XXe COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL DE PALÉOGRAPHIE LATINE
Yale University (New Haven, CT), 6–8 septembre 2017
Les scribes et la présentation du texte
Scribes and the Presentation of Texts
Colloques internationaux de paléographie latine Accueil / Homepage
Comité international de paléographie latine



RÉSUMÉS • ABSTRACTS

 

Michael I. ALLEN
University of Chicago

The Pragmatics of Presentation in Carolingian Letter-Collections

Evidence for Carolingian letters is "spare". Three sent originals survive. A number of volumes of mate-rial in the MGH Epistolae series. All that is an infinitesimally small fraction of what existed.

The presentation of texts in existing editions at once emulates and falsifies the surviving evidence. I shall present recoverable strategies of presentation and inscription as knowable especially from the letter-book of Lupus of Ferrières (Paris, BnF, lat. 2858-I), which is demonstrably the original inscription of the selection of material for transmission that it includes. I shall consider applicable original Caro-lingian parallels. A master hand found in other mss. associated or associable with Lupus and Ferrières corrected the collection of his letters. I shall consider in detail the palaeography of the master hand (more widely known, and perhaps nameable) and his associates. The three major participants in the copying of extant collection marked the letters with headings which show particular textual and graphic innovations vis-à-vis historical otherwise known circumstances and the texts themselves. I shall provide detailed accounts of certain events, people, and subtle transformations "inscribed" in the particular bent and form given to the headings and concomitant surmisable omissions in the adjoining inscriptions proper.


Jesús ALTURO
Tània ALAIX

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Categories of promoters and categories of writings: the free will of the scribes, cause of formal graphic differences

The polygraphic capacities of the scribes manifest themselves in different ways. Different texts or different parts of these could require a specific type of script. Often, a same scribe was capable of answer-ing to these demands. But, it was not infrequent, either, that a scribe applied a bigger or smaller deter-mination carrying out of his work as the amount that might report him. It is for this reason that some texts can present an aspect more neglected, not because of lack capacity of the copists or scribes, but simply because of a lack of sufficient motivation of themselves in case that they receive a small remu-neration. Otherwise they do their best.

On the other hand, throughout the active life of a same scribe changes were not always progressives. In some cases, a contrary trend, regressive, is observed and can be made particularly visible in amanuen-ses of advanced age. Here the changes of the script are also due to the free will of their authors.

These changes can confuse the scholars if they have the wrong idea that a mediocre penmanship is always fruit of a less cultivated scribe and if they do not take into account the presence of graphic ar-chaisms too. To examine in detail some of these examples is the purpose of our communication.


Francisco ÁLVAREZ LÓPEZ
Julia CRICK

King's College London

Decision-making and work flow in the making of Exon Domesday

Exeter, Cathedral Library and Archives, MS. 3500 is a manuscript of exceptional complexity, produced in response to King William I's order to create the survey of his English dominions which has been known since the twelfth century as Domesday Book. The survey was commissioned in December 1085 and possibly completed by 1 August the following year. The Exeter manuscript is both a unique survival from the first information-gathering phase of the Domesday process and a rare example of a datable manuscript from the first generation of the Norman Conquest of England. Its codicology and palaeog-raphy have been minutely surveyed by Francisco Álvarez López as part of a major research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2014-2017).

In his 2006 study of the manuscript Colin Flight had already suggested that a master scribe was in command of the process of copying Exon Domesday. Our project has shown that its twenty-five scribes collaborate on the page in an orderly way, anticipating the receipt of new information and responding to it when it arrives, correcting and checking the content, necessitating the involvement of as many as four scribes on a single page. Similarly, the evidence collected from its 532 leaves suggests that the booklets were produced and freely adapted in immediate response to the peculiar nature of the content and the ways in which the information was organised. This paper will present a summary of our find-ings in the light of some of the key research questions that were set out at the start of the project.


Serena AMMIRATI
Università degli Studi di Pavia, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Unde de plano recte legi possit. Strategie distintive e conservatorismo grafico nel manoscritto latino di contenuto giuridico tra Antichità e Medioevo.

