PALAEOGRAPHY, CODICOLOGY, DIPLOMATICS, AND THE EDITING OF TEXTS: AN ELEMENTARY VOCABULARY

BY

LEONARD E. BOYLE M. MICHLE MULCHAHEY

ASSIBILATION. Pronunciation with a sibilant or hissing sound. As a general rule in common Latin speech, the letter t in ti compounds was assibilated before a vowel, as in pretium, traditio, potentia, but it was unassibilated when ti was followed immediately by a consonant, as in sentire, and especially when ti was preceded by the letter s, as in carestia; the two sounds are present in words such as iustitia, laetitia, tristitia. Roman grammarians (or at least those of classical times) were aware of the difficulty of separating the two sounds, but in the oldest extant manuscripts there is no attempt to distinguish them in writing. And when a distinction was attempted for the first time, it was not in literary documents but rather in non-literary forms such as papyri of the 6th and 7th centuries from Ravenna and diplomas of the Merovingian kings. Under the influence, perhaps, of these cursive and diplomatic forms of writing, the bookhands known as Visigothic and Beneventan introduced a clear orthographic distinction between the sounds of ti: thus in Beneventan manuscripts the unassibilated ti is always a simple form of conjunction of t and i ( ), while the assibilated form regularly appears as . The introduction of ci as a convenient way of distinguishing the assibilated ti from the unassibilated form seems to be due to early Caroline writing: thus ratio became racio, and gratia became gracia. With the spread of Caroline all over Europe, this form of assibilated ti became widely accepted outside of centres that still clung on the whole to Beneventan, Visigothic or Insular hands; hence we find condicio, solucio, as well as iusticia, sentencia and even distinccio, in general use in bookhands from about 900. It is important to remember, however, that the assibilated ti as written in manuscripts of Beneventan and Visigothic origin is always a ti ( ), and that it is incorrect to render it as ci. Possibly a similar case could be made for the transcription of the Caroline ci as ti, since, in fact, it is not ci but rather ti as it is differentiated from the unassibilated ti. In general see E.A. Loew (E.A. Lowe, that is) in Studia Palaeographica (Munich, 1910), pp. 16-26. AUTOGRAPH. A text written in an authors own hand. When an authors hand was so very personal that an exemplar for copying purposes could not be made directly from it, the stationarii (stationers) at Paris and other universities labelled it littera inintelligibilis, and were forced to base their exemplars on an APOGRAPH (littera legibilis = a fair hand copy) of the autograph. BOOKLET. A gathering of folios that travels unbound and independently as a pamphlet. Usually containing a single text, or closely related materials, a booklet might later be bound together with other booklets or newly written gatherings to form what is known as a COMPOSITE MANUSCRIPT, that is, a codex put together from a series of originally unmatched gatherings. As the individual booklets that comprise such a manuscript in all likelihood started life in slightly varying sizes, the finished product is normally trimmed to a uniform size (as a normal manuscript would be); the result in this case, however, can be the loss of pre-existing marginalia. The same can be true of two manuscripts later rebound together into one codex, as sometimes happened, and so trimmed marginal notes are not the unmistakable hallmark of the booklet. A surer clue is a generally dog-eared appearance to a gathering, and, often, a rather dirty and abraded first and last page, which would have received the brunt of wear and tear as the booklet was carried loose-leaf. Also see GATHERING, and compare PECIAE.
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BOUSTROPHEDON, BUSTROPHEDIC. Writing in Greece and early Rome which goes from left to right and then right to left, as the ox ploughs from furrow to furrow (from Gr. strephein: to rotate; bou-strephos: ploughed by oxen): L R
L R L R L R

CALAMUS.

A reed pen (harundo). This was ousted by the quill sometime before 800.

CALENDAR. An accurate summary of the contents of a document or series of documents, including all significant particulars regarding persons, places, dates, and actions indicated in the document. While a transcription renders a text verbatim and presents enough detail of observation that it can stand in place of the manuscript for most purposes, the function of a calendar is to provide the essential elements of a source in more summary fashion. This extracted information is presented by the editor in modern idiom, and in a readable and grammatically-correct form. If properly presented, a calendar allows the researcher to move quickly through a large amount of documentary material. For most purposes, the calendar information may be sufficient, and no recourse to the manuscript will be required; often, however, the calendar serves as an introduction to the source and as a finding aid, assisting the scholar in determining which documents are worth pursuing directly. A published calendar will usually provide a detailed discussion of the sources being calendared, in which are treated diplomatic questions such as the standard forms and formulae employed in the particular type of document under consideration, issues of authentication, historical significance, and the like. A typical example (and typical perhaps in not being without critics yet at the same time indispensable because of the legwork it saves the scholar) is the Calendar of entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Calendar of Papal Letters , edd. W. H. Bliss, C. Johnson, J. A. Twemlow (H. M. Stationery Office, London, 1893-1960). Compare TRANSCRIPTION. CANCELLATION. Deletion by means of criss-cross lines: xxxxxx (from cancelli, meaning a lattice or trellis, referring to the barrier that separated a court from the public; hence chancellor = cancellarius, and chancery = cancellaria). CATCHWORD. A word written under the last line or word of the last folio of a gathering in a manuscript or early printed book, indicating the first word with which the first folio of the next gathering had to commence. This, amongst other things, enabled all the gatherings to be bound in their proper sequence in the manuscript or book. It also provides one means by which the codicologist can detect that a manuscript is incomplete in its present state: a catchword not picked up means one or more gathering is missing. In printing, a series of letters known as signatures usually took (and take) the place of catchwords. See GATHERING. Also compare QUIRE-MARK and SIGNATURE. CHIROGRAPH. Any document that is written by hand. Technically, however, the word is applied to various documents which are formally compiled, engrossed or signed as evidence of a legal transaction. The word is often used for a bond in ones own handwriting. In a further refinement of its definition, chirograph can designate a document produced in duplicate on the same membrane, which was then bisected through the word CHIROGRAPHUM (sometimes CYROGRAPHUM) written in large letters between the two copies; the two halves of the document could later be matched again to verify the authenticity of either copy. In all its senses, however, the word implies an original, authentic document. Compare INDENTURE. CODEX. The terms codex and caudex (tree-trunk, piece of wood) were used by the Romans to designate by metonymy anything made out of several wooden boards, especially the writing tablet. In general the codex is a collection of sheets of any material (papyrus, parchment, paper), the sheets being fastened together at the back or spine, and usually protected by covers. See C.H. Roberts, The Codex, in Proceedings of the British Academy 40 (1954), 169-204. Compare TABULAE.
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CODICOLOGY. The scientific examination of any codex, but particularly of manuscript codices, which considers such things as the physical make-up, parentage, provenance, production environment, and the textual and palaeographical qualities of a codex. Perhaps neatly described as the archaeology of the book, the idea of codicological investigation derives from the German Handschriftenkunde, or manuscript science, which advocated the thorough examination of the individual, physical manuscript codex and its history as providing a broader understanding not only of production techniques, but also of the environment in which texts, images, and handwriting were transmitted. See R.Masai, La palographie grco-latine, ses tches, ses mthodes, in Scriptorium 10 (1956), 281-302; J. Mallon, Larchologie des monuments graphiques, in Revue historique 226 (1961), 297-312. COLOPHON. An inscription or device placed at the end of a manuscript or printed book or individual item within a codex, and containing information such as the works title, the writers or printers name, the place and date of writing or printing. In manuscripts there is often a greeting of some kind from the scribe, generally stylized ( Hoc opus feci totum; pro amore Christi da mihi potum), sometimes quite personal. The term comes from the Gr. kolophon, meaning summit. See Bndictines de Bouvet, Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux des origines au XVIe sicle (Fribourg, Switzerland, 1965- ). On the variants on the personal, chatty colophon known as silent writing or silent conversation see C. Plummer, On the colophons and marginalia of Irish Scribes, in Proceedings of the British Academy 12 (1926) 11-44. CURSUS. A technique of composing Latin prose in accordance with the laws of accentual rhythm, as opposed to metrical rhythm. The word cursus literally means a running or the course or flow of something, and it came in classical times to be used in reference to the graceful flow of words necessary in beautiful discourse. The rules that helped one achieve this graceful flow of words were gradually codified into the technique known to medievals as the cursus. The idea of the cursus was so to deploy the accented syllables of the last two words (or the combinations of words) at the end of a grammatical clausula or at the end of a sentence that the effect was pleasing to the ear. The cursus is found in Ammianus Marcellinus (4th c.), the sermons of Leo the Great (c. 450), the works of Cassiodorus (early 6th c.), and in most of the oldest prayers of the Latin liturgy. It was given a new lease on life towards the end of the 11th century when, it seems, John of Gaeta (later pope Gelasius II) re-introduced it to the papal chancery about 1087. From there it spread to chanceries all over Europe, and became a normal part of schooling, particularly in schools of dictamen, where the composition of letters was taught. Some knowledge of the cursus and its main forms is therefore essential if one is to appreciate the proseand, indeed, some of the poetry of the middle ages. A knowledge of the cursus is especially useful to the editor of medieval texts when punctuating tracts, letters, or documents; and it can be very useful in textual criticism when one has to choose between variants found in different manuscript versions of the same text, to emend or to conjecture about gaps in a text. DELETION. The elimination or expunction of mistaken words or letters, usually by means of: a. Dots, know as EXPUNCTION POINTS, placed below (and sometimes above) any unwarranted letteres, litters, or wordes; b. some other sign such as vacat (this is superfluous), which, in the case of a passage, usually runs from the beginning to the end of the offending vawhatever the subject may be of the section in questioncat section. Care should be taken not to confuse deletion dots, that is, expunction points, with those placed under the first and last letters of a scriptural or other quotation as a sign to the rubricator that he should underline that quotation in red or some other colour, thus, ut dicitur in evangelio: in principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud Deum: quod interprepretatur sic ab omnibus. Compare ERASURE. DIPLOMA (pl. DIPLOMATA). Originally two strips of metal on which was recorded the statutory grant of land to a Roman soldier on the completion of his military service; on occasion the term was used to describe a passport. In the 17th century, antiquarians began, for no very clear reason, to apply the term to charters: whence the field of DIPLOMATICS, or the study of the content and forms of charters, instrumenta, and other documentary evidence, took its name. The noun form Diplomatics was first used by Tassin and Toustain in their Nouveau trait de
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diplomatique, 6 vv. (Paris, 1750-1765); the adjectival form, however, was already used by Dom Jean Mabillon in his De re diplomatica libri sex (Paris, 1681). Mabillon, indeed, was the first to distinguish documentary writing (scriptura forensis or diplomatica) from literary (litteratoria) or book-hand writing: Distinguendam in unoquoque saeculo scripturam forensem seu diplomaticam litteratoris, quae hominibus litteratis convenit; diversa etiam ab usuali, quae non ita elaborata est atque illa, quae in mss. Codicibus reperiri solet (De re diplomatica, ed. 1709, p. 359). See L. E. Boyle, Diplomatics, in James M. Powell, ed., Medieval Studies. An Introduction, 2nd edn (Syracuse University Press, 1992). Compare INSTRUMENTUM. DISPLAY SCRIPT. Special characters used for titles, incipits, colophons, lemmata , etc., for the purpose of setting them off from the rest of the text. In manuscripts of Vergil, for example, the opening letter of each line is often in a script (generally Rustic Capital) that is distinct from the rest of the opening word and the text in general. The ranking given to the various display scripts from scriptorium to scriptorium is termed the HIERARCHY OF SCRIPTS. Generally Rustic Capital headed the list, but Uncial was preferred in some scriptoria. DITTOGRAPHY. Writing twice what should have been written once: intendendendo for intendendo; in primo dicendum dicendum quod for in primo dicendum quod. DORSE. The back or reverse, as opposed to the face or obverse of a document (from dorsum, the back); originally dorse referred most particularly to the outside surface of a roll, whence it came to be applied to the exposed reverse of any single-leaf document, especially once folded. Thus an ENDORSEMENT is writing found on the dorse of a document or roll. Compare OPISTHOGRAPH. EPIGRAPHY. The study of inscriptions or EPIGRAPHS (from Gr. epigraphein: to write on), and, more specifically, the deciphering of ancient inscriptions. ERASURE. The physical removal of writing from parchment with some sharp instrument.

