these findings also suggest the reason for a peculiarity of certain monastic booklists, where we often encounter two copies of Virgil, three of Prudentius and so forth, against just one each of the prose-writers. One is tempted to conclude that poets were kept in duplicate so as to copy them at double speed without undoing a binding.