A comparison between ancient, late antique (mostly unknown and so far unedited) and medieval Latin manuscripts of juridical contents allows us to highlight the continuity between the Late Antiquity and the Roman Middle Ages. Titles, rubricae, numbers, paratextual elements in medieval legal manuscripts of Roman origin show significant similarities with the older evidence; in my opinion, this is due a) to the type of text (that 'imposes' a mise en page with a very stable and rich paratext); b) to a trend in 'conservatism' in the mise en page, likely because of the presence in medieval Rome of many late an-tique legal models/antigraphs.


Sébastien BARRET
Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (CNRS), Paris

Présentation des textes, discours diplomatique et 'responsables de la transcription des textes' : autour des chartes clunisiennes.

This paper will take Cluniac charters (tenth-eleventh centuries) as a basis for reflecting on how the layout of charters, in spite of a limited variability, could be part of the 'diplomatic discourse' developed by the texts on several levels (going from their grammatical composition to their validation). In this regard, it is also important to assess the possibilities of associating layout and related elements (script, punctuation, graphical signs) with the activity of individuals. Further, the relationship between the layout and the various steps in the creation of a charter shall be studied, as well as the impact of the visual presentation of the documents on their reception by historians.


Patrizia CARMASSI
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

The prologue between author, scribe and manuscript. Use and function of one paratext in the medieval manuscripts of the Herzog August Library

This contribution aims to analyze the prologues of ancient and medieval works focusing on their layout in medieval manuscripts. In particular following aspects have to be considered with respect of the topic of the conference: the relationship between what the author says about the materiality of his work and the practical shape of the actual written manuscript; the aesthetic or functional criteria which were used by the scribe(s) in order to highlight the prologue and separate it from the rest of the text, and, finally, the interaction between different paratextual elements in the mise en page of the prologue. The variety of the manuscript collections at the HAB but also in some cases their consistency (e.g. the codi-ces from Weissenburg) offer a good basis for the investigation.


Irene CECCHERINI
Bodleian Library, Oxford

The shaping of the Latin classics in fourteenth-century Italy

My paper presents the results of a research project which investigates how humanistic culture devel-oped in Italy during the fourteenth century, focuses on the connections between the texts of the Latin classics and their material transmission and is based on a selection of manuscripts in the Canonici col-lection, Bodleian Library. This collection can be considered an ideal starting point for assessing how the Latin classics were reshaped in Italy for two main reasons. First, the richness and diversity of the texts preserved in the Canonici collection ensures that manuscripts of the classics can be studied within the general context of fourteenth-century book production. Then, most of the Canonici manuscripts come from northern and central Italy and offer the possibility of investigating the production, study and use of classical texts not only in Florence, but also in other centres that have received much less attention.


Carmen del CAMINO MARTÍNEZ
Universidad de Sevilla

De la 'Lex Visigothorum' al Fuero Juzgo: aspectos materiales, formales y gráficos.

Il y a quarante ans que Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz avais souligné le rôle joué par les modèles sur la diffusion et la survivance de certains caractères matériels et formels des manuscrits contenant la Lex Visigothorum et qu´on pouvait faire remonter jusqu'à l'époque wisigothique. Par conséquent, il avait consacré attention spéciale à l'analyse codicologique et paléographique des manuscrits du haut Moyen Âge por-teurs de ce texte, en latin et majoritairement en écriture wisigothique. Mais le texte du Liber Iudicum ou Liber Iudiciorum a été traduit à partir du XIIIème siècle aux langues romanes péninsulaires avec le titre de Fuero Juzgo. Nous nous proposons d'analyser dans quelle mesure les manuscrits de ces traductions, en plus de refléter les changements logiques en rapport avec l'évolution de l'écriture ou la con-solidation progressive du papier, conservent certains éléments formels, la mise en page ou les rubri-ques, présents dans leurs possibles modèles de la tradition latine, ou, au contraire, les modifient en les adaptant aux nouvelles tendances dans la production du manuscrit au bas Moyen Âge. D'autre part, pour expliquer les éléments de continuité ou de changement il ne suffit pas de tenir compte de l'influ-ence de ces modèles, mais entrent en jeu d'autres facteurs, comme les commanditaires des copies, les ateliers et les auteurs matériels de ces dernières, ou les possibles destinataires, qu'il s'agisse des par-ticuliers ou d'institutions, des exemplaires.