EXEMPLAR. An authenticated copy of an autograph or apograph from which to make copies. See AUTOGRAPH, above, which includes APOGRAPH. EXPUNCTION. A particular form of deletion in which the deletion is indicated by means of EXPUNCTION POINTS, that is, dots placed below or sometimes above the unwanted letters or words. See DELETION. FOLIUM, FOLIO. A single leaf of parchment or paper (from folium: leaf), which has a front or recto side (also known as the obverse), and a back or verso side (also known as the reverse); hence one folio comprises what in normal parlance is two pages. Numbering of the initial leaves of a manuscript would thus be as follows: f.1 r, f.1v, f.2r, f.2v, f.3r, f.3v, f.4r, f.4v. A BIFOLIUM is the double-sized sheet that is folded to give two folia; normally, stacks of four or five bifolia form a gathering. See GATHERING, below. GATHERING. A number of sheets folded as a stack and sewn together to form a codex. In parchment manuscripts care was taken when arranging a gathering before writing to make sure that at whatever point the finished codex might be opened there should not be any contrast between the flesh (white, smooth) side and the hair (darker, stippled) side of the parchment. The rule was not too difficult to observe because, normally, the flesh side was preferred for the opening outside folio of each gathering, which meant that its final outside folio would also be flesh side, ready to match the next gatherings opening flesh-side folio. The Insular preference was for gatherings in quinones, that is, of five doubled sheets or bifolia giving ten folia or twenty pages once folded; but the general usage outside of Insular centres was to gather the sheets in quaterniones (or quires), that is, in four doubled sheets or bifolia yielding eight leaves or sixteen pages. In printing the analogous term for a gathering is a signature, namely, a section of a book to which a signature mark or number or letter has been given for purposes of binding the printed gatherings together in proper sequence. See QUIRE and SIGNATURE.
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GLOSSES. Notes on particular words or phrases in a passage, whether in the margins of the text as MARGINAL GLOSSES or between the lines as INTERLINEAR GLOSSES. An interlinear gloss relies solely on its location, usually directly above the word or phrase upon which it comments, to make the reader see the relationship between text and gloss. This did sometimes lead later copyists erroneously to incorporate the glosses into the main body of the text as they copied it, supposing them to be corrections rather than comments. Such potential for confusion, along with the limitations of space, probably explain why marginal glosses generally came to be preferred over interlinear glossation. Mistakes of this sort can, however, be of service to the editor of a text, who may recognize a glossed exemplar behind such insertions. A marginal gloss is shown to correspond to a particular word or phrase in the text by being assigned a letter, number or sign which then also occurs above or beside the word or passage which is being glossed. If several words or phrases in different lines on the same page are being glossed marginally, a sequence of letters of the alphabet or a variety of signs will be used in both text and gloss; sometimes, to avoid confusion, the glossed word itself or an abbreviated version of the passage is written out and then underlined in the margin with the gloss or note. When a series of glosses on a text expanded to such a size that they no longer fit on the pages of the text being glossed the glosses were often gathered together to constitute a separate volume; but such a comprehensive gloss travelling as a separate text is properly speaking no longer a glosswhich implies a certain physical proximity on the pageand is better described as a COMMENTARY. A word or phrase being glossed (and this whether the gloss occurs interlinearly, marginally, or as a stand-alone commentary) is known as a LEMMA (pl. LEMMATA), (from Gr. lambanein: to take), and should always be underlined, or otherwise set off from the commentary, when being transcribed or printed. In manuscripts the lemmata usually are set off by the use of a display script (e.g., Rustic, from 800-1200; Uncial, 800-1200; etc.) or by underlining (most common in the post1200 period), thus: INFIXUS SUM IN LIMO PROFUNDI ET NON EST SUBSTANTIA. Et est sensus: Infixus sum: corpore; in limo profundi: homo enim limus est et de limo terre.; Et non est substantia: substantia dicuntur divitie quibus sustentatur homo. HAPLOGRAPHY. Writing out once what should be written twice, as intendo for intendendo.

