Colophons and Running Titles: On New Terminology in Describing Greek Manuscripts of the Ninth–Tenth Centuries, in: Greek Manuscript Cataloguing: Past, Present, and Future (Bibliologia: elementa ad librorum studia pertinentia. 48), eds. P. Degni, P. Eleuteri, M. Maniaci, Turnhout 2018, pp. 239–251

A pdf file of the paper is available by request. This paper focuses on just a few aspects and terms that were introduced for the comprehensive description of illuminated manuscripts published in the first volume of the Corpus of Greek illuminate Manuscripts in Russian Collections (2013). So-called ‘colophons’ may denote not only the scribes' inscriptions and the ἐξεδόθη-Notizen, but also colophons of a third type: a repeat of the title at the end of the text. When embellished they are examined as an element in the overall decoration of the book. Description of the running titles and consecutive numbers side by side with the titles, headings and marginalia amplifies the characteristics of the codex. Such terms as ‘decoration of an irregular type’, ‘decoration of a transitional type’ and ‘decorative system of a regular type’ used for the description and characteristics of manuscript illumination. The material provided by illuminated manuscripts of the 9th to 10th cc. prompts us to view the evolution of book decoration in several distinct stages: from irregular decoration it passed through a transitional period, before the formation of a regular decorative system. The period of transformation lasted about a century, from the mid-9th c. to mid-10th c., with the gradual introduction of new features to the structure of the codex. The main tendency in manuscript design of the transitional phase was a gradual shift of the reader’s attention from the end of the text to the beginning.