James D'EMILIO
University of South Florida (Tampa)

Marks of Distinction: Scribes and the Levels of Charter Production in Medieval Galicia

Using twelfth- and thirteenth-century charters principally from Lugo Cathedral, the Cistercian monas-teries of Meira and Sobrado, and the Benedictine house at Samos, this paper investigates the range of ways charters of special importance were singled out for distinctive treatment. I focus on charters that recorded unusually large gifts or expensive sales, or those involving prominent protagonists. I consider material features (the size, quality, and preparation of the parchment), layout (ruling of charters, spacing of writing, separation of clauses, organization of witness lists), script (including different registers, specific letter forms, selective embellishment, and expansion of common abbreviations), decorative elements (the chrismon and other signs), and language (use or elaboration of formulas, orthography, and formal Latin or Romance usage).

The large number of signed and dated documents from these institutions makes it possible to analyze these prestigious charters against the backdrop of the more routine work of individual scribes and their scriptoria. As a result, we can see how scribes varied the presentation of charters in response to their commissions, or how key assignments were reserved for specific scribes in a larger scriptorium. In some cases, we can identity sources and experiences that shaped their efforts to fashion a more attractive charter for a suitable occasion. These included contemporary book production, royal and papal documents, and the heritage of more prolix formulas in early medieval documents of Galicia and the Leonese kingdom.

My findings highlight the agency and creativity of scribes, and remind us that writing-even in the workaday world of charter production-was a malleable and creative art, not a set of forms and formu-las learned mechanically and repeated by rote. Moreover, the scriptorium and archive appear as a storehouse of ideas and laboratory for experimentation, where diverse texts were produced and earlier documents, books, and privileges from many institutions were gathered together. This enabled scribes to approach a range of texts creatively as sources for the constant enrichment of contemporary writing.


Thomas FALMAGNE
Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg

L'efficacité de la mise en page dans les manuscrits de compilation au Moyen Age

Sur base d'environ 150 prologues de compilations et une centaine de manuscrits différents, je propose d'observer quatre phénomènes dans la littérature de compilation : annoncer un titre, fournir un pro-logue, organiser les citations et enfin indexer les citations et/ou fournir une table des auteurs. Donner un titre précis à sa compilation nécessite souvent de se justifier pour accéder à un statut d'autorité, de synthèse, d'" originalité ". Fournir un plan, expliquer sa méthode pour organiser des textes d'autrui n'est pas la chose la plus courante, même au bas Moyen Age. L'usage de marqueurs de citations dans le texte et/ou en marge, et évidemment leur indexation le cas échéant, ont des implications immédiates sur la lisibilité du manuscrit.

Si le vocabulaire technique est assez pauvre pour le haut Moyen Age, le 13e siècle innove, en utilisant l'ordre alphabétique pour indexer les citations - et plus tard dans le siècle pour les classer par thèmes - et surtout les auteurs prennent soin d'expliquer les procédés. Je propose dans ces cas de comparer les mots utilisés dans les prologues à la mise en page réelle. Comment se concrétisent des expressions telles que " per que singule sententie concordate - concordationis gratia reducuntur - per earumdem dictionum concordantiam ", " Ita quod a paragrapho usque ad paragraphum sequentem uel numerum capitulorum uel librorum uel rubricam aliam continuant uerba auctorum ", " more concordantiarum collegi ", " in fronte libri in superiori margine litteram capitalem per se positam minio scriptam ", etc. Enfin, il n'est pas rare, comme dans le Resina scripturarum composé à Clairvaux au 13e siècle, qu'aucun prologue n'explicite les intentions du compilateur, mais que le système de renvois à l'intérieur de l'œuvre, la hiérarchie des couleurs dans la mise en évidence des citations ait été conçu pour une consul-tation efficace ou rapide, sans qu'il soit nécessaire de s'appesantir sur un outillage intellectuel désor-mais devenu commun.

Le bas Moyen Age laissera coexister des outils alphabétiques qui pourront se recopier indépendamment du format de la page, et des recueils personnels sans planification et où l'efficacité de la consultation ne constitue pas l'exigence première.
Si, pour le Moyen Age occidental, l'émergence de l'ordre alphabétique et des nouveaux modes d'accès aux textes d'autorité ont été étudiés depuis une quarantaine d'années, leur application concrète sur les choix de mise en page, à l'exception des manuscrits de la Bible et des instruments à usage strictement universitaire, n'a pas encore été traitée sur la longue durée et sur base d'un échantillon suffisamment représentatif.


