The manuscript book: A Compendium of Codicology

Sites

INTRODUCTION

No book is so bad

to not have something of use in some part of it

(Pliny the Elder, 23-79 AC)

This volume sees the light twelve years after the first Italian edition, Il libro manoscritto. Introduzione alla Codicologia (Roma, L’Erma 2003), which was followed, given its success, by a second, enlarged edition, Il libro manoscritto da Oriente a Occidente. Per una Codicologia comparata (Roma, L’Erma 2009¹), and I have to admit that there have been more than a few difficulties in concluding the work, considering how much the situation has changed since then.

At the time, the sources available for the ancient and medieval book were disorganised and unsystematic, which impeded a unitary vision of synthesis, so I considered it imperative to equip myself with certain learning instruments which might one day be of use to my Italian Codicology students. Despite the many, inevitable, limits, it could also become a working tool, or could simply be consulted by ‘non-students’: librarians, philologists, palaeographers and anyone else who might be interested in studying, or simply getting to know, the handwritten book.

A consolidated, satisfactory handbook tradition was lacking, and at the same time, there was no longstanding academic tradition. In Italy, the first university professorship of Codicology was created only in 1967/68, but in other countries no such tradition had ever emerged, although institutions or cultural and research centres, focusing on the integral study of the ancient and medieval book did. The reason is that the philological-textual, and following this, the palaeographical, dimension, up to at least the mid-twentieth century was the only observation point for a manuscript, a perspective in which material data were only functional, if not mere accessories. In terms of the research object (i.e., Codicology) it evades organic, systematic treatment: as with every art, it can only be acquired through experience, wrote Emanuele Casamassima in the 1960s, thus paving the way for the emergence of that alibi which was to hinder the autonomous development of codicology as a discipline, despite the proclamation of independence by the other historical sciences launched by François Masai a few years earlier.

This proclamation, however, began to bear fruit, but the results were slow to make themselves felt.

Some decades later, Paul Canart’s (by now historic) typewritten lecture notes from 1978, at the Vatican School of Paleography, Diplomatic and Archives, while he was scriptor and vice director of the Manuscripts Section of the Vatican Library, made, for the first time, a distinction between Palaeography and Codicology (Canart’s Lezioni, which were the background for my own studies: cf. <http://webuser2.unicas.it/webspace/Documentazione/Canart_Lezioni.pdf>).

After this first timid, but at the same time, daring attempt at presenting a new discipline in an ordered, though synthetic fashion (new discipline in terms of its status, but not in terms of its actual existence) followed the arrival of the Vocabulaire codicologique (1985) by Denis Muzerelle of the Parisian IRHT. It was a lexicon rather than a proper manual but it seemed a good starting point, given the thematic organisation of the lexemes. However, it proved how the discipline had still not reached that maturity in terms of research, reflection and certain acquisition of knowledge which is an essential foundation for handbook writing.

But handbook writing soon made up for lost time. The idea, by now established, produced two initial results: the Codicology manual in Spanish by Elisa Ruiz Garcia in 1988 (2002²) and a year later in French by the Belgian Jaques Lemaire, pupil of Léon Gilissen the first author of Prolégomènes à la codicologie (1977), clearly varied in their structure, given the different backgrounds of authors, but basically complementing each other. But only thirty years later they already seemed dated, limited, though as forerunners they were undoubtedly a starting point, a significant expression of that moment in time when our discipline defined itself and became an established fact.

This was a decade after the Vocabulaire, a season in which an integrated and updated Italian edition emerged (Terminologia 1996/1998²), plus a Spanish translation (Vocabulario 1997) and a singular Catalan version (El llibre manuscrit 2002), a clear sympton of the need – still a priority – for clarification, at least from a terminological point of view, essential for a definitive clarification of the respective concepts. Even now, long after the publication of these pioneering instruments, we have come to understand only gradually and partially, in recent years, that we have conquered an equal status in focusing upon concepts, problems and themes which have emerged little by little as the research advanced. We get an idea of this by reading, for example, Marilena Maniaci’s Archeologia del manoscritto, and seeing her methodological – as well as bibliographical – approach to this new book discipline, including all its problems (Maniaci 2002a). Already author of the Terminologia, this very same scholar is never tired of insisting on the importance of completing the terminological fine-tuning in other linguistic spheres. A little before the new English edition of Beal’s terminology, 2008, and the ongoing enterprise by J.P. Gumbert, Words for Codices (Gumbert 2010), she was calling for a multilingual and digital codicological lexicon: it was to be ‘open’, so as to avoid the rigidity of print, and would envisage different levels of content and thus overcome the physical distinction between lexicon, handbook and bibliography, including the photographic aspect (Maniaci 2007 and 2008: also Jakobi-Mirwald 2009 speaks of a multilingual result).

But apart from terminological questions, basic but difficult to resolve in a study domain which tends to shun univocal definitions, these years at the turn of the two millenia have seen the birth of specialistic book series and periodicals like – to mention only a few – Bibliologia (1983-) of the Belgian publishing house Brepols, or Scritture e libri del Medioevo (2003-), of (the publishing house) Viella, the semiannual Gazette du Livre Médiéval (GLM, 1982-) edited by the French CNRS, with its bibliographical review; the Cabnewsletter and Quinio of the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro e la Conservazione del Patrimonio Archivistico e Librario ICRCPAL (ex Istituto Centrale per la Patologia del Libro), founded in 1938 by Alfonso Gallo for the conservation of and research into books: alongside conservation, biology, chemistry, physics, technology and activities concerning the environment, hygiene and documentation, together with teaching and scientific information, this institute also caters, at an international research level, for codicological research. We might recall the Paper Project (Progetto Carta), set up by the CNRS, whose first and unfortuantely only results have been two sturdy volumes in the series Addenda, of the same institute (Ornato et al. 2001), as well as the census of medieval bindings [CLEM], carried out by all existing Italian libraries.

