![]() ![]() ![]() In the second half of the workshop, Andrew Honey gave us a thought-provoking overview of binding. The knowledge and awareness of these systems allows us to be able to spot ‘mistakes’ or inconsistencies in quire structures – are there any leaves missing or have any been added? Are there any ‘singletons’ (folded leaves that are missing their second half)? These details can point us towards the decisions made by the scribe, with regards to the placement of extra text or inserted decorative elements, and help us raise questions about how and why a certain MS was put together. JL 867, a collection of seven bookbinding finishing tools, used on bindings commissioned by Thomas and Richard Rawlinson We were introduced to ‘catchwords’ and leaf or bifolium signatures, which were used to number sheets in alphabetical numerical sequence. Following folding, and prior to writing, scribes would fasten the quire temporarily (a process known as quire tacketing) and then number the quires to keep them in order before assembly and binding. Due to the uneven texture of parchment – which, due to its animal origins, has a ‘hair side’ and a ‘flesh side’ – there are two approaches to folding the quires: in continental Europe, parchment was folded so that hair side would face hair side when the MS is open, whereas scribes from the British isles favoured the ‘insular’ method of arrangement, wherein the parchment sides would alternate, with hair side facing flesh side and vice versa. Having learnt about parchment production in the last session, we were now guided through how four full or half-sheets of parchment (and later paper) can be folded together to form a quire. ![]() The provenance of the manuscript from the circles nearest to the emperor himself explains the magnificent design of the book.In our ‘Structures of the manuscript book’ seminar last week, we continued our foray into understanding how manuscripts come together – focusing in this session on the journey from sheet to codex to bound book.Īll of us browse, read, and generally handle books in our daily and academic lives, and a few of us are perhaps aware of the details of how these objects are put together – though the first half of this workshop, led by Matthew Holford, made us confront this intricate process. Bischoff discovered that the writing must be of the hand of the learned Irish monk Dungal, who had been invited to the continent by Charlemagne. The corrector's adjustments are easily recognizable, because he used another script, the so-called Insular script, which originated in England and Ireland. One alteration on the presented page, folio 22r., immediately catches the eye, because the corrector replaced one single line by two new ones, marring the layout of the page in the process. This is what the corrector of this Lucretius manuscript did. In the case of parchment this is not difficult, for the writing is easily scratched out with a knife. Of course it was desirable to save the book's appearance as much as possible. At other times the corrector would use his own judgment. Sometimes this was done by comparing the copied text carefully with the exemplar, the book which served as a model for the copy. As happened so often, this original manuscript was corrected afterwards. The ample spacing does full justice to the excellent Carolingian minuscule, the new script which was developed towards the end of the 8th century. In spite of its large dimensions, the page counts only twenty lines. This manuscript distinguishes itself by the spacious layout of the page. The two manuscripts that have come down to us from that period are now both kept in Leiden, where for the sake of distinction they have been named after their dimensions the codex quadratus (the square manuscript) and the codex oblongus (the rectangular manuscript). Characteristically, the text was copied at least twice in the first half of the 9th century, when all things from Antiquity were collected as fully as possible. It is therefore not surprising that his work was hardly ever read in the Middle Ages. The Roman poet Lucretius (94(?)-55 BC) wrote it to convince his audience that man need not fear the whims of the Gods or punishment in the hereafter, because the universe is governed by mechanical laws. De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) is an unusual poem as to its content. ![]()
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