David GANZ
Cambridge

Half uncial scripts: a way of presenting texts

Half uncial scripts were used across the Mediterranean world from the fifth to the ninth century. They represent a major shift in the form of writing, which has not really been explored or explained. Is the choice to copy a text in half uncial a statement about the status of that text? Does the script have particular connotations? Can we make comments about the form and functions of the script? In this paper I shall argue that half uncial letter forms were sometimes more familiar to early medieval scribes than uncial letter forms, and that they served as a reference point for scribes in the development of insular scripts and of Caroline minuscule scripts. I shall also consider why half uncial survived as a script for so long, and how it was used by different scribes in different cultural settings, especially at Lyon and at Castellum Lucullanum. What was the role of half uncial in the copying of Roman law and canon law texts? By examining half uncial I hope to raise fundamental issues about the nature of minuscule scripts.


Andrew J. M. IRVING
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Mass by Design: Design Elements in Early Italian Mass Books

The combination of the various individual and seriated textual elements - readings, rubrics, chant, and prayers - in a single "mass book" was one of the most successful and widely disseminated innovations of western book, liturgical, and cultural history. What has remained largely obscured is just how early scribes combined different kinds of texts and series of texts (fixed and variable; read silently, aloud, sung, instructions to be followed, and material to be consulted) in a single volume.

Liturgical scholars have long proposed diverse reasons for the adoption of the integrated "missal" for-mat of mass books (instead of separate books for different texts). These hypotheses have remained un-convincing however, in part because they neglect to examine sufficiently closely the extant mass books as material witnesses of what is at base a question of design: how scribes combined different texts, and different series of texts in a single volume intended to be used in the course of ritual performance. Be-fore developing theories regarding the reasons for this integration, what is needed is a careful, quanti-tative, description and analysis of extant early mass book manuscripts, and comparison with sets of contemporary anthologies, in order better to understand how, when, and where early medieval mass texts were integrated.

It is now becoming clear that integrated mass books were a more common and earlier than has been previously thought. While the attribution of universal change in preference in format to integrated mass book (missal) to the long-twelfth century now appears to be accurate, a picture is emerging of an overwhelming preference for the integrated mass book format in the Beneventan scribal zone from our earliest surviving evidence, long before the dominance of the format elsewhere. Moreover, recent analysis of Berhard Bischoff's Katalog of ninth-century manuscript identifies no fewer than fourteen integrated mass book fragments all identified as Italian, and all dating before the turn of the tenth cen-tury.

This paper will explore quantitatively the codicology, layout, and use of readers aids of Italian inte-grated mass books prior to 1200, and compare the results with scribal practice in anthologies of other texts.


Marilena MANIACI
Giulia OROFINO

University of Cassino and Southern Lazio

Making, Writing and Decorating the Bible: Montecassino, a Case Study

For those wishing to investigate the changes that occurred in the structure, writing, decoration and contents of biblical manuscripts over the centuries, Montecassino represents an ideal case study. It is well known that the abbey's scriptorium fostered a strong and characteristic local tradition, but it also received and reinterpreted influences arriving from outside; indeed, as early as the Middle Ages, its library contained manuscripts of different origins and cultural traditions. Thanks to the large number of variously dated biblical codices still preserved in situ (either produced at the abbey or in the sur-rounding area, or acquired from different regions of Italy and Europe), Montecassino represents an exceptional window onto the physical, textual, graphic and decorative transformations undergone by the Bible between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Additionally, the collection offers insights into the changes that occurred in the Bible's use.

Capitalising on the results obtained through the detailed cataloging of almost a hundred complete, partial or glossed Bibles produced at Montecassino or by its dependencies, or acquired elsewhere (all of which are still held in the abbey's archive), the proposed contribution aims to evaluate them as a whole. A multidisciplinary approach will be adopted and particular attention will be paid to the follow-ing aspects:

  • the material, graphic, decorative, textual and paratextual features of the Cassinese biblical tradition and the relationships (of distance or closeness, kinship or foreignness) between manuscripts of differ-ent ages;
  • the relationship between biblical manuscripts produced on site and those acquired from elsewhere;
  • the interactions between the manufacturing practices used in the production of the Bibles and their intended use within the monastic community;
  • the evolution of the role played by Montecassino?well beyond the so-called 'Golden Age'?as a center of culture and book production, examined from typologically specific viewpoint.