These same years also witnessed the genesis and evolution of that particular current of codicological studies called Quantitative Codicology, to use the expression coined by its promoters. Making use of statistical methods, it investigates aspects of book manufacture and production not only in a merely technical light but, above all, economically and socially. If the procedural criteria are well applied – this being its only weakness – investigations of this nature allow us to single out interesting evolutionary strains and despite the fact that this methodology is not suitable for every single situation, there have sometimes been positive results, especially in clarifying the history of book production and circulation in medieval France. A new current has been delineated and has already come to the forefront, that of Structural or Stratigraphic Codicology (Syntaxe 2013), emerging from the need to refine scientific description methods of composite or miscellaneous codices. This only concludes a further new chapter, which had been developing in the meantime, of numerous theoretical reflections, not only about the complex or composite manuscript, but also of a dynamic type, in other words aiming at investigating the gestures of the craftsman who achieved the results we now see (we are referring especially to the ideas of Albiero, Gumbert, Maniaci, Muzerelle, from 2009 onward).

We might have expected this theoretical streak, which seemed to have arrived with such vehemence, to peter out – what else could we expect? – given, moreover, the scarcity of militants.

But it does not end here.

The same years saw other manuals concerning geo-cultural areas other than those of our own scholastic-academic tradition, arriving one after another, a continuous flow, as it were: a manual of Slavic Codicology by Axinia Džurova, of the Dujčev Centre in Sofia (Džurova 1997), the Codicology of Arabic manuscripts by François Déroche and other collaborators of the French CNRS (Déroche 2000, the Italian edition with Sagaria-Rossi in 2012) and even of Persian manuscripts (Handbook 2011), while the first to arrive concerned Hebrew Codicology, by Malachi Beit- Arié (1976/1981², summary in English in Beit-Arié 2003), followed by the Colloquium of Hebrew Palaeography in 1974, many of its results proving to be useful in ongoing research in the other geo-cultural settings. Growing interest in the material study of the manuscript, in comparative terms, in areas other than our own, already seemed full of promise at the time of the second tome of Codicologica (1978) – a series of thematic booklets edited by Gruys and Gumbert – and a little later, in the desire for a Mediterranean Codicology expressed by Paul Canart in an exuberant article (Canart 1979b). It was a wonderful concept with a basic conviction: by observing in parallel fashion the same phenomena in different settings and highlighting, on the one hand, the convergencies and on the other, the divergences, so as to investigate their motivations, not only are different codicologies enriched mutually but we might also arrive at delineating an eloquent outline of the origins, alterations and evolution of craftsmens’ practices disseminated and transmitted by the ancient world throughout the Middle Ages. The history of book techniques should encompass all civilisations that were in contact from the beginning of the invention of writing wrote Colette Sirat (in: Zerdoun Bat-Yehouda 1983, Préface, p. xiv). However at the time, this concept seemed to come up against a series of problems, not the least of which that posed by linguistic barriers, and Canart himself expressed his doubts in a later contribution (Canart 1992), asking himself who might have all those skills necessary for studies of this nature if even Greek-Latin palaeography has revealed itself a chimera; and how might we demolish those barriers which lock the specialists up inside their own investigative ground or their own professorship; or how can we eliminate the differences in education which mark every specialist, for example how can the humanist overcome his limits and adapt himself to that of a physicist or a chemist, and to the times and methods of laboratory research. Mutual comprehension, unification of descriptive criteria and terminology were felt to be fundamental to achieve a real interdisciplinarity. Years were to pass before the first of the two colloquia dedicated to Comparative Codicology, in Paris (Recherches 1998) and Bari (Libri 2002) as well as single research projects, which were just as significant (e.g., concerning Visigothic manuscripts in the Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule [Keller 1985 and 1987-1989]), or contributions which sought to further explain the utility of this type of study (e.g., Beit-Arié 1993b and 1993a, evidence of the astonishing experience acquired by this scholar in the field of Hebrew and also Latin manuscripts).

Another conference held in Venice in 2004, Scritture e codici nelle culture dell’Asia (Japan, China, Tibet, India). Prospettive di studio², more than preceding ones showed that we can go beyond, and enter a dimension which, more than Mediterranean has already become Ecumenical, while the first really solid assertion of in parallel, or comparative studies, was provided by Lire le manuscrit 2005, an update of the Guide 1977, of the IRHT in the audacious attempt to recapitulate the overall development of codicological science, also reaching out beyond Greek and Latin scholastic-academic spheres, going as far as possible, extending to the frontier of the great oriental civilisations which have interacted with ours: from East to West (this was the title of the Italian edition of 2009: Il libro manoscritto da Oriente a Occidente), passing through Byzantium, the multi-ethnic millenary empire which had harvested – and thus salvaged – both the Greek and Roman legacy. By mediating, it fused cultural and linguistic practices as well as library and artistic techniques of different backgrounds.

This was a challenge for me as an expert on Byzantine paleography: and this is of special relevance for those who, in reading this book, will find coverage of the Latin domain meagre, at least compared to that of the Greek. Moreover, it is precisely for this reason that I am proud to be able to offer – and I am fully aware of this – a less predictable perspective than might have been expected.

And I say this with all due humilty, even more so in that I have not worked as part of a team and cannot know all the languages, but I believed in it. I believed and I wished to send a message, and I still believe, now, at a moment in which this concept of comparison seems to have borne fruit in ambitious European programmes – English language based – providing an interaction between people, like COMSt (Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies), which has finally drawn from the entities of medieval book study, previously marginalised civilisations.

My basic conviction has not changed. I remain faithful to the term codicology, intended in its entirety, like a cognitive act concerning the object, i.e., the codex: we have to know it inside out, and necessarily, this means including an initial stage linked to its material study as a cultural find/asset (archaeology). Our analysis has to be in-depth, we have to appreciate its singular importance (above all to place it within a textual tradition), as Gumbert stressed (2004b). And this can be done from a comparative perspective. However, codicology looks further, and in a second, more historical phase, it does not rule out interaction with philological and palaeographic disciplines, which are in fact just a different approach to the same codex-reality. Neither does it elude aspects like transcription, illumination, the history of libraries, conservation and cataloguing. Unfortunately, in this instance, specific skills are required, in their respective languages and it is impossible to come up with a single synthesis.

This results is an initial limitation to the present work, besides which the doubts expressed at the beginning not only concern the fact that, once more, yet again, we cannot claim that a perfect and definitive work is being offered. On the contrary, these doubts derive mostly from continuous updating in both research and investigative techniques, as well as the speed with which projects, information, digital images and also a certain type of cataloguing – a constant stream, as it were, on the Web – relegate to a secondary role, and as a result, rapidly age, the fossilised printed contributions which books have become.