HEURISTICS. Tracing the history, the origin and provenance, of a particular manuscript, including the tradition of the text or texts it carries. The term comes from the Gr. verb euriskein, meaning to discover. HISTORIATED INITIAL (or CAPITAL). An initial letter containing a scene or figure germane to the text of which it is part. Such an initial may carry an author portrait or it may depict an historia (narrative) connected to the text, whence its name. This is in contrast to a DECORATED INITIAL (or CAPITAL), a term which refers to any embellished letter that may or may not contain figures, and whose decoration does not necessarily bear any clear relationship to the text. An historiated initial, thus, is a type of decorated initial, but not all decorated initials are historiated. HOMOEOTELEUTON. Originally a literary device (Gr. omoioteleuta: words of same ending; from omoios and teleuta) used by the followers of Isocrates (see Cicero, Orator 38; and esp. Aulus Gellius, Noctae Atticae XVIII.8, ed. J.C. Rolfe, Loeb Classics, III, p. 324, London, 1927). It is now used in palaeographical, editorial and other circles to describe A textual omission resulting from the presence in the original of two or more syllables, words, or phrases which end in the same way and which lure a copyist into treating the second as if it were the first, or the first as if it were the second occurrence of the duplicated ending. (Note that the word is to be pronounced hom-ee-o-teleuton; the adjectival form is homoeoteleutic). A homoeoteleutic copy of this definition would run as follows:
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A textual omission resulting from the presence in the original of two or more syllables, words, or phrases which end in the same way and which lure a copyist into treating the second occurrence of the duplicated ending. IDEOGRAPH. An individual symbol representing an abstraction or idea or action through a pictograph, but without expressing the name of it either phonetically (as in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs) or orthographically (as in our own writing). An overworked modern example is the use of a stylized heart to mean love. The writing of the ancient Hittites, or of the indigenous inhabitants of North and Central America, Africa, Polynesia, and Australia, is ideographic, as is Chinese writing. Compare PICTOGRAPH. ILLUMINATION. The decoration of a manuscript or printed book with gold or silver, the result being a lighted ornamentation of borders or letters, or of illustrations or miniatures. The practice goes back to the 6 th century B.C., but beautifying as such begins with the Funeral Rolls of Egypt about 2000 B.C. The oldest illuminated Latin manuscripts are the Vatican Vergil (CLA I.11; c. 300-350 A.D.) with 50 illustrations, and the Roman Vergil (CLA I.19; c. 450 A.D.) with some 19 miniatures. The earliest extant Christian example of an illuminated manuscript is the Quedlinburg fragment of the Itala (or Old Latin) version of the Bible, written around 400 (CLA VIII.1069). In general see David Diringer, The Illuminated Book, its history and production (London, 1958); and more recently, the works of Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts 2nd edn (London, 1994) and The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques (London, 2001). Compare ILLUSTRATION and also MINIATURE. ILLUSTRATION. Any decorative embellishment in a manuscript, from the Latin illustrare (to adorn or embellish). An illustration can be a figural depiction of something related in the text, as the modern reader of an illustrated book has come to expect; but ornamental letters and decorative borders and the like, technically, are also forms of illustration. Thus a connection between an illustration and the contents of the manuscript or text in which it occurs is not implied by its definition. In fact, if the illustration is in the form of a picture and has some connection to the text it accompanies, then it is, strictly speaking, not an illustration, but a miniature. Likewise, the term implies nothing about the presence of lighting, that is, gold or silver detail: an illustration per se is un-lighted; the addition of gold or silver makes it an illuminated illustration. Compare ILLUMINATION and also MINIATURE. INCAUSTUM. A name given to a purplish-black and very durable ink composed of iron-salt and gallic (tannic) acid; the name comes from the ability of the ink to burn into the parchment (from Gr. enkaustikos: corrosive). It was the favourite of Irish and Anglo-Saxon scriptoria; Continental practice, however, preferred an ink made of carbon (lampblack) and water, since this produced an immediate and striking black writing. Unfortunately, this latter type of ink is inclined with age to flake or turn brown, and does not conserve writing with the clarity and tenacity of proper incaustum; hence in many of the manuscripts described by Lowe in the CLA, the carbon ink is, as he puts it, brown or chestnut or olive, or it is scaling or flaking or fading. Incaustum, with its metallic qualities, leaves traces in parchment even when it has been erased and is invisible to the naked eye; it will react under infrared or ultra-violet light, often making legible that which is just partly visible in the manuscripts present state, or which the palaeographer only suspects may be present because of an abraded surface. Carbon-ink, however, does not react readily to infra-red or ultra-violet treatment. This differing behaviour means one must usually rely on the naked eye when deciphering faded carbon-ink manuscripts, but it can help one to distinguish quickly between incaustum and other inks. INCIPIT. The actual words which introduce ( Hic incipit.) a text, or those with which the text itself begins. EXPLICIT, on the other hand, means the words or phrase which come at the end of a text ( Explicit tractatus.), or the last words of the text itself. Since incipits and explicits are very often the only guides we have to the identity of a treatise, and are often used by medieval and modern bibliographers alike when listing anonymous treatises (e.g.,
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in medieval catalogues of libraries, or in T. Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannica-Hibernica (London, 1748), it is always wiser to note, when setting out on a search for extant or lost manuscripts of a given work: a. the incipit proper, if any and b. the incipit of the prologue, and, most important of all, c. the incipit of the first chapter of the text (one or two phrases), and d. the explicit (last sentence at least) of the text, and e. the explicit proper, if any. With proper attention to these explicits and incipits it may be possible to identify a treatise which in a particular manuscript appears without a, or without a and b, or, indeed, as often happens, shorn of a, b, c, and e. Most modern catalogues of manuscripts holdings provide a list of the incipits of all treatises occurring in the collection that is being catalogued. A good introduction to this type of research will be found in A. Pelzer, Rpertoires dIncipit pour la littrature latine, philosophique et thologique du Moyen Age, 2nd ed., Rome (Sussidi Eruditi 2) 1951. Wellknown collections of incipits are A.G. Little, Initia operum latinorum quae saeculis XIII, XIV, XV, attribuuntur , (Manchester 1904, reprinted 1958); L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Medieval Scientific Writings in Latin, 2nd ed., (Cambridge, Mass., 1963); Morton W. Bloomfield, B.-G. Guyot, D.R. Howard, and T.B. Kabealo, Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices 1100-1500, including a Section of Incipits on the Pater Noster (Medieval Academy of America, 88; Cambridge, Mass., 1979), which replaces Bloomfields earlier A Preliminary List of Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices, in Traditio 11 (1955) 259-379. INDENTURE. A method of providing matching copies of a single document employed in the later middle ages, and particularly in England. It takes its name from the Latin dentata (toothed); hence, an indentura is a document produced with at least one toothed or serrated edge. The method involved copying the document in duplicate on the same membrane and then bisecting the membrane horizontally in a zig-zag or wavy fashion between the two copies, so that each half looked toothed or indented. The indented halves could later be realigned to demonstrate the authenticity of either copy. The technique could also be used to produce three copies by writing the document once at the foot of the membrane, and twice more above it, at 90 o to the lower copy and head to head. An indenture in the shape of an inverted T could then be created by cutting between the two vertical copies and above the lower one. Compare CHIROGRAPH. INHABITED BORDER. A decorative border which contains figures. The border is said to be zomorphic if it is actually composed of animal forms, or anthropomorphic if it is composed of human forms. Similarly an INHABITED INITIAL is a letter that contains figures, and can be zomorphic or anthropomorphic if constructed from animal or human forms. INSTRUMENTUM. Closely construed, any writing which has a dispositive effect, that is, through which something is done or effected; understood in this way, an instrumentum is a juridical document, an act. Instrumenta, and not diplomata, were the true subject of J. Mabillons De re diplomaticaindeed, the author did not even use the term diplomata in describing the scope of his work: Novum antiquariae artis genus aggredior, quo de veterum instrumentorum ratione, formulis et auctoritate agitur. Similarly, the full title of the De re diplomatica is Six books on the Res diplomatica in which is explained and illustrated whatever pertains to the antiquity, matter, handwriting and style of old instruments; to seals, monograms, subscriptions, and dating; and to antiquarian, legal, and historical disciplines. A. Dumas, in the 1930s, broadened the definition of instrumentum to move beyond Mabillons dispositive, juridical documents, and preferred to include anything that had a juridical connection with the acts recorded in such documents, either before or afterwards; by this he meant things such as verbal processes, reports, inventories, burial registers and the like, which might provide fuller context for juridical acts themselves. These other instrumenta might well be called quasi-juridical. While the juridical definition of the instrumentum is to be maintained, it is important to recognize that, today, instrumenta are by no means the sole subject of the discipline known as diplomatics. L. E. Boyle, especially, has argued that to restrict diplomatics in this way is to bypass the fact that many, many documentary sources are far from juridical in character and yet have all the antiquarian stuff of history. Non-juridical material, such as an episcopal register or a collection of letters, is
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to be subjected to the same critical study as any collection of instrumenta. Thus, while the study of instrumenta remains an important part of diplomatics, diplomatic investigation is now understood to mean the study of all types of documentary evidence, all non-literary survivals. Compare DIPLOMA (including DIPLOMATICS), above. LEMMA (pl. LEMMATA). From the Greek lambanein (to take), the term lemma literally means a subject or theme taken up for consideration or explanation. The medieval usage of the word denoted a specific word or phrase being commented upon in a text. Lemmata may be marked in situ in the text or may be copied into the gloss on the text (whether that gloss is carried in the margins of the text itself or stands alone) as indicators to the reader of the portions of the text to which particular comments relate. In text or gloss, lemmata are usually underlined or otherwise made prominent for easier visual reference. Because many medieval commentaries gloss an entire text from start to finish, word by word and line by line, it has in some instances been possible to reconstruct an otherwise lost text by stitching the lemmata in a stand-alone commentary back together to form the original text. Such was true of Book V of Ciceros De republica, which contains the so-called Dream of Scipio (the Somnium Scipionis): it was long known only through Macrobius famous commentary upon it. Similarly, scholars can often discern which version of a text, and perhaps which particular manuscript, a medieval author had before him when writing a commentary simply by noting any tell-tale variants in a commentarys lemmata. Most medieval sermons were built around a single lemma, normally a phrase taken from one of the scriptural readings for the days mass; the sermon lemma is more properly known, however, as a THEMA (pl. THEMATA), this being perhaps the closest translation of the Greek lemma into Latin. See GLOSSES. LETTER. The following terms are used to describe a letter or its ornamentation: Ascender: those strokes in a letter which go above the headline of the other letters, and above a letters own main body: b, d, f, h, l, t are notable for their ascenders. Baseline: the writing line. Biting: refers to the coalescence, through lateral compression, of two adjacent contrary curved strokes, as when b is closely followed by o. Gothic script is characterised by its consistent biting or fusion of contrary curves. See LIGATURE. Body: the essential portion of a letter, which does not include an ascender or descender: the bow of b or p, the whole of e. Bow (or Lobe or Oval): the closed curve of letters such as a, b, d, g, o, p, q. Broken stroke: a stroke made in more than one movement, the direction of the pen being changed suddenly without its being lifted from the page. Compare Stroke, below. Cross-stroke: a horizontal stroke in the centre of a letter, e.g. the centre stroke in E. Compare Head-stroke, below. Descender: those strokes in a letter which sink below the baseline of the other letters, and below a letters own main body: g, p, q are notable for their descenders. Ductus: the order of the strokes that go to the making of a letter, including the direction of each movement of the instrument with which the strokes are made. Form: the exterior aspect or appearance of an individual letter. Garniture (or Otiose stroke): any stroke, loop or flourish which is not essential at the period of writing to the formation of a letter, and which does not indicate and abbreviation, e.g., barbs, beards, finials, hooks, spurs. Hast (or Shaft): any part of a letter perpendicular to the writing line, e.g., in h, b, l, r, t. Headline: the line marking the height of the letters in a script. Headstroke: the top horizontal stroke of a letter, e.g. the top stroke in E. Minim: a single down-stroke of the pen, and in particular the short down-stroke in the letters i, m, n, u; the word minim is itself an excellent example of concurring minims. Serif: a short finishing stroke at the extremities of main strokes, particularly of ascenders and descenders.
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Shoulder: the outside of the top, curve or angle of the body of a letter, e.g., of the letter m (which has two shoulders). Stroke: a single trace made by the pen on the page, made in a single movement. Compare Broken stroke, above. Versals: ornamented capital letters written marginally or overflowing into the margins from the text; they mark the beginning of verses, paragraphs, chapters, and, from time to time, an important passage. Well (or Trough): the inside of the shoulder in certain letters, for example c, d, g, u and v. Apex: a vowel stress, especially of broad vowels, e.g., in Oratio Claudii of about 50 A.D. (Steffens 4): petitri (line 1), impontur (line 5), rerum (line 20). Also see the passage from Mabillon quoted above under DIPLOMA: ....scripturam forensem seu diplomaticam litteratori.... Tall-I: vowel lengthening, especially in certain cases, e.g., in an Oxyrhynchos census of 45-54 A.D. (Mallon, Palographie romaine, Madrid, 1952): fIlios (line 3), cIvitate (line 3), fInes (line 8), metropolI (line 10). Aspect: the general appearance of a hand, the cumulative effect of its letter forms, e.g. its tendency towards a round or square appearance, a slant to left or right, etc. Compare Form, above. Bilinear script: a script whose letters are confined between two lines, the head- and baselines. A MAJUSCULE SCRIPT. Quattrolinear script: a script which, by the incorporation of ascenders and descenders, occupies four lines A minuscule script. Cursive hand: a hand characterized by a rapid ductus, with fewer pen lifts and devices to increase speed, as linking of letters and perhaps loops. Set hand: a hand displaying a more formal ductus, with frequent pen-lifts. LIGATURE. The joining of two letters together so that there is a stroke or more in common to both letters. Although letters which are in any way connected together are often spoken of as in ligature, the term involves more than the simple joining or connection which is present in ( ti), or in a monogrammatic joining such as (prop). The most striking example of ligature proper is the Gothic phenomenon known, rather clumsily, as the fusion of opposite or contrary curves: two curves occurring back to back are written as one, oc becoming . , pe becoming . This phenomenon first appears about 1210-1230, and it has been calculated that more than 100 possible combinations of contrary curves were in use in the 13th and 14th centuries. See H. Mayer Die Buchstabenverbindungen in der sogenannten gothischen Schrift, in Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Gttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, n. F.I,6, 1897, 1-124. LITTERAE CAELESTES. The ancient Roman cursive as employed exclusively by the Imperial Chancery after an imperial mandate of 367: Serenitas nostra prospexit inde caelestium litterarum coepisse imitationem.... Quam ob rem istius sanctionis auctoritate praecipimus ut posthac magistra falsorum consuetudo tollatur et communibus litteris universa mandentur, quae vel de provincia fuerint scribenda vel a judice, ut nemo stil huius exemplum aut privatim sumat aut publice (Ad Legem Corneliam de Falso, in Codex Theodosianus, ed. Th. Mommsen, Berlin, 1905, p. 468). LITTERAE COMMUNES. The common Roman cursive of any period, whether the early (classic) cursive or the late (new) version which appeared between 200 and 300 A.D. When these new litterae communes supplanted the ancient or classic cursive, the latter continued in use in the Imperial Chancery, developing into the highly stylized and elongated type of letters which are the LITTERAE CAELESTES described above.
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LITTERAE FLORISSAE.