We also wish:

  • to draw attention to the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach for the study of biblical manu-scripts?an approach which has already been successfully trialed on other categories of Bibles. Such an approach is based on an analytical descriptive protocol aimed at the exhaustive ex-amination of codicological details (paying particular attention to the relationship between content and quire structure), textual and paratextual features (i.e. the systematic identification of titles, pro-logues and capitula), and decorative elements (i.e. a comprehensive survey of all initials and display scripts, and a detailed description of the same);
  • to present to the scientific community the outcome of several years' work?work that will be showcased in a forthcoming catalogue that we have compiled and edited in collaboration with Roberta Casavecchia, with some additional input from a group of young scholars.

Julia MARVIN
University of Notre Dame

How British History Begins: Scribal Presentations of the Prose Brut Chronicle

In its Anglo-Norman and Middle English manifestations, the prose Brut chronicle survives in well over 200 manuscripts , more than any other vernacular insular work aside from the versions of Wycliffite Bible in English. First printed by William Caxton in 1480, it appeared in thirteen different printed edi-tions before 1528, and its matter was still influential into the seventeenth century. For centuries, the prose Brut set the context, form, and matter for vernacular historical writing in England, and it may have played a significant role in the establishment and growth of commercial book production for a vernacular readership whose formation it encouraged. The sheer number of surviving manuscripts makes the prose Brut tradition an unparalleled resource for the study of habits of writing and reading, the growth of literacy and the book trade, the continuing role of Anglo-Norman, and the development of Middle English prose in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Extant manuscripts range widely in scribal presentation, textual context, and size, from cheap, hasty productions possibly made for personal use (e.g., Oxford, Bodleian, Douce 120), to handsome pocket books (e.g., London, British Library, Additional 35092), to late, deluxe illustrated Continental texts with illustrations (e.g., Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève 935).

In this paper, concentrating on the beginning and end of the chronicle, I will examine the meaningfully different ways in which scribes across the centuries present the Brut's history and guide the reader's response to and understanding of it, by means other than outright revision of the body of the text, such as rubrication, textual organization, and strategic use of decorative elements. My examples will range across the corpus (with concentration on the Anglo-Norman versions, which I know best), but I will focus particularly on the prose Brut manuscripts held at the Beinecke Library (numbers 86, 323, 405, 494, and 593). Time permitting, I will also briefly consider the Brut's transition into print (Yale holds a number of the early printed editions).


Marigold Anne NORBYE
University College London

In recta linea arboris genealogie: form and function of genealogical diagrams of the kings of France

This paper examines the format and role of the genealogical diagrams found alongside or within chronicles of the kings of France. The main focus is on A tous nobles, a brief anonymous chronicle where genealogical trees are integrated with the text, but other genealogical diagrams of the French kings are also considered. A tous nobles survives in more than sixty manuscripts and more than twenty textual versions. Most of these versions have a corresponding version of a genealogical tree. Apart from these variations of content, there are numerous variations of physical layout and form, as different writers (authors and/or scribes) sought to present the diagrams in the most effective manner. The most common solution was to copy the chronicle onto a roll, so that history could literally roll out in front of the reader's eyes in a continuous narrative without the breaks caused by turning pages. However, many versions were copied in the codex format, which led to a variety of different forms of the genealogical figures, some of them ingenious solutions to the problem of how to replicate the continu-ity of the line of succession that a roll so effectively provided.

The role of the diagrams went beyond that of physically representing the passage of time and dynastic continuity. They could also convey a more political message, namely the legitimacy or otherwise of individual kings. From one of the earliest diagrams of the kings of France in the 11th century down to A tous nobles in the late 15th century, design and layout played an essential role in expressing such a message. This was sometimes acknowledged explicitly by authors such as Gilles de Paris or Bernard Gui.
Thus the authors or the scribes had to make choices when designing the diagrams, and some of them were quite innovative. These diagrams, whether standalone or linked with the neighbouring text, were a powerful visual aid that could influence the reader's perception of France's history and its rulers.


Eef OVERGAAUW
Staatsbibliothek, Berlin

Authors, scribes and archivists. Literary estates in Germany in the Fifteenth Century

In the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, some authors working in Germany started creating manu-scripts containing their own works for their personal use. These manuscripts are often partly written by the authors themselves, partly by scribes working on their behalf. Other authors carefully kept and reworked their own unfinished works, and had these works bound together with materials written by others, but pertaining to the unfinished works.