All limitations which the present volume is destined to have should be acknowledged, besides eventual shortcomings, for which personally I am responsible. But at least this work might provide a focus (for documentation and reflection) and at the same time a new departure point, maintaining its vigour as long as it can.

***

As far this new and revised edition is concerned, I would like to thank in particular Fulvio Mercuri, professor of Applied Physics in Cultural Heritage at the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Tor Vergata, Rome, previously Head of the Degree Course in Preservation and Conservation of Books, and Caius Gavrila, from the Department of Mathematics at Tor Vergata, as well as the Istituto Invalsi, for their generosity in contributing their considerable skills.

I would like to express my gratitude to colleagues and/or friends who have not denied me their help, their opinions concerning English terminology and even the proofreading of translated passages or chapters: Paul Canart and Timothy Janz from the Vatican Library, Konstantinos Houlis from the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Arietta Revithi from the Hellenic Parliament Library: to her in particular I owe a careful and patient final reading of the entire English text.

Finally, together with a thought of gratitude for the hard work done by the translator, Colin Swift, and for the patience and availability of the Publishing House – especially for Rossella Corcione and David J. Chacón –, it is to J. Peter Gumbert – who, despite the fact that he couldn’t proceed in the proofreading which he had spontaneously and with abnegation offered to do, but whose suggestions have been of inestimable value – that I would like to dedicate this new English edition.

The Author

October 2014

PREFACE

We have avoided overburdening this volume with systematic references in the notes, which therefore only concern exceptional or occasional quotations which would not have contributed to the general bibliography. The latter is the result of a selection, and sitography entries have been kept to a minimum¹.

We would particularly like to stress that for a number of reasons (and technical snags), the definitive text of the present volume has been set aside since autumn 2014. Therefore, the updated bibliography stops at that year, except for very rare exceptions concerning small contributions. It is important to point out that in 2015 the conclusive volume of the European project concerning oriental manuscripts, COMSt (about which see later), came out, though it was not used for the present volume. (It would have been misleading to have used it, given the scope of this work). However, information concerning the work on this volume has been registered with COMSt 2014.

BASIC CODICOLOGICAL SOURCES

²

Beit-Arié 1976/1981², 2003, 2008; Canart, Lezioni; Capasso 2005; Codicologica 1-5, 1976-1980; COMSt 2015; Déroche 2000, 2005; Déroche – Sagaria Rossi 2012; Džurova 1997; Federici - Rossi 1983; Handbook 2013; Lemaire 1989; Löffler 1929; Lire le manuscrit 2005; Maniaci 2002a; Mazal 1986; Ruiz 1988, 2002² ³; Syntaxe 2013; Terminologia 1996/1998²; Vocabulaire codicologique 1985, online: ; Vocabulario 1997.

SPECIAL SERIES

Bibliologia. Elementa ad librorum studia pertinentia, Turnhout (Brepols) 1983 – –

Cambridge Studies of Palaeography and Codicology, Cambridge University Press 1994 – –

Scritture e libri del medioevo, series dir. by Marco Palma, Roma (Viella) 2003 – –

SPECIALISTIC JOURNALS

Aegyptus, Milano 1920 – –

Chrysograph, Moscow 2003 – –

Codices Manuscripti. Zeitschrift für Handschriftenkunde, Vienna 1975 – –

Gazette du Livre Médiéval (GLM), Paris 1982 – –

IPH-Information. Bulletin de l’Association Internationale des Historiens du papier, Alte Folge 1962-1966; Neue Folge 1967-1989; poi IPH-International Paper History, 1990-1999; then Paper History. Journal of the International Association of Paper Historians, 2000 – –

Libri e carte, ICPL (now ICRCPAL), Rome 2006 – –

Litterae Caelestes. Rivista annuale internazionale di paleografia, codicologia, diplomatica e storia delle testimonianze scritte, Rome 2005 – –

Manuscripta, Saint Louis 1957 – –

Nuovi Annali della Scuola Speciale per Archivisti e Bibliotecari, Florence 1987 – –

Papiergeschichte. Zeitschrift der Forschungsstelle Papiergeschichte in Mainz, Mainz 1951-1976.

Quaerendo. A Quarterly Journal from the Low Countries devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books, Amsterdam 1971 – –

Quinio. International Journal for the History and Conservation of the Book, Rome 1999-2001.

Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Paris 1971 – –

Scripta. An International Journal of Palaeography and Codicology, Pisa – Rome 2007 – –

Scriptorium. Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits, Turnhout 1946 – –

Scrittura e Civiltà, Turin 1977-2001.

Segno e Testo. International Journal of Manuscripts and Text Transmission, Università degli Studi di Cassino (Italy), 2003 – –

Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Cologne 1967 – –

PHOTO CREDITS (in compliance with photographic copyright law):

Athens, National Library of Greece (EBE); Berne, Burgerbibliothek; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College; Cesena, Biblioteca Malatestiana; Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV); Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana; Geneva, Aga Khan Museum Collection; Grottaferrata, Biblioteca della Badia Greca di San Nilo; Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit; London, The British Library (BL); Oxford University, The Bodleian Library; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF); Patmos, Library of the Monastery of St John the Evangelist; Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana (BANLIC), Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II (BNC), Istituto Centrale per il Restauro e la Conservazione del Patrimonio Archivistico e Librario (ICRCPAL); Sinai, Library of the Monastery of St Catherine; Utrecht, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit; Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana; Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare; Private Collection.

Moreover, Terminologia 1996/1998²; Vocabulaire codicologique 1985, and the single authors, who will be mentioned one by one.

CHAPTER ONE

THE STUDY OF THE HANDWRITTEN BOOK, OR CODICOLOGY

I.1 – THE FIELD OF STUDY

The science that deals with the handwritten book, the subject of this volume, is known as codicology. The term is recent and two French scholars of the past century, Charles Samaran and Alphonse Dain, both claimed to have coined it.