Pen-flourished letters or initials. Enlarged letters within the text.

LITTERAE NOTABILIORES.

MARGINALIA. Notes of any kind written on the margins of a text, whether bearing on the text or not. Marginal glosses are a type of marginalia, but not all marginalia gloss the text they accompany; they may simply be doodles or diaristic notes or other unrelated jottings. Compare GLOSSES. MEMBRANA. Parchment (i.e., the material as such). MEMBRANAE, the plural, however, means a parchment notebook. See the advice of Quintilian (Inst. Or., 3, 31) on the best method of taking notes: Scribi optime ceris, in quibus facillima est ratio delendi, nisi forte visus infirmi or membranarum potius usum exigit...; relinquendae autem in utrolibet genere vacuae tabellaea clear reference to parchment notebooks about 90 A.D. See also Martial, Poemata, II, 1: Qui tecum cupis esse meos ubicunque libellos Et comites longae quaeris habere via, Hos eme quos artat brevibus membrana tabellis: Scrinia da magnis, me manus una capit. Ne tamen ignores ubi sim venalis, et erres Urbe vagus tota, me duce certus eris. Libertum docti Lucensis quaere Secundum Limina post Pacis Palladiumque Forum. MINIATURE. A picture, lighted or unlighted, in a manuscript which depicts a scene or person connected with the contents. Thus an author portrait or a depiction of an episode recounted in the text are equally examples of miniatures. For the Romans a miniator was one who applied minium (red lead mixed with water and egg-white) to mark the initial letters, titles or rubrics of books; and in the middle ages miniare continued to mean to pick out in red or to rubricate (see RUBRIC, below). It is modern usage (beginning in the mid-17 th century) that has given us the broader definition of miniation as the illumination of medieval manuscripts, and of the miniator as a medieval illuminator or miniaturist. This usage is problematic on several counts, but it should be noted in particular that a miniature as such is not an illumination, although there are illuminated miniatures which carry gold or silver. Nor are miniatures to be equated with illustrations, for even a figural illustration has no necessary connection to the text, while, on the contrary, this is the defining characteristic of a miniature: a hare scurrying across the lower margin of a page of Aristotles Poetics is an illustration; the same scene, placed next to the passage in the Life of St Francis which tells of the rabbit who in fear of the hunters fled to the saint and nestled in his habit, is a miniature. Compare ILLUMINATION and ILLUSTRATION. NOTAE IURIS. Basically, Tironian notes as used in law books, with a special system of legal contractions, truncations, sigla, and so forth. In 438 the Roman Senate forbade the use of the notae in authenticated copies of the Codex Theodosianus: Huic codici, qui faciendus est a constitutionariis, notae iuris non adscribantur (Gesta Senatus 5, in Codicis Theodosiani Libri XVI, ed. Th. Mommsen and J. Meyer, Berlin, 1905, I, p. 3, line 3). This, of course, does not at all mean, as some authors keep repeating, that the notae iuris were outlawed simpliciter in 438, although it may represent a certain recognition that these abbreviations were becoming difficult for some to decipher at this date. See in general E.Chatelain, Introduction la lecture des notes tironiennes (Paris, 1900). And also see TIRONIAN NOTES, below. OMISSION SIGNS. The usual omission sign is a caret (^) or similar mark ( ), but in early continental manuscripts one finds hd and hs, meaning hic deorsum, (this below) and hic sursum (this above), an idea adapted from the Greek signs of omission, kato (= downward) and ano (= upward). These signs have a locative significance, and depend upon whether the omitted part is supplied in the upper or the lower margin (for some
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examples see CLA I.36, 117 [Latin], I.11, 19 [Greek]). Thus an omission from a line of Martial as quoted above could be repaired in two ways, using these signs: hd me duce 1. Ne tamen ignores ubi sim venalis, et erres Urbe vagus tota hs certus eris. 2. Ne tamen ignores ubi sim venalis, et erres Urbe vagus tota hd certus eris. hs me duce N.B.: The signs do not mean hic supple (here supply ) and hic deest (here is wanting). They answer each other. OPISTHOGRAPH. Writing found on the dorse, as opposed to the face, of a roll.

ORIGIN. The original home or place of production of a manuscript, not to be confused with its PROVENANCE, which is the first known place where a manuscript was preserved (or, loosely, any known place, or the last known place). Thus the origin of the Codex Amiatinus (Steffens 21; CLA 3.299), now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, is Wearmouth-Jarrow in northern England, where it was produced, but its provenance is the monastery of S. Salvatore on Monte Amiata near Siena, whence it ultimately reached the Biblioteca Laurenziana. In CLA IV.xiixiv, E. A. Lowe outlines an important series of Assumptions with respect to the origin of manuscripts, e.g.: 1. If a manuscript has been preserved for generations in an ancient centre, and if local tradition connects it with that centre, then the presumption is that it originated in that centre (provided, of course, that there is no palaeographical evidence to the contrary). 2. If internal or external evidence shows that a manuscript was collated, corrected or annotated in a certain region or at a specific centre soon after it was written (a conclusion reached after a study of script, ductus, ink, etc.), then it is to be assumed that the manuscript actually was written in that centre.