In some miscellaneous volumes, however, autograph manuscripts have been bound together with other handwritten documents collected by the author. These documents may refer to intellectual matters, but also to ecclesiastical and juridical issues as well as to business and family commitments of the au-thor and the people in his immediate surroundings. These manuscripts may be considered as early in-stances of literary estates, bound in one or more volumes. Literary estates became frequent in the course of the 16th century, not only in Germany, but in other countries as well.

This particular kind of manuscripts, in its scripts as well in their codicological aspects, can neither be described and analyzed satisfyingly as autograph manuscripts nor as common miscellaneous manuscripts. As their production was closely associated with the biographies of their makers, they should be studied as codices as well as personal documents.


Laura PANI
Univertsità di Udine

Lay scribes before c. 1100: books, texts, scripts.

My paper investigates a group of manuscripts copied before c. 1100 - that is, before the transition from mainly ecclesiastical contexts of book production to the distinction of roles and systems that took place during the revival of the cities in the Late Middle Ages - by scribes whose status of laymen is explicitly declared in the colophon or can be reconstructed on the basis of the documentary evidence.

I will focus on the textual typologies and the codicological and palaeographical features of the books copied by lay scribes. They will be compared with manuscripts of certain ecclesiastical origin, in order to highlight preferences in the choice of the texts, differences and similarities in the codicological data (dimensions, mise en page…), graphic education, skills and habits. I hope that the data so collected will help in determining the origin of other books whose ecclesiastic origin is doubtful, and in clarifying the potential intervention of scribes not stricltly connected to the ecclesiastical writing centres.


Erik PETERSEN
Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen

Bertoldus' Bible revisited

MS GKS 4 2° of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, a Bible in three volumes made for the Cathedral of Ham-burg at the initiative of the dean Bertoldus who also financed part of its production, is the result of a high degree of planning and extraordinary craftsmanship. It is best known for a series of images show-ing the main stages in the production of the medieval book. It was completed in 1255. It survived fatal events in Hamburg, including a devastating fire in 1284. It left Hamburg half a millennium later, when it was offered for sale at an auction of manuscripts and printed books in the Chapter library and ac-quired by the Royal Library in Copenhagen.

I have in the past focused on some of the subtleties that reflect the intelligent plan and creative ideas behind the process. In this paper I shall concentrate on deviations rather than the straight lines of the production. What happened when errors or mistakes were detected? What happened when Bertoldus ceased to supply financing for the project? What does the distribution of texts in the three volumes tell about the planning? Who composed the verses of dedication to the Blessed Virgin that occurs in each of the volumes, who copied it, and what does it tell about the production of the Bible? By studying aberrations and incoherencies in the product, we may understand the ambitions of the plan and intentions better.


Gabriella POMARO
SISMEL, Firenze

Dall'ars scripta all'Ars figurata: Raimondo Lullo (1239-1316) e la tradizione figurata dell'ars combinatoria.

Raymond Lull (1239-1316) was born in Mallorca during the period in wich the island, claimed back by the Aragon kindom after centuries of Arab rule, was facing problems caused by the evangelization and also by the necessity of achieving a peaceful cohabitation of a Muslim majority and a large number of Jews. Loking at the work of this out of the ordinary individual it is fundamental to take into account the historical context.

Lull's thought, already outlined in the Llibre de contemplació (1270 ca.) was then rerworked in the most precise Ars inventiva veritatis (1289) and was given a finished form with the Tabula generalis (1294). Arbores, sketches of elements, cosmological representation - typical of medieval culture - are plied to the Art, pairing the discussive aspect with a complex system of schematic combinations, of figurae circulares and of mobile multicolored wheels (rotae). The Art explains all the explainable and required expert scribes able to create manuscripts where text, imagines, drawings and simbols are all correlated.

Unfortunately Lull's graphic competence have been little studied; is certain that his knowledge of latin was barely adequate; he travelled continuosly and where he stayed the longest (Paris, Montpellier) he often used helpers to whom he intrusted the final realisation of his work. The study of the oldest manu-scripts perhaps related to his entourage (74 mss.) has evidenced the lack of paleographical and codi-cological analysis and the difficulty in separating Lullus from the Lullist.

My intention is to follow the codicological and paleographical figurative aspects in these manuscripts in order to verify their degree of authenticity as well as any eventual discrepancis (for ex. differences between catalan and latin translation / tradition of the same work).