In actual fact, the former, defending the independence of the science of the manuscript during a course held at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, in the academic year 1934-35, coined the neologism codicography based on the term palaeography, though with little success (Samaran 1934-1935). It was the other scholar who used a similar term, codicology, during a Greek philology course in 1944, but it remained unused until the publication of his famous book Les manuscrits (Dain 1949/1975³), where, at p. 75, he claimed the paternity of the term, adding that by then the definition had been registered in the Grand Larousse encyclopédique, and welcomed unanimously by the experts.

The term codicology is the result of an unusual combination of Latin and Greek, in which the discursive element prevails, i.e., that which is implicit in the suffix -logy (from λόγος), as opposed to the analytical, indicated by the other suffix -graphy. Its name derives from the Latin codex/caudex, which denoted a tree trunk (on which the letters of the alphabet were engraved) and later, by metonymy, the wooden tablets suitably treated to create a writing support. Since these were often attached, with rings, two, three or more at a time, so as to form a block, the same term, in the Christian era, was used to indicate blocks of papyrus or parchment sewn together, the ancestors of the codex proper. The term codex therefore indicates the book form that (though it may present different characteristics) has been maintained up to the present day, and which, from about the first century AD onward, gradually replaced the volumen, or roll, which the Graeco-Roman world had inherited from ancient Egypt. Codex refers to the book in its concrete materiality, where an abstract idea of the author (of whatever type) achieves, with the help of an editor, its physical realisation, and arrives at its counterpart, i.e., the reader. However, this general meaning refers to the book before the invention of printing, therefore the handwritten book, or manuscript.

Manuscript: paradoxically this term owes its existence to typography which, in modifying production and editorial techniques, created a deep watershed in the long history of the book. In fact, by saying manuscript we actually mean any kind of writing that is not printed (autographs, documents, deeds, inventories…) regardless of date and type of support. However, a sort of fossilisation has taken place and the main idea which remains is the book (implied), as a text – bearer (whether literary, philosophical, juridical, religious, etc.), intended for circulation and commerce, copied by an amanuensis (and thus within clear chronological limits), and manifactured using a variety of materials which mark accordingly distinct eras in its evolution. This is basically what codicology is about.

What emerges from this premise is the terminological inaccuracy of this discipline. By studying the handwritten book, its domain (besides the codex) should also include – albeit marginally – the roll, together with the most primitive book forms like tablets. The German term Handschriftenkunde might be considered more accurate in reflecting this range of meanings, since it is based on the term manuscript. In its fullest sense, it refers to more than the physical or material structure; it signifies the Art- science – of the handwritten book.

Thus, codicology studies the ancient and medieval book, and to a certain extent, the humanistic, Renaissance book, its multiple aspects, and the problems it poses. Whereas the printed book is the fruit of known and standardized technical procedures, the hand-copied book often conceals, totally or partially, those elements which concern its genesis – the when, where and why it was conceived and produced.

In an attempt to shed light on a number of unknown factors, codicology, by sifting through all useful clues, in the first place, tries to interpret the conditions of the original production of a book made as a craft product (Lemaire 1989, p. 4). As a handmade product the manuscript is a unicum, and has to be studied and evaluated as such, by investigating the complex network of factors – personal choices aside – of which it is the non-random result. It is also an archaeological arcanum (Id.), whose material facts, once certified by archaeology, are submitted to history so an explanation can be attempted. Therefore, this discipline is concerned with form, supports and all the technical procedures needed for the book to achieve realization, the last intervention being that of the writer, or the person who eventually decorates the book, in order to increase its value or to better illustrate it, and finally the person who puts all the parts together, with an appropriate assemblage and cover. In this sense, – codicology stricto sensu – is the archaeology of the book, the science of its material components, its physicality.

Nowadays, this science makes use of increasingly refined research methods, like laboratory techniques, and is undergoing constant evolution, thanks to which we are able to determine the animal species used in the manufacture of parchment, the wood used for boards in bookbinding or the ink and pigment components. We can accurately measure the width of the support, or bring vanished writing back to the surface and thereby read erased texts.

All these observations become possible only if we work directly on the original, just like in every branch of archaeology. In order to understand the book-object as an archaeological finding, reproductions are of little or no use since we cannot touch the support or look at it against the light to see all of its features (consistency, quality, texture, etc.). Nor can we measure the different dimensions – format, written surface, line-spacing, etc. – or make out prickings and ruling in order to understand the techniques used, or see the watermark that could help us date the artefact.

Only at the stage following the observation of the data does a reproduction come in handy, as a reminder, as evidence which allows us to construct data archives, etc., with the exception of watermark reproductions which, regardless of how they are retrieved, become indispensable for a correct classification.

But the book as a mere container is an abstraction.

The book-object exists as a carrier of a written message handed down over time and is to be preserved as evidence of an era. As such, the book is a social, as well as cultural, phenomenon, the product of intellectual activity with a destination in mind. Its origins are a meeting point between a scribe and a reader: a hand that knows how to write and a text that wants to be recognized in order to be copied, with a certain public in mind – readers who are able to understand it. It is a tool conditioned by the function it wishes to be attributed to it and which determines its circulation in a phase following the circumstance for which it was created¹. Another essential point therefore is that the study of the structural appearance must not be regarded as alien to the content; on the contrary, it must be closely correlated: (codicology) …is the historical-philological discipline whose objective is the study of the manuscript, or more precisely, the codex or handwritten book, in all its aspects, both formal and textual (Casamassima 1963, p. 181). The philological operation of reconstructing the text remains abstract if the object in which that text – whose roots are anchored in a cultural and material context – has been handed down, remains abstract. Thus, studying – and understanding, also by means of the text – the ideological substratum which has generated the book, and then investigating the path it has followed up to the present day (the manuscripts which have survived) is part of the history of every country, indicating the roots of its culture and traditions.

Accordingly, codicology goes beyond the study of the book as an artefact – of merely archaeological interest – and of those who commissioned it.

At a second level (codicology lato sensu), codicology follows the book afterwards, during its life as an independent entity, for what it represents or means, i.e., its public, its success, the events accompanying it (to whom it belonged, the process of selling or buying it), its conservation. Thus, analysis proceeds to synthesis, which is of a historical nature and which aims at studying the places of conservation and consultation (to be reconstituted, if necessary: collections and libraries, public and private) of the ancient and medieval world, as well as of the humanistic period, and likewise, the way it was registered – inventories and catalogues which assure historical memory. Any type of source is useful at this stage: repertories (those of scribes, catalogues, incipits, watermarks, reproductions, etc.), treatises (historical, biographical), bibliographical studies or those of scribal centres or libraries, critical editions and so on.