PAGE LAYOUT (or MISE-EN-PAGE). The overall organization of the page, as regards placement and dimensions of the writing-frame, number and width of columns of writing, number of ruled lines per column, placement of any illustration or miniatures, whether the page was originally organised for a gloss as opposed to receiving one subsequently, etc. PALAEOGRAPHY. The study of writing as a graphic phenomenon, or the study of the various forms of handwriting in which texts were written and of the forms of writing subsequently derived from them. It should be distinguished from codicology, the scientific study of the codex (see CODICOLOGY, above, and also see Masai), for which palaeography is a necessary tool.The first scholarly treatise on Latin palaeography is to be found in the last four chapters of the De re diplomatica libri sex (Paris, 1681) of Dom Jean Mabillon. A contemporary of the first naturalists, Mabillon attempted in their wake to classify all the scripts known to him on the basis of their distinctive characteristics, distinguishing three types of Roman script (uncial or capital, minuta or minuscule, and minuta forensis or documentary) and four types of national hands (Gothic, Lombard, Frankish and Anglo-Saxon). This classification was rejected by Scipione Maffei in his Istoria diplomatica (Mantua, 1727), who was the first to advance the thesis of the original unity of Latin writing. Mabillons work, however, was continued in the Nouveau trait de diplomatique (Paris 1750-1765) of the Benedictines R. P. Tassin and C. F. Toustain, of the Congregation of S. Maur (hence Maurists), but the Trait has a serious weakness in as much as it bases its classification of hands on external characteristics of handwriting, particularly on the forma (look, measurements, etc.) of the letters. It was only in the second half of the 19th century that a more scientific approach to hands begins to be aired, particularly in the writings of W. Wattenbach and L. Delisle, who initiated the study of the ductus in preference to that of the forma, and then attempted to establish a true genealogy of writing based on historical development.The most
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influential names in the present century have been Ludwig Traube (1905) and Jean Mallon.The latters Palographie romaine (Madrid, 1952) is a great landmark. The best known manuals are those of E. Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford, 1912); G. Battelli, Lezioni di paleografia, 4th edn (Vatican City, 1999); Bernhard Bischoff, Palographie des rmischen Altertums und des abendluaundischen Mittelalters (Berlin, 1956; now translated and reprinted as Latin Palaeography. Antiquity and the Middle Ages , trans. D. Crinin and D. Ganz (Cambridge University Press, 1990)). Useful sets of facsimiles are in Franz Steffens, Lateinische Palographie, 3vv (Trier, 1909; repr. Berlin, 1929, and again in 1968); B. Katterbach, A. Pelzer, C. Silva-Tarouca, G. Batelli, Exempla Scriptuarum, 3 vv. (Vatican City, 1929-1933); J. Kirchner, Scriptura latina libreria (Munich, 1955) and Scriptura Gothica Libreria (1967). The finest general collections of facsimiles are to be found in E. A. Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores (CLA), 12 vv. (Oxford 1934-1970), E. Chatelain, Palographie des classiques latins, 2 vv. (Paris 1884-1890), and in the volumes publishes by the Palaeographical Society (Facsimiles of Manuscripts and Inscriptions, First Series, London 1873-1883, Second Series, 1884-1894) and its successor the New Palaeographical Society ( Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts, First Series, London 1903-1912, Second Series, 1913-1930). PALIMPSEST. Parchment or other writing material from which the original writing has been erased. If the original writing has been erased to make way for a second, superimposed writing, then the palimpsest is, properly speaking, a CODEX RESCRIPTUS, literally, a re-written book. In a palimpsest of this second type the original writing is called the primary script, while that over the primary is known as the upper script. The word comes from the Greek palimpsestos, meaning scraped or rubbed again. The most famous CODICES RESCRIPTI are Ciceros De republica under Augustine on the Psalms (CLA I .34, 35) and the Institutiones of Gaius under Jeromes Epistolae (CLA IV.487, 488). See E. A. Lowe, Codices Rescripti. A list of the oldest Latin palimpsests, with stray observations on their origin, in Mlanges E. Tisserant, V (Vatican City, 1964), pp. 67-113, now reprinted in E. A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers, 1907-1965, ed. L. Bieler (Oxford, 1962), pp. 480-519 (and pls. 114-119). PAPER. A writing surface, generally of compressed pulp. Discovered, it is said, by the eunuch Tsai in China about 104 A.D., it was introduced into Europe by Moors in the 11 th century. The first paper mills were in Spain (Jativi and Toledo); in other places there were mills later on at Valenciennes (1189), Fabriano (by 1270), Ravensburg (by 1290). In the late 14 th century, when paper began to replace parchment as the normal writing surface, the greatest mills were at Fabriano, Padua and Treviso in Italy, and in Champagne. The first English mill was not until 1490 (Hereford). PAPYRUS. A writing surface made from the pith of the water plant or giant reed (Gr. papyrhos). Thin strips of stalk were first placed side by side, and a second layer was then added at right angles to the first; the crossed stalks were then soaked, pressed, dried and polished. The locus classicus on the manufacture of papyrus is Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, XIII, xxi, 67-xxvii, 89, who also has a celebrated passage on the invention of parchment at Pergamum: Prius tamen quam digrediamur ab Aegypto et papiri natura dicetur cum chartae usu maxime humanitas vitae constet certe memoria.... Mox aemulatione circa bibliothecas regum Ptolomei et Eumenis, supprimente chartas Ptolomeo, idem Varro membranas Pergami tradit repertas; postea promiscue patuit usus rei qua constat immortalitas hominum. (XIII, xxi, 70) Papyrus was in use in Greece and Rome as early as the 4 th century B.C., but by 400 A.D. it had been displaced by parchment for the copying of literary texts (see CODEX, and reference to Roberts there). Chanceries and private persons continued to use it for some centuries afterwards; the Papal Chancery dropped it in favour of parchment only about 1070, which coincided with the native papyrus being wiped out in Egypt following a severe draught. PARCHMENT. Any writing surface prepared from the skins of animals, more usually from the skins of sheep or goats. VELLUM is veal parchment prepared from the skins of calves (or kids or lambs); the most expensive kind
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was ABORTIVE or UTERINE VELLUM made, it is said, from the skins of still-born or unborn calves, kids and lambs. Insular manuscripts are by and large of vellum; continental manuscripts are normally of parchment proper. PECIAE (sing. PECIA). Numbered sections or pieces of manuscripts into which university exemplars were divided in order to ensure control (and the accuracy) of the copying of texts. By the middle of the 13 th century the Universities of Paris and Bologna were taking steps to regulate the book trade. The system they hit upon was basically very simple: the stationers (who performed the functions of both publishers and booksellers) were obliged to hold copies of books (exemplars) in unbound quires or peciae normally of two bifolia, and then hire them out piece by piece to a scribe to copy (that is, a scribe would only get the second piece when he returned the first and so on). The stationer was required to display in his shop a list of exemplaria that he held, the number of peciae which each exemplar contained, and the official price for hiring out the peciae. A commission of masters (Peciarii) was appointed by the university to supervise the work of the stationers and to check the correctness of their exemplars. The scribes were in the habit of noting in the margins of the copies that they made the point at which they changed from one pecia to another, so that whoever had commissioned the book could easily confirm that the copy contained the official number of the peciae into which the exemplar had been divided. A change of ink or in the size and alignment of letters can also be a sign of a hiatus in writing between one piece and the next. Thus it can often be easy to identify a book copied under this system. The original peciae themselves are recognizable by their dog-eared and worn look, even when bound together, but are much rarer to find. See the classic work of J. Destrez, La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe sicle (Paris, 1935), and more recently, Mary A. and Richard H. Rouse, The Book Trade at the University of Paris, ca. 1250-ca.1350, in La production du livre universitaire au moyen ge . Exemplar et pecia, Actes du symposium tenu au Collegio San Bonaventura de Grottaferrata en mai 1983, ed. L. J. Bataillon, B. G. Guyot, and R. H. Rouse, Paris 1988, pp. 41-114; repr. now in Mary A. and Richard H. Rouse, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, Notre Dame, IN 1991, pp. 191-219.The pecia probably takes its name not from its being a piece of a text or manuscript, but from the fact that it represents the amount of usuable parchment, again, usually two bifolia, that on average could be obtained from a single skin or piece of uncut parchment. PICTOGRAPH. A pictorial sign which either represents a concrete thing directly or portrays an abstract notion in more symbolic fashion.The representation of ideas as opposed to things is, more properly, the function of ideographs; hence an ideograph is a type of pictograph but not all pictographs are ideographic. See IDEOGRAPH, above. PRICKING. Guide-points for ruling pages made by a pointed instrument at equal vertical intervals on the outer edges of folios. Methods of pricking varied between scriptoria in England and Ireland (and foreign Insular centres) and those of continental monasteries. It was the custom of continental scriptoria to rule each bifolium before the folia were put together into gatherings; hence only the outer margins of each bifolium were pricked for ruling. In Insular centres, however, folia were pricked for ruling after the folia had already been gathered together and sewn, probably as a way to ensure alignment of ruling across each opening; hence Insular scribes had to make twice as many prickings as their continental fellows before ruling began. In an Insular mansucript, then, the pricking-points normally are visible on both inner and outer margins of each page, while in a continental manuscript the only points are on the outer margins.The size and shape of pricking instruments also varied from region to region and scriptorium to scriptorium, and thus the aspect of the prick-marks themselves can provide information about a manuscripts place of origin. See L.W. Jones, Pricking Manuscripts. The instruments and their significance, in Speculum 21 (1946) 389-403. And see RULING, below. PROBATIO PENNAE. A phrase, a name, a jingle, or any other form of doodling that results when a scribe tests a new or a recalcitrant quill, stylus or calamus. The Latin phrase translates literally as a testing or proving of the quill, but, palaeographically, denotes the writing that results from this testing, not the action itself. Probationes pennae can occasionally be of some value in heuristic investigation, as scribes have a natural propensity for using their own names or that of the place where they were working as suitable test phrases; also vernacular notes or
