Historical Background and "How-To" Projects in Paleography, Papyrology, and Codicology
This section will discuss uncial and half-uncial (also can be referred to as semi-uncial) lettering regarding Latin Palaeography as well as provide a guide on how to write each letter. ...continue reading "Uncial / Half-Uncial (Historical Background and How To)"
What scripts did the ancient Romans use? In the absence of a printing press, everything was handwritten, but we can still identify distinct scripts that were used for different purposes. It was square capitals (capitalis quadrata) for inscriptions on public monuments since the early imperial age, old and new Roman cursive for daily writing (shopping lists, inventories, birthday notes etc), and rustic capitals for copying out literary works.
...continue reading "Ancient Scripts: Rustic Capitals, Old and New Roman Cursive"
Before I begin the Historical Background for Multi-Quire Codices, you may find a few other pages to be useful in learning how to make single-quire codices, multi-quire codices, and parchment.
Multi-quire codices emerged from single-quire codices. A single quire codex takes the form of what we consider today as a traditional book. To learn more about the single-quire codex and codices in general take a look at this page:
This link will give you the necessary steps to construct your own multi-quire codex:
How to make a multi-quire codex
This link will provide information on the parchment making process:
Here, I will discuss the historical and cultural background information that laid the foundation for the multi-quire codex to emerge.
The development and implementation of the multi-quire codex came as a result of cultural changes occurring throughout Europe and the necessity for documenting religious texts beginning with the 1st - 4th centuries AD. The first shift that laid the foundation for the emergence of multi-quire codices was the transition from papyrus to parchment. Though there were papyrus codices for the first few hundred years of the codex form, parchment eventually overtook papyrus beginning in the 4th century AD. From this initial change in book material, parchment codex gained popularity with the Christian church that utilized first in monasteries. From this point on we see efforts of standardization of scripts and literature, one of the first being Charlemagne. The constant revival of literacy and transcribing that consumed this period are the primary sources of the surviving manuscripts and texts we possess today.
This post will provide you with an overview that will leave you with a general idea of the different aspects of the scroll from production to importance.
It wasn’t until the fourth century AD that the Medieval world was introduced to monastic life, in the form of a devout Egyptian Christian named Pachomius that thought it was a good idea to have an isolated space to be humbly miserable and to worship God at the same time. His concept spread rapidly throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, and with it, his expectation for all monks to be literate. About two hundred years later in 529 AD, Benedict established Monte Cassino, a soon to be famous Italian monastery close to Rome and Naples, and took literacy one step further than his predecessors. His Rule of Saint Benedict provides some guidelines for monastic life at Monte Cassino, including a section called “On Daily Manual Labor,” where reading is one of the compulsory activities built into a monk’s very regimented schedule. Soon after, Cassiodorus founded Vivarium in South Italy, and pushed for more than just idly reading texts--he made copying them yet another compulsory task. Suddenly, as per popular adoption of Cassiodorus’ Institutes rule book, copying texts of all kinds became an important (and highly pretentious) part of life in monasteries. He saw copying biblical texts as spreading the message of the Christian religion and “fighting with pen and ink against the unlawful snares of the devil” (ch. 30), which seems as noble a purpose as any for devout monks to perform daily as part of their grueling manual labor. And trust me, it was grueling.
...continue reading "Medieval Book Production and Monastic Life"
In the modern world, literature, and text in general, is so ubiquitous and presented in so many varied forms that we take the act of creating textual media for granted. Modern “authors” are able to create shareable works from anywhere, in a variety of typefaces, and at negligible repeated cost. The modern literary economy is so widespread that even as I acknowledge the carelessness with which we treat the written word, I create my analysis with taps of my fingers while music plays in my ears. While the scribes who created the works which have survived to us from antiquity would no doubt envy the ease with which works are created and copied today, their jealousy would not be limited to the act of production itself. ...continue reading "Out of the Hands of Slaves: A Comparative History of the Roman book production Economy"
Carolingian Miniscule owes its fame to Charlemagne, though not its actual creation, it was around long before Charlemagne made it the norm in his empire. Crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. by Pope Leo III, his reign only lasted until 814, Charlemagne was able to bring a large amount of change to Europe and bring back an intellectual populace that had not been known since before the splitting of the Roman Empire into East and West. With education reforms that Charlemagne put in place, the stage was set for a simple, easy to read script meant for the lay person to take over from the many evolved cursive forms used in very formal and courtly documents. ...continue reading "Carolingian miniscule"
Is there one thing you cannot survive without? A teddy bear, phone, or even your BFF. Well, this type of dependent relationship, noted above, exists between the writing surface and the writing instrument. One has no purpose without the other. The very existence of literature depends on this "friendship' between paper and pen. I say this very loosely due to the fact that our paper and pen wasn’t, in fact, the paper and pen of antiquity to the dark ages. What did they use then?
...continue reading "The Writing Instrument ( The Reed and Quill) and Ink"
In the following post, I will discuss papyrus and its function in the history of writing and documentation. I will first explain the general history of the material, followed by a brief explanation of how we now believe rolls of papyrus were constructed. Lastly, I will describe my experiences with papyrus in order to provide my insight into its quality as a writing surface. This piece serves to highlight the role of papyrus in the development of writing, documentation, and literature as we now know it.
In the words of scholars Roberts and Skeat, “parchment of good quality is the finest writing material ever devised by man” (1987), and it has played an instrumental role in book production through centuries. Read on and watch the video at the bottom of this page to understand its unique qualities and history. ...continue reading "Parchment"