The many tasks and the scope of this discipline can, thus, be singled out gradually at different levels and can be schematized in the following way:

- analytical description of the single manuscript as an object and carrier of text. It must be stressed that the description, carried out scientifically, is the basic aim of the codicologist: the elements required are decided upon, not only to supply a reliable image of the artefact for the scholar who does not have the copy in front of him, but also, to allow a synthesis of successive steps (or levels) of work;

- sorting out the common elements in different manuscripts, which will allow for a grouping based on specific parameters, such as originating from the same scriptorium or having the same hand;

- structure and history of manuscript collections;

- creation of inventories and/or catalogues of such collections, with diversified methodologies, in both single libraries and general collections, according to country, subject, era, etc.

It is to be inferred, from what has been said, that codicology, even though recognised as autonomous, cannot actually consider itself as separate from the other disciplines that study the manuscript as carrier and witness of text. Given the close relation with the content, codicology interacts in harmony and shares descriptive procedures and a typological-formal methodology with palaeography, which studies the evolution of writing in different linguistic domains (Latin, Greek, Arabic, Slavic, etc.). But it cannot be reduced to the pure, mechanical, formal graphic fact, and it acquires a sense if sustained both by philology – which in turn implies textual analysis with its interpretation and its collocation within a handwritten tradition conceived in genealogical fashion – and, as a result, by literary history. It is interesting to add, in this context, Cavallo’s suggestion (2002d, p. 28), for a thirteenth article to be added to Giorgio Pasquali’s handbook: the material characters connoting the text’s vectors can, in certain cases, indicate facts, ways, phases of its history (and sometimes the ‘writing’ itself), in the light of a material philology which does not forget it is also a ‘total philology’ (ibidem, p. 23).

Basically, for the palaeographer and the philologist it is essential to make use of codicology in order to obtain in full the space-time coordinates of the text they are dealing with and – furthermore – because knowledge of the material techniques of manufacture constitutes a further addition to the history of any civilisation and culture. Moreover, since the material techniques also include the decorative aspects of a book, we might finally add the history of art, the history of the miniature, of great importance in supplying us with those clues which the results obtained by art historians furnish us with, so as to arrive at a global vision of the object.

With reference to the classical, perhaps outdated, family tree, or hierarchy in the human sciences, all four disciplines mentioned can thus be considered independent. Each has its own point of view, from which it observes the same book as an object, but all are complementary to one another and act as ancillae historiae. In such a way, finally, after much debate, we have seen a modification in the reductive version prevailing up to half a century ago, which considered palaeography an ancilla philologiae, and codicology a mere chapter of the former. Augusto Campana’s comment in the 1960s was apt in describing this vision: codicology does not exist, so much so – he went on – that all palaeography handbooks deal in the first place with supports, writing instruments, etc. (Campana 1967).

Within this renewed perspective, by broadening the viewpoint, our interacting disciplines are set alongside those others which in similar fashion are concerned with the graphic monuments of the past, handwritten objects whose only distinction consists in the nature of the writings (Masai 1956) even before that of the supports. These are: epigraphy, the oldest, which studies inscriptions sculpted on hard material; papyrology, the youngest, which investigates that body of papyri, both intact and fragmentary, which emerge during archaeological excavations; and diplomatic, which concerns documents and archival deeds. Then, each of these in turn finds itself parallel to the printed matter disciplines, according to relations which can be schematized as in fig. 1.

1.2 – METHODOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

It is important to stress immediately that, precisely because of deeply-rooted prejudices, since the birth of the (historical-philological) human sciences, the road leading to the presentday goal, i.e. a discipline with an independent status, has been demanding and uneven. To begin with, codicology actually existed even before the term designating it.

FIG. 1. Complementarity and interaction between book disciplines (re-elaboration of Ruiz 1988, pp. 26-27).

In 1708 Bernard de Montfaucon, in his treatise Palaeographia Graeca², not only laid the foundation for Greek palaeographical science, broadening the horizons of Mabillon’s diplomatic, but also, for the first time, investigated the origins of codices, seeking that information which is, today, considered indispensable for philological analysis. His intuition concerning the links between writing and culture opened up new perspectives in the study of texts, though it initiated that process of questioning which terminology to use, and the skills required.

For a further step forward however, we have to wait for more than a century.

Between 1825 and 1827, a German librarian, who was also the author of a pamphlet on the training of librarians (Die Bildung des Bibliothekars, 1820), Friedrich Adolf Ebert, in his Zur Handschriftenkunde – divided into two tomes (only the first interests us here) based on his experience in describing manuscripts in library of the Duke of Brunswick in Wolfenbüttel – made a clear distinction between the Bücherhandschriftenkunde, or science of manuscripts³, and diplomatic and epigraphy, stressing the former’s function. Its scope was to teach how to read a manuscript and take into consideration its internal (text = palaeography and philology) and external (supports, instruments, inks, general knowledge concerning writing, punctuation, binding, formats, numbering of collections and scriptoria, commerce, history of circulation) aspects (Ebert 1825). The intuition about the need for independent manuscript study was still not accompanied by a division into single components⁴.

That division took place in the 1900s with an improved definition of codicology according to specific terms, which detached it from palaeography and pointed it in the direction of full independence. Not immediately, however. In 1909 Ludwig Traube, taking things further than Ebert, singled out in the Handschriftenkunde a historical palaeography aimed at studying glosses and marginal notes and marks indicating cross-references, and library history, which deals with the global evaluation of the artefact as the product of a scribal centre, as part of a structure and as textual and cultural evidence. He attributed a preparatory function to general palaeography which reads the texts and dates and localises the writing (Traube 1909/1965²). The result was a science still secondary to philology. Moreover, the two German scholars diverged only in a methodological sense in the consideration of palaeography itself as part of (or with respect to) Handschriftenkunde.

Only in the 1920s and ‘30s, at the École des Chartes and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, did the distinction begin to get finer.