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quotations sometimes appear as probationes in otherwise Latin manuscripts, and these, too, can point to a region of origin. PUNCTUATION. In our oldest Latin manuscripts (4 th-6th century) the practice, broadly speaking, is to mark large sense-pauses or ends of sections by means of a blank space; otherwise the words are not separated and form what is known as SCRIPTURA CONTINUA, or continuous writing. The decline of learning probably was responsible for a change that appears to begin in the 6 th century: points (Lat. punctus, pl. puncti, hence punctuation) come into use for punctuation by 700-800, and by 800-900 they appear to be firmly established. Perhaps the first to make full use of a point-system for punctuation were the Irish and their Anglo-Saxon pupils; this was probably for the very good reason that Latin was for them an utterly foreign tongue, and punctuation was therefore a great help to understanding the language. There was not, however, any uniform system to which the Insular scribes adhered as a rule; all that one can say is that they had a preference for multiple points variously grouped. Dots placed variously on the base-line, at mid-letter height, or at the head-line of letters may also have had different values as pauses in some early systems. In the post-Insular period, medieval scribes used the point, virgula and inverted semi-colon (point-and-tickle) for punctuation; but the usage is so indiscriminate and inconsistent that the exact significance of the punctuation marks is rarely clear. In general, writers on prose composition (that is, the ars dictaminis) recognized three pauses: the comma, the colon, and the period, but their views seem to have had little effect. More often than not, at least in the early middle ages, the scribe had a listener rather than a reader in mind when inserting dots and commas, indicating places to take a breath, drop the voice, or otherwise pause. Thus, reading passages aloud from a manuscript (or from a transcription that retains the manuscript punctuation) sometimes allows one to see what the scribe was about; this is particularly true of papal letters, and of other texts which adhered to strict rules of clausulae and cursus. Thus it is a good habit when transcribing to render any punctuation just as it appears. See Battelli, pp. 212-215. QUILL. A feather, often of a goose, with its tip sharpened and used as an implement for writing. In Latin the term is penna and in Middle English also penna, hence the our word pen; but the Old English used feder. The quill displaced the calamus or reed-pen before 800 A.D. See D. Diringer, The Hand-produced Book (New York, 1953) for a picture of a scribe with quill from an illuminated manuscript of 1169; and J. Boussard, Influences insulaires dans la formation de lcriture gothique, in Scriptorium 5 (1951), 238-264, for some interesting suggestions about the various methods of cutting quills (and, as well, for some very important observations on the origin of Gothic handwriting). Other valuable treatments of writing instruments will be found in F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Rome, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1951); H. Fichtenau, Mensch und Schrift im Mittelalter (Vienna, 1946); L. C. Hector, The Handwriting of English Documents, 2nd ed. (London, 1966), where there is an excellent account of the preparation of parchment, inks, etc. QUIRE. Any collection or gathering of leaves in a manuscript or a printed book. The word comes from quaterni, or set of four, hence the Latin term QUATERNION. So most properly speaking, a quire is a gathering of four bifolia (which was, indeed, the most common); but the term came to be used to designate any gathering regardless of the number of sheets that composed it. A QUIRE-MARK in a manuscript is a mark placed at the end of a gathering so that sets of quires may be correctly ordered when the codex is being assembled for binding; generally this mark consists of QUATERNION or QUA or simply Q, followed by the number of the quaternion. In printed books the quire-mark is usually known as a signature. An interesting example of the distribution of quires for copying will be found in CLA I.109 (Vatican Livy, MS. Reg. Lat. 762): this copy of Livy was written by eight monks at Tours during Alcuins abbacy (796-804), but it is clear from crowding or spreading at the end of each quire that the archetype was distributed quire by quire to the eight monks, each of whom copied his quire independently of the others. See CATCHWORD and GATHERING, above, and also SIGNATURE, below. RECENSION. The process of establishing a text from multiple manuscript witnesses through a comparison of variants in the codices. Also known as the Common Variation method, this technique of editing is based on the proven fact that codices and the texts they carry change progressively as copied: the manuscript tradition of a work
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can therefore be recontructed by plotting which codices share variations, which do not, and which add further variations not seen in others. These findings can be presented graphically in the form of a stemma codicum (see STEMMA CODICUM, below). The recension system is credited to K. Lachmann, who explains its principles in the preface to his edition of the New Testament, Novum Testamentum graece et latine, I (Berlin, 1831). Perhaps the best discussion of the method is Paul Maas Textkritik, 3rd edn (Leipzig, 1957); trans by. B. Flower, as Textual Criticism (Oxford, 1958). REVERENZPUNKT (or GEMIPUNCTUS) . Two points placed horizontally on the base-line before titles of dignity or office, thus, Dilecto filio . . illustri Regi Castellae. Sometimes the points may imply that the addressee of a letter is not known by name; often they mean that the grant, privilege, etc. is to the office as such and not simply to the person who for the time being holds that office (e.g. a privilege in perpetuity to a diocese or monastery). Revrenzpuncte also sometimes appear in copies of letters in FORMULARY books, which preserve samples of various types of official correspondence to be used as models; often a letter preserved as an example will be shorn of its particulars, the addressees name, for instance, being reduced to a simple N., indicating Name (that is, nomen, -is) or So-and-so, or to a Reverenzpunkt alone. REVERSAL SIGNS. Oblique strokes, or sometimes the letters a and b, written superscript before or after each word in a pair of words to show that they should be read in reverse order, that is, in the order indicated if the words were arranged either alphabetically according to their superscript letters or numerically according to the count of strokes: bsapientia aalta or sapientia// alta/ is to be read alta sapientia. ROLL. A manuscript of papyrus or parchment that is rolled, not folded. In a papyrus roll there were never more than 20 sheets attached end to end: Nunquam plures scapo quam vicenae plagulae (Pliny, Historia naturalis, XIII, xxiii, 77). This maximum, which kept the diameter of the rolls at a manageable size, meant that a long text would fill several rolls, rather than one roll being extended indefinitely to hold it. In antiquity the writing on a roll was done at 90o to the direction the roll was rolled, in a series of columns with their heads near one edge of the roll and their bases near the other, so that one rolled the roll from right to left (or left to right in the case of the Semitic languages) to advance the text. There are some exceptions to this rule, most notably perhaps the Christian EXULTET ROLLS, so named because they contained the narrative sequence for the Easter Vigil liturgy which began with the word Exultet. These rolls were written to be unrolled vertically, and, indeed, were unrolled down over the front of the pulpit as the cantor sang the sequence, revealing to the congregation a series of miniatures interspersed with the text; the scenes were upside down in relation to the writing so that they would be right-side up as the roll hung before the people. In a parchment roll the flesh (white) side was reserved for the text and was called the FACE of the roll, while the hair (dark, outer) side formed the rolls back or dorse and was for endorsements only, such as indications of the contents of the roll. Hence one finds the expressions (also used in references to codices), Videatis in carne... in albo...in parte munda, meaning the text; this is particularly to be noted in references back from the hair (dorse) side of a roll or page (ex parte nigra...ex parte pili) to the flesh side, where the text proper resided. On the relationship of the roll to the codex, see the reference to Roberts under CODEX. Also see DORSE. RUBRIC. A heading, lemma, title, or initial letter written in red as a means of highlighting it, from Latin ruber (red) and rubrico (to colour red). In post-Augustan Rome, the term rubrica came to be applied to the individual titles or laws in Roman law, which were picked out in red in the great codifications. It is this practice that was adopted in medieval manuscript production as a means of signalling the sections in other sorts of works as well. One of the earliest appearances in Christian texts was in liturgical books, where the directions for the conduct of the mass were rubricated. As in Roman usage, too, the term shifted in significance from indicating something picked out in red, to the title or lemma itselfas the rubrics in the law were understood as the various laws themselves, so the various ceremonial directions indicated in a sacramentary became known as the rubrics of the mass. While the term does derive from the Latin word for the colour red, it later became common for other colours to be used alternately with red for even greater ease of visual reference, and these section headings might still be referred to as the texts rubrics. In university texts, for example, the section headings or litterae notabiliores would normally alternate
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between red and blue, and such a text would still be referred to as being rubricated, that is, as having its various divisions picked out in colour. But the most correct usage is to limit the application of the term rubric to something red. RULING. Lines drawn with a semi-blunt (or dry-point) instrument, or with a plummet (a small pointed piece of lead or pumice-stone), across a sheet or a page of a codex or gathering, generally with the aid of prickings as guidepoints. Dry-point was the preferred technique before the 13 th century, when it gave way to plummet and other wet rulings, including ink; this means, of course, that ruling became a more visibly obvious part of page-layout. See D. Coveney, The ruling of the Exeter Book, in Scriptorium 12, (1958) 51-55; E. K. Rand, How many leaves at a time? in Palaeographia Latina, ed. W.M. Lindsay, 5 (1928), 52-78. The way writing related to the ruling on a page changed over time as well, as for example, the earlier scribal preference for writing on the top line of ruling gave way in the 13th century to a preference for leaving the top line clear and beginning instead on the second line. Ruling can thus provide clues which will assist in the dating of a manuscript. See N. R. Ker, From Above Top Line to Below Top Line: A Change in Scribal Practices, in Books, Collectors, and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A.G. Watson (London, 1975), pp. 71-4. And see PRICKING above, and WRITINGFRAME, below. SIGLA. Words as reduced by abbreviation to a single letter. But, in fact, any form of abbreviated reference can be termed a siglum: S.P.Q.R. for Senatus Populusque Romanus; M.L.A. for Modern Languages Association; but also Vat. lat. for Vaticanus latinus. SIGNATURE. A number or letter placed at the end, or beginning, of a quire in a printed book; in this it is analogous to the manuscripts catchword or quire-mark. The term can also be used to refer to the entire quire which carries the signature; in this the word is analogous to the manuscripts gathering or quire. Compare CATCHWORD, GATHERING, and QUIRE SILENT CONVERSATION. Written asides in which scribes indulged before, during or after a spell of writing; also known as silent writing. A silent conversation that occurs specifically at the end of a text is a type of colophon, serving to indicate the closing of the text and an end to the job of writing it; not all silent writing is colophonic, however. See C.Plummer, On the colophons and marginalia of Irish Scribes, in Proceedings of the British Academy 12 (1926), 11-44. Also see COLOPHON, above. SILLABUS. A tape or tongue projecting from a roll and serving as a label. Usually attached to edge of the roll at some point, the sillabus would hang from the end of the roll when rolled. Rolls were then stored either loosely stacked on shelves in an open cupboard with their sillabus ends outward so that the labels dangled accessibly, or in a portable drum-shaped container, called a capsa, in which the rolls were stood with their labels upward. STEMMA CODICUM (pl. STEMMATA). A graphic illustration in which the relationship between codices carrying the same text is displayed as a family tree (the Latin stemma meaning pedigree or geneaological tree). The stemma codicum is arrived at by tabulating all the variations between the manuscript witnesses. CONJUNCTIVE VARIATIONS, or variations that are unlikely to have been duplicated by two scribes independently but which nonetheless are shared by two or more codices thus joining them together in a branch of the family, are plotted first; next the SEPARATIVE VARIATIONS or variations which are peculiar to each codex are plotted to refine the relationships. Note that the stemma codicum is a tree of codices, not a stemma textuum, a family tree of the texts carried by the codices; both codicological and textual variations are taken into account when establishing relations between manuscripts. See RECENSION. STYLUS. A sharp instrument, often of metal, for writing on wax or clay tablets.