Laura REGNICOLI
David SPERANZI

Strategie del bilinguismo. Contesti culturali e mise en page dei codici greco-latini dal tardo medioevo al Cinquecento

L'édition bilingue, le livre conçu pour accueillir des textes en alphabets différents, est pour le Moyen-Âge un héritage de l'antiquité classique et chrétienne. Notre communication se concentre sur la mise en page des livres bilingues à partir du Moyen-Âge tardif jusqu'au XVIe siècle et à la complète affirma-tion de l'imprimerie : dans les centres de la nouvelle culture humanistique des nouveaux volumes sont réalisés avec nouveaux textes, destinés à nouveaux publiques et à nouvelles fonctions. En mettant l'ac-cent sur quelques exemples significatifs et sur les moments cruciales de la 'bataille du Grec à la Renais-sance', il serait possible d'évaluer en détail les différents 'stratégies du bilinguisme' : les interactions entre le différents artisans du livre, comment le bilinguisme est réglé en rapport aux finalités de l'exemplaire, en jouant un rôle sur l'écriture et la mise en page.


Elena E. RODRÍGUEZ-DÍAZ
Universidad de Huelva (España)

The Rubrics in Medieval Manuscripts from the Kingdoms of Leon and Castille (12th-15th Centuries)

This contribution tries to make a global study on the use and characteristics of the rubrics used in the Spanish codices of the kingdoms of Leon and Castile. We start with the definition of the polysemic sense of this term and its typology, although we will focus on the rubrics as chapter heading, which serve to structure and organize texts and as references for an easier reading. We make a diachronic and comparative analysis of the procedures used during the XII, XIII, XIV and XV Centuries.

In the peninsular West, the chosen historical framework makes necessary to include codices belonging to different cultural and palaeographical traditions that shared that space, as manuscripts copied in Visigothic script (in force in northern Spain in the early Twelfth Century and sacralized between the mozarabs of Toledo until the Thirteenth Century), in Caroline, Proto-Gothic, in Gothic and, finally, in Humanistic writing. All these hand writings are subjected to a comparative analysis.

The aspects to study are related to the palaeographical and codicological categories of this book tech-nique, so our intention is

  1. Study the technical evidences left by medieval artisans, which reflect the organization of their work, by observing the gaps left by the copyists, brands and messages destined for the rubricator.
  2. Perform a tour of the various provisions of the headings on the page and the behavior of artisans in front of the detected errors.
  3. Examine the different morphologies (uppercase, lowercase, graphic types) used in write headings, according to palaeographical times and traditions.
  4. Verify the different mechanisms used by spanish artisans to distinguish the chapter headings (pig-ments used, module, underlined, indents, gaps, use of subsidiary elements as paragraphs, etc.).

We use as a basis a wide range of Spanish manuscripts of different textual nature, made in the king-doms of Leon and Castile: chronicles, scientific books, theological, biblical, manuscripts of law, poetry, didactics, liturgical, etc.
We also include some Diplomatic codices. Specifically, we collect a representative selection of cartular-ies to analyze this codicological element of multidisciplinary interest.


Dominique STUTZMANN
Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (CNRS), Paris

La distinction du livre : les scribes et les écritures de colophons

Colophons are not only the consequence of scribal choice, but a specific part in the book, even if at the edge. This paper will analyze the graphic differences between colophons and the copied texts (script, formality, layout, color) and correlate them with internal factors (date, language, text genre) as well as to the co-presence of other script variations (e.g. for titles, rubrics, and incipits; tables of content; mar-gins) and the hierarchy between the script that they imply. Based on the French catalogues of dated manuscripts, this study demonstrates that the changes of script occur frequently (almost every second colophon) and raise the colophon above the normal text, creating a distinction within the book.


Maria THEISEN
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien

God Speaks Czech. Correlation between Text, Layout and Images in Czech Bibles of the 15th Century.