This happened when Samaran proposed the term codicographie, and later Dain who, in the above-mentioned work, Les manuscrits, listed the tasks which are pertinent to codicologie: the history of manuscripts, the history of manuscript collections, research into their current location, cataloguing problems, catalogue indices, commerce of manuscripts, their use, etc. On the other hand, what is relevant to palaeography is the study of the writing and the writing material, the structure of the book and its illustration, and an examination of its architecture. No real steps ahead here except on a terminological level in that codicology, still the handmaid of philology, is reduced to manuscript heuristics (their localization) and is only understood in a broader sense.

It was the Belgian school which reacted to this idea with the contribution of François Masai, the founder of the renowned palaeography and codicology journal, still published today, the Scriptorium (1946). In his two historical articles which came out in the journal in 1950 and 1956 respectively, he argued for the first time that palaeography and codicology have the right to exist in themselves, declaring that the former must study ancient scripts and, since these are encountered in written works, it concerns all written works, regardless of the support (hence a distinction between the disciplines which deal with written monuments derives mostly from their specific nature). Masai considered palaeography as belonging to the historical disciplines like bibliology or the history of miniatures. On the other hand, he considered codicology, which has to make use of those disciplines in the practical study of manuscripts in order to deepen our knowledge about them, as pertinent to the archaeological disciplines, defining it the archaeology of the most valuable monuments of a civilisation, i.e., its books (Masai 1950, p. 293).

The fracture was complete. Codicology was re-founded, justifying its declaration of independence (Savino 1991, p. 148): in Brussels in 1959 the Centre National d’Histoire et d’Archéologie du livre opened and in 1983 it was renamed the Centre International de Codicologie.

This new perspective was welcomed and enlarged by Léon Marie Joseph Delaissé (Delaissé 1956, 1967), who extended it to the history of the medieval book; the archaeology of the book was understood as a thorough material examination of the object and an interpretation of the observed facts, in relation to the content, whilst Gilbert Ouy went even further, in contributions dating from 1958 to 1972. Since the manuscript is a cultural phenomenon it is possible to study it from different angles: codices – being books – are the heritage of palaeography as far as writing is concerned, therefore they constitute a branch of bibliography that is to be studied in the same way as archives. His new concept of manuscript ‘collection’ whose creation and preservation should be attributed to an archivistics of manuscripts, was new. This is the same concept that inspired Paul Oskar Kristeller when he spoke of a heuristics of manuscripts (Kristeller 1976).

At about the same time, both Albert Derolez and Albert Gruys also drew upon Masai’s ideas of independence but with a further distinction between codicology in a wide sense (lato sensu), which studies the manuscript as an historical-cultural phenomenon and codicology in a strict sense (stricto sensu), which is what Masai intended with the term archaeology of the book, meaning an archaeological analysis of the book-object, a goal not in itself but as a point of departure for codicology in a wider sense (Derolez 1973; Gruys 1974b, 1976). More specifically, Gruys, embracing Samaran’s term, codicographie, as the art of describing manuscripts and manuscript collections (thus corresponding to Kristeller’s heuristics) enlarged the areas of interest of the new science from two to three.

Three spheres were also recognised by another Dutch scholar, Gumbert 1974a-b: a codicology which examines the manuscript in its individuality (archaeological analysis); a technical codicology which studies the techniques applied in the production of the book; a codicology which examines the book as a cultural phenomenon.

The second half of the 1970s saw the first concrete application of the ‘technical’ orientation in the extraordinary work of Léon Gilissen, curator and restorer at the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels. His Prolégomènes à la Codicologie (Gilissen 1977), a product of the scholar’s great curiosity about the craft aspects of the codex, constitute the first pillar of the archaeological science of the book.

The total evaluation of the handwritten book, in its different aspects, has helped to better circumscribe the boundaries of the different spheres of research, defining their aims more appropriately. Such an evaluation, inevitably, was meant to be embraced by research institutes whose very goal was the scientific organisation of codicological research, such as the Brussels Institute previously mentioned, and the older Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT) in Paris, founded in 1937 by Felix Grat. Thanks to a team of scholars, from the 1980s onwards, this institute has been at the forefront of manuscript investigation, basically aiming at a historical codicology whose tasks range from libraries, collections, and catalogues to a scientific or technical codicology which consists in the archaeological examination of the manuscript. It is also of importance as a documentation centre.

In short, the distinction between archivistic study, purely technical-material, and a study of the book as a cultural phenomenon, is now fully operational, with a broadening of perspectives, in both a diachronic sense (with interests also involving the era of the printed book) and in a spatial sense (with a widening of horizons which reaches out to the Arabic, Jewish, Slavic worlds etc., which will be discussed further on. There is also the more modern dynamic approach, which investigates the gestural nature of the artisan’s work, and the structuralist approach, which analyses the artefact ‘stratigrafically’, in order to retrace its genesis, studying in depth the concepts of constitution and transformation of the codex, understood as a phenomenon of production/circulation (Syntaxe 2013).

The discipline concerned with the handwritten book has without doubt reached full maturity, on equal terms with other sciences: …it studies manuscripts, above all medieval, in their material reality, which is no less important than the writing and the text (Palma 1991, p. 673). The manuscript is a vehicle for writing and the text, but it is also the material product of a society in which technique and ideology merge. All its characteristics have to be taken into consideration and in this way all the disciplines channelled towards it are fundamental, and at the same time all have to work together.

I.3 – QUANTITATIVE CODICOLOGY

One further chapter in the history of codicological studies deserves to be handled separately, the result of new times and needs, besides new technologies, and which is still active thanks to the tireless efforts of a compact group of scholars and neo-adepts. Quantitative codicology, as they define it, is a typical approach of the experimental sciences – concerning a science that is all but experimental⁵.