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SYLLABIFICATION. The method of dividing words into syllables. The Roman rule was Never let a syllable end in a consonant if the consonant can possibly be pronounced at the beginning of the next syllable (E. R. Lindsay, The Latin Language, Oxford, 1894, p. 124), for example vi-ctrix, pro-pter, o-mnis. Insular scribes, the Irish particularly, offended greatly against the rules, writing, e.g., su-nt, fo-ssam, pulc-hra. Italian scribes were often not far behind. They were inclined to break words, as we do, according to pronunciation, thus: dic-tis (for di-ctis), om-nis (for o-mnis), dis-co (for di-sco): see CLA I.16; II.197, for examples of corrections made by purists of Italian syllabification. The most famous example, perhaps, occurs in the uncial Codex Fuldensis of the Gospel Harmony (CLA VIII.1196), where there are various corrections made by bishop Victor of Capua at Capua in 546/7: in the facsimile in Steffens 21 it will be seen that the Bishop has corrected fac-tor to fa-ctor (lines 20-21), and fac-tus to fa-ctus (lines 31-32). TABULAE. Writing tablets, i.e., two or more pieces of wood, held together by a clasp or by two strings passed through pierced holes. Each tablet was hollowed to receive wax upon which to write; a small raised rim enclosing the hollow kept the wax from smearing when the tablets were folded one over the other. See Pliny the Younger, Epistolae, III, 5, 15 and following, for a vivid account of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, at work on his Historia naturalis: all his uncles notes were first written down on pugillares (tablets which fit into a fist); from these were compiled the immense commentarii that filled 160 rolls of papyri, and were written on both sides of each roll (i.e., on the dorseopisthographicallyas well as on the face). Note that a plurality of tablets and multi-leaved tablets was known by the proper name of codex: see Seneca, De brevitate vitae 13: quia plurium tabularum contextus caudex apud antiquos vocabatur unde publicae tabulae codices dicuntur. Later codex came to mean a book: sheets fastened together. Compare CODEX, above. TIRONIAN NOTES. Name given to the stenography first used (if we are to trust Plutarch, Cato Minor, 23, 3) by Cicero in 63 B.C. to obtain the substance of the speech of Cato against Catiline in the Senate. The term comes from the name of the freedman TIRO whom Cicero used as a stenographer: see Ad Atticum (45 B.C.), XIII, 25, 3: Sed quaeso epistola mea ad Varronem valdene tibi placuit? Male mihi sit, si unquam quidquam tam enitar: ergo ne Tironi quidem dictavi, qui totas perioxsas persequi solet, sed Spinthero syllabatim. Tironian Notes include both generic abbreviations for common word endings and combinations of letters, as well as symbols or sigla for entire words that occurred with the greatest frequency. Irish scriptoria seem to have been the first to revive the system in the medieval period, and knowledge of Tironian abbreviations seems to have spread back to the Continent through Insular influence. For an example of Tironian Notes as practiced in 9th century, see Steffens 56. See also NOTAE IURIS, above. TRANSCRIPTION. The faithful and complete rendering of the text of any manuscript into typescript or clear handwriting, including expansion of all abbreviations and sigla and the noting of all erasures, corrections, glosses, gaps, illustrations, colphons, punctuation, etc., as well as the number of different hands that are at work in both the text and any later amendments. A careful transcription will thus preserve all orthographical variants; it will note any palaeographical information available from the manuscript; and will include pertinent codicological observations, such as whether or not catchwords are correctly picked up on the next folio, or changes in ruling or pen-width that might indicate a hiatus in writing or perhaps work from peciae. Similarly, a diplomatic transcription of a document should involve not only an accurate rendering of the text of the document, but physical observations such as the presence or absence of a seal or the placement of writing on the face or dorse of the document. In sum, a proper transcription should be able to stand in place of the manuscript for most purposes. Compare CALENDAR. UNCIAL. Perhaps one of the most controverted palaeographical labels, a term first used by Mabillon, De re diplomatica libri sex (Paris, 1681; ed. Paris, 1709, p. 48), to describe large Capital Roman ( quadrata) writing, as distinct from Roman writing in minuta or minuscule hand. As a source of the term he cited St Jeromes prologue to his version of the Book of Job (PL 28, 1142A):