The Czech edition of the Bible gained particular importance with the appearance of the theologian Jan Hus (1369-1415). Hus and his followers understood the Holy Scripture as the Word of God, which every individual believer had to follow (without mediation of the Church). But the use of the vernacular was not alone a religious and social statement: it was always associated with didactic objectives - and these in turn with "illustration" of the subject matter through images. This now meant for scribes of illus-trated Czech Bible editions that they had, together with the illuminators, to develop new approaches to the page layout. Not only do the text lengths differ from Latin to Czech: The tradition of announcing each Bible book with highlighted initials could cause practical problems when inserting scenes: Not every letterform was a suitable frame for figural scenes. Scribes and illuminators have found new and creative solutions, some of them were so successful that they were even taken over by letterpress. Chal-lenges, communication problems and solutions will be demonstrated with selected examples in this presentation.


Benjamin VICTOR
Université de Montréal

Subscriptions and Text-History in Terence

I propose to examine a case where details of presentation have large consequences for text-history, namely the earlier medieval tradition of Terence. Attention will be concentrated on the following manuscripts as being the best representatives of the two principal strains within this tradition.

  • Gamma-class: Vatican City, BAV, Vat. lat. 3868. Early or middle ninth century. Origin disputed.; — Paris, BnF, lat. 7900. Mid-ninth century. Attributed to Corbie on palaeographical grounds; — Paris, BnF, lat. 7899. Late ninth century, Rheims origin, on strong palaeographical ground; — Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. F 2 13. Twelfth century, English.
  • Delta-class: Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 38.24. Early tenth century. Southwest Germany.; — Paris, BnF, lat. 10304. Ca. tenth century. Beauvais.

The gamma-class and the delta-class, it is recognized, must each descend from a distinct late-antique exemplar. A subscription – Calliopius recensui or Calliopius recensuit – is found at the ends of plays in both groups. For that reason scholarship has assumed that the two late-antique fountainheads of tradition are genetically related, both deriving from a single copy corrected by one Calliopius. The assumption has so far passed without challenge, but a close look at the manuscript sources gives much reason to reject it. Presentation of most paratexts-didascalic notices, verse hypotheses, scene-headings, incipits, explicits-is rigourously consistent from one comedy to another within each manuscript. It is also consistent on the whole from one manuscript to another within each class. Matters stand very differently, however, with the subscription, the circumstances of whose occurrence vary from one codex to another and even from one leaf to another within the same codex. Sometimes it appears in a display script, sometimes in the text-script, sometimes in ink, sometimes in red pigment, sometimes on the same line as the end of the text proper, sometimes below, or within the explicit or even the front matter to the following comedy. Most importantly, none of the ninth-century manuscripts shows it everywhere by the first hand, and three of our manuscripts (Vat. lat. 3868, Paris lat. 7900 and ibid. 10304), show it by the first hand nowhere at all. All this strongly suggests that the subscription Calliopius recensui was not in-herited along with the text, but infiltrated the manuscripts by stages, the first hand of Vat. lat. 3868 reflecting the most primitive state of affairs, the Bodleian manuscript (latest among the best witnesses) the most evolved state, with complete consistency not obtained even in this latter. Far from being common patrimony of the gamma-class and delta-classes, the subscription is a latecomer to both, and no stemmatic claim should be made on its basis.


Stefano ZAMPONI
Università di Firenze

I papiri di Dura Europos nella storia della scrittura latina
[Special lecture]

L'oggetto di questo intervento intende sottolineare l'importanza fondamentale dei papiri di Dura per ricostruire la storia della scrittura latina nel momento di passaggio dalla scrittura comune classica alla nuova scrittura comune. In particolare intendo affrontare la pluralità di esiti grafici, che vedono, nell'arco di 50 anni, una accanto all'altra, due scelte grafiche fondamentali. Da una parte abbiamo una scrittura in continuità con la scrittura comune classica, piuttosto rapida, che utilizza le varianti di lettera più corsive, che garantiscono la possibilità di lunghe catene di legature dall'alto ad angolo scrittura che ha un esito alto in una stilizzatissima corsiva di grande modulo – P. Dura 59 – che è il più antico testimone di scelte grafiche che si canonizzano nelle litterae caelestes): sono gli esiti di quella corsiva che Mallon ritiene venga ad esaurirsi con il III secolo. Accanto a questi esiti si registra anche anche la pre-senza di testimonianze in cui convivono soluzioni rapide, corsive, e soluzione posate, un momento di grande creatività ed elaborazione grafica, checostituisce quel serbatoio di forme dal quale, circa 40-50 anni dopo, saranno selezionati in serie coerente gli esiti posati che caratterizzano la nuova scrittura comune (e questo direttamente contro Mallon).