Already in the past, there had been sporadic attempts at quantitative analysis, including – if we are to consider it as such – that of Gilbert Ouy in 1972 (Codicologie latine médiévale) – that is, if we choose to ignore the first attempt at a normalized description of the codicological questionnaire (Maxi-Q) drawn up at the end of the 1960s by the Équipe de Recherche sur l’Humanisme Français des XIVe et XVe siècles of the CNRS (known today as Culture Ecrite du Moyen Age Tardif), of which Ouy himself was head (though he had no followers), later replaced by the elaborate IRHT version in the 1977 Guide (this too, however, was never used in cataloguing). The new tendency can be said to be effectively a product of the 1980s, with the work of two Italian scholars, members of the French CNRS, Carla Bozzolo and Ezio Ornato. Pour une codicologie expérimentale, 1982, is their methodological manifesto, whereas the definition of quantitative codicology appears for the first time in their volume Pour une histoire, published in 1980 (1983²). In later contributions, they defined further, and improved upon, the approach they had adopted, which is actually designed in opposition to accepted scholarly trends. The traditional approach to the medieval book, like in any other historical discipline in the humanities, is of a heuristic-deductive type, typical of erudite research. The detail is studied, then different evidence is gathered in order to achieve a generalisation of a certain coherence. Each manuscript is thus analysed and appraised in its uniqueness, before reconstructing the facts. Furthermore, the legacy of an ancillary vision of the history of the handwritten book – which was due mainly to the fact (except for the most recent approach of an archaeological type) that it was for centuries considered a mere support for the writing and/or decoration (simply considered as subordinate to the text) – has always hindered the application of research methodologies other than those usually adopted.

These scholars have shown that it is in fact possible to study the medieval book according to rules they define as experimental but which perhaps we might prefer to call scientific, while this methodology is actually the only one which solves the problems of such a fluctuant object, victim of subjectivity, allowing us to reach syntheses of clearly a more objective nature than others. They should be truly scientific and fundamentally, they go beyond the atavistic preconception of incompatibility between esprit de finesse and esprit de géométrie, founded mostly on the following observations basically amounting to an acknowledgement of certain limits:

the liberties we encounter in the activity of artisans and scribes reduce the potential for – even make illusory – research aimed at signalling constants, or organisational tendencies at a general level;

the documentation available is too incomplete to be subjected to investigations of a statistical nature. Indeed, we possess only a portion of the entire book production of the Middle Ages – furthermore, it is often neither dated nor localized – and we know that statistical methodologies require populations of a certain size in order to get reliable results;

the medieval book lacks invariants, it is often made up of different units, where in general the differences are numerous, even within homogeneous types, therefore it is difficult to gather them into a corpus of reasonable dimensions;

the scholars of these branches of the humanities have seldom received the training necessary to implement the statistical skills needed to carry out this type of investigation.

Given these limitations, these scholars consider the book as sociology considers the human being, studying its behaviour, not as an individual but as a member of a collectivity.

As the field of observation is structured in the same way, the manuscript is seen from a single perspective, i.e. as the fruit of a social activity that reflects a given socio-cultural context and as such can be treated with the same scientific character as that of a social science. Just like an individual in a group is conditioned by his belonging to a social structure – with obligations or needs influencing his actions – the manuscript too, in the making, obeys a whole complex system of constrictions of both a technical and economic nature – functional or canonical – which act upon it through the artisan-client pairing.

The analysis of the material components of the artefact will allow us to determine both what these constrictions are, as well as their evolution over time, and thus to trace it back to the society and the civilization which produced it. This will allow us to realise the true history of the book, the one based on all the different elements characterising it which are inseparable one from the other: its conception, making, diffusion, use, transmission, conservation and survival.

By reconstructing the manufacturing techniques used by the artisans, we can evaluate the different degrees of functionality, single out their mutations – which occurred in the techniques and in the habits of the production milieux – investigate price and market variations, etc. However, above all, such a history has to ask itself about the reasons for those mutations and why they spread from one centre to another, and those for which the exception became a system. In other words: why?

We can see how in this anthropo-sociological perspective – it involves the study of behavioural norms – since every mutation is determined not by the will of the individual but by variables which are expressed at a collective level, the manuscript loses its elitist singularity to become an element in an anonymous crowd whose interest consists of all that which it has in common with the mass, that which is ordinary, rather than that which allows it to stand out.

Therefore, as a craft product, it is true that it is a unicum, but with variable components. Much like a hologram, every detail contains the totality of the image (Bozzolo – Ornato 1982). And this variability, inherent to the structure of every codex, within different populations, is measurable and can be described, leading to the definition of the type of codex, but only if one knows how to discern clearly the random from the systematic, and can define appropriately the analysis sample appropriately, and can operate preliminary surveys of a certain breadth. What is more difficult to represent are the variants consisting of concepts which are too abstract and qualitative.

What are the phases in this type of investigation?

According to the principles of descriptive and inductive statistics, a variable can express itself in quantitative terms, beginning with a preparatory phase which consists of the identification of the variables to analyse and describe, in the choice, that is, of a given material characteristic (which tends to change or might be subject to change) of the population to be observed. This is the phenomenon to study, i.e., raw data is attributed the status of measurable variables whose conditions of observation are indicated; then, explaining the definition of quantitative investigation, which is carried out not on the single objects but on a quantity, from which a normalised or formalised representation must be extracted. To formalise means classify, and to classify means expressing in quantitative terms – in other words translatable into discreet units – given characteristics which at first sight are not quantitative.

Quantitative, we must stress, is not a synonym of computer-based, and on a number of occasions Bozzolo and Ornato have warned against eventual misunderstandings, since statistics and computing are only tools, albeit valuable. Concerning the use of computers, it is undeniable that the spread of the electronic brain at the end of the 1960s made the birth of a maximal approach possible, allowing us to accumulate a huge amount of data, greater than the observation capacity of a human being, and create databases on detailed description models available at every moment. That of the computer is a procedure that is no longer selective but exhaustive, in that it gives us the chance to obtain complete information about the phenomenon observed.

A sample is drawn from the population (it is impossible to comb through it entirely): this is a corpus of manuscripts. In this operation, an initial problem is already implicit, concerning the reliability of the sample (more than its consistency) which, according to statistical rules, has to be rigorously representative and thus attain the principle of randomness and independence.

Then we move on to the operational phase which begins by extracting from the sample the coherent information it contains, i.e., the system of interrelations innate in the individuals of the corpus and in the variables analyzed. Every interrelation singled out produces a result, but this has to be convalidated and subsequently interpreted and if possible traced back to its historical motivations.