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Habeant qui volunt veteres libros vel in membraneis purpureis auro argentoque descriptor vel uncialibus (ut vulgo aiunt) librisonera magis exarata quam codicesdummodo mihi meisque permittunt pauperes habere schedulas, et non tam pulchros codices quam emendatos. For Mabillon, the various Vergil codices (Vaticanus, etc.), the Codex Amiatinus, the Vatican St Hilary De Trinitate (the so-called Basilicanus codex), were all in this majuscule Uncial or quadrata hand, and belong to the scriptura romana secundae aetatis. For Mabillon, therefore, as probably for St Jerome, Uncial seems to have meant any type of large Roman writing, particularly the quadrata type. Mabillons terminology was refined by Scipione Maffei, Istoria diplomatica, (Mantua, 1727). Maffei, indeed, is the first to draw a distinction between the majuscule writing of the Vergil codices (calling it Capital) and the equally majuscule but distinctive writing of, e.g., the Vatican Hilary (Basilicanus), to which he preferred to reserve the term Uncial. However, the majuscule script in the Vatican Hilary (Basilicanus) was, in fact, of two different sizes, the smaller looking like a cut-down version of the larger. So Maffei decided that the large majuscule writing should be called Uncial writing, and that the smaller majuscule writing should be termed Semi-uncial . Thereafter, the Basilicanus codex of Hilary became the yardstick of Uncial and Semi-uncial scripts (see Lowe, Codices Latini Antiquiores, for variations on the Semi-Uncial theme: Uncial verging on semi-uncial; semi-uncial verging on uncial; b-d uncial, etc., etc.). In fact, as J. Mallon, Palaeaographie romaine (Madrid 1952) has shown so forcefully, there is no direct relationship whatever between Uncial and Semi-uncial; Maffeis terminology is as spurious as the use of Uncial itself (Mabillon probably was quite correct in thinking that Jerome meant something like large, expensive, expansive, ponderous, writing). As Mallon and others have well shown, the two scripts in the Basilicanus codex are independent developments out of the classic Roman literary script known as Rustic: Uncial being based on an outmoded form that we may term Transitional Rustic (best seen in the De bellis macedonicis fragment in the British Museum: BM Papyrus 745, written ca 100 A.D., and found at Oxyrhynchos); Semi-uncial on the Reformed Rustic script that has its earliest witness in the parchment roll fragment known as the Epitome Livii (c. 200 A.D.; found in 1903 at Oxyrhynchos, now BM Pap. 1532). Semi-uncial is thus in fact a more authentic script than Uncial. However, since the terms are to be found in every book on palaeography worth its salt, there is no avoiding the terminology. The two labels may be used provided one remembers: first, that there is no question whatever of a full/semi relationship between the two; and, secondly, that the descriptions given of them in most manuals of palaeography (Steffens, Ullman, Battelli, etc.) are very, very inaccurateas are the methods of identification. VOLUMEN. A papyrus roll bearing columns of writing which, when not in use, was wound around a stick.

WRITING-FRAME. The area on a manuscript folium within which the actual writing is contained. The writingframe is composed of the BOUNDING LINES, the marginal lines that guide the offsetting and justification of text left-to-right on the folium, together with the top line and bottom line of ruling. Marginal decoration, such as decorative borders or bas-de-page scenes, will fall outside of the writing-frame, but miniatures deployed within the text were meant to respect the frame. Also, double bounding lines are often employed to suggest the size of any enlarged initials: the main body of the text will adhere to the inner line, while any embellishment of initials is intended to fall within the outer line. These are suggestions, however, which rubricators and illustrators did not always follow. As well, over the course of the mid-13 th century the habit changed from beginning the writing on a page above the top line of ruling (and, hence, outside the writing-frame proper) to below the top line of ruling, in essence, on the second line. The dimensions of the writing-frame are generally more informative for comparative purposes than the overall dimensions of the parchment within a manuscript, for the writing-frame will usually have escaped trimming and the other distortions sometimes suffered by margins. Different medieval scriptoria had different specifications for the size and shape of the writing-frame in the manuscripts they produced, and knowing these characteristic layouts can point to the original place of manufacture of a codex. For a set of instructions for the layout of a writing-frame employed at the Tours scriptorium in the 9 th century, see in E. K. Rand and L.W. Jones,
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The Earliest Books of Tours (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1934), pp. 87-88; for a discussion of three other methods known as the Pythagorean Triangle, the Golden Rectangle and the Extended Square see L. Gilissen, Un elment codicologique trop peu exploit: la rglure, in Scriptorium 23 (1969), 150-162, and the same authors Prolgomnes la codicologie (Gand, 1977), with many facsimiles and tables. And see RULING, above.

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