The interpretation is the key to the whole procedure but before getting there it is important for the data gathered to be well defined so as to deliver reliable final results (in a statistical sense, i.e. in the sense that sporadic deformations of single manuscripts should not lead to disastrous consequences). With this aim in mind, what is absolutely indispensable is the elaboration of a univocal, universally accepted protocol of description that minimizes or annuls the risks of ambiguous or incomplete – and thus insufficient – definitions, the inevitable cause of deformed results.

When a given feature of the manuscripts is measured, and it is noted according to circumstances, the artefacts can be grouped on the basis of common features. However, as has already been said, in order to go beyond this and understand if those variations can lead back to chronological segments or indicated geographical spheres. Is it a reflection of tendencies? Or a mutation of aesthetic taste? Must we seek out much clearer motivations that, to a certain extent, forced the hand of the craftsman? Or is it human intervention on material that, at the beginning, is homogeneous? In this case, did the intervention take place before or after the manufacture? Once the most plausible hypothesis has been chosen, by looking further into the motivations and modality of the phenomenon, it is possible to proceed to the verification (or the falsification) of the hypothesis assumed.

Lack of confidence might have occurred in the face of the certainty shown in these methodological ideas – mistrust of formative deficiencies, mistrust due to initial disadvantages, since descriptions of available manuscripts are lacking in numerical data which lend themselves to this type of treatment, etc. -. The scholars in question reacted to this, hoping for close interdisciplinary collaboration, where each one offers his own specific skills, nevertheless stressing also the need for teamwork – thus lightening the load of data-gathering – in a scientific approach. Furthermore, they tried to demystify the preconceived idea prevalent at the time, that a computer was a miracle machine, mysterious and accessible only to a few initiates.

Today, great strides have been made: our whole life has been imperceptibly transformed by computerization, to such an extent that it cannot be conceived in any other way, therefore the recommendation expressed above no longer makes any sense. Instead, it is never useless to insist upon a collaboration between specialists, with or without differences, which, on a number of occasions, has produced good results.

Indeed, quantitative codicologists themselves have shown this to be the case, with fastpaced production, applying basic principles to definite objectives. From the French manuscript of the early Middle Ages, thanks to the expansion of the school, their investigative field has opened up to populations of other nations of the Latin West, especially Italy in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries. What emerges is the fact that the medieval craftsman, in the choices he made, was not so much guided by aesthetic taste as by motivations of a functional and economic nature, which, moreover, turned out to be in contrast with aesthetics and which forced him into making compromises to save both the one and the other. This is the basic explanation given about measurements and formats, the adoption of the two columns rather than the full page, or certain relations resulting from the parameters of the written page. This will be discussed later on.

Despite the success, however, there has been no lack – in those studies inherent to the medieval book, like codicology, palaeography and philology – of a certain sporadic perplexity, manifested openly, which has failed to lead to an outcome. Caterina Tristano manifested a certain unease concerning procedures that began with formulations of pre-arranged hypotheses, and confuted the idea that the imperatives of the craftsman were not of an aesthetic order (Tristano 1991). Paolo Radiciotti, on the other hand, in analysing common tendencies in the approach to codices which range from the traditional ones, of a heuristic type, to the more innovative (like the partial structuralist outline of Costamagna or Casamassima or the historicist idea behind Cencetti’s Roman school and those of a quantitative type), considered this orientation as an assertion of a true/false binary logic (statistically it can be translated as presence/absence). This logic, like a loophole concerning the partially empirical and subjective character of this investigative field, confers authoritativeness upon those who carry out the censuses, which those who are extraneous to the research cannot verify. Radiciotti stressed the dubiousness of an investigative procedure whose results are mediated by the impersonal calculation of the computer and which, applied to a category of which we preserve only partial evidence, and in chronologically privileged slots, would already appear weak, methodologically incorrect and subject to statistical error (Radiciotti 1999).

Rather than bugbears, these methods should be seen as subsidiaries, if there is a need, and as complementary to the old methods, offering a confirmation of phenomena emerging from a traditional, critical study of the sources. Gumbert once proclaimed that We belong to the same community (Gumbert 2004b, p. 526), and, using different approaches, we all contribute to understanding the same object, the handwritten book. As far as the application method is concerned, the details can differ slightly, as in the case of Malachi Beit-Arié, who works in a rather different – and perhaps privileged – field, that of Hebrew manuscripts (spread around Europe, in contrast to the thousands of European Latin Codices). Beit-Arié does not assume as a basis the theoretical datum (or a sample which he supposes belongs to a universe) to verify later on. On the contrary, without calling upon sociology as a postulate, he starts from a definite, given universe, i.e., from the material gathering of documentation, the largest possible number of dated manuscripts, already subdivided into geographical areas. These are representative tangible data, empirically recorded and quantitatively sorted (Beit-Arié 2003, p. 13), from which he draws the variables, which are all the quantifiable codicological features, so as to arrive at theoretical conclusions afterwards (Beit-Arié 1994). On the interpretation of the two respective methods, that of Ornato and that of Beit-Arié, both of them quantitative and based on statistic techniques, Canart in 2005 has much to say.

Continuing the discussion of the definition of quantitative codicology, it might have been more accurate to call it statistical codicology, or even codicological statistics. And why not inferential codicology? This is clearly not the place to argue this point, but the question is of interest, also because perplexities induce us to consider that, despite Bozzolo’s and Ornato’s optimism in overcoming the dichotomy esprit de finesse / esprit de géométrie, and despite technological progress, such a dichotomy is probably destined to remain forever.

I.4 – COMPARATIVE CODICOLOGY

Areas of reference

It is easy to see how the possibilities of mass treatment of a huge quantity of data offered by new electronic technology does not only allow for a rapid and thorough dissemination of investigative results, but naturally and inevitably encourages scholars from different linguistic and cultural areas to compare their work.

After the first results some decades ago, a full development of this new orientation is seen today: the exploitation – for manuscript collections in other languages too – of the same working methods used for Greek and Latin manuscripts, subject to a verification of the existence of given assumptions. The first, for example, is a large enough quantity of material which can be read, i.e., dated or datable material, localised or localisable, which will allow us to apply known structural survey parameters, with consistent, practical results, for the history of culture in both a specific linguistic sphere and in the background of a vaster historical scenario. The function of the media