Medieval Manuscripts

Basado en las premisas de la literacy, la cual considera al lenguaje escrito y oral un sistema dialéctico que transforma y es transformado por la realidad, a partir de su acción en los espacios de lectura y de escritura, el presente artículo muestra un análisis de las diversas copias de los manuscritos de los cinco romans courtois de Chrétien de Troyes, con el objetivo de establecer el posible alcance y su relación con la cultura material de los siglos XIII al XV. En este sentido, se hace énfasis en la posible procedencia de los manuscritos, sus características físicas, su lengua y su contenido, así como su relación con otros textos incluidos en diversos corpus documentales.

Palabras clave: Chrétien de Troyes; manuscritos; literatura medieval francesa; materialidad; literacy.

Based on the premises of literacy, which considers the written and oral language as a dialectic system that transforms and is transformed by reality, and based on its action in the reading and writing spaces, this paper presents an analysis of the various copies of the manuscripts of the five romans courtois written by Chrétien de Troyes, with the objective of establishing the possible scope and its relation to the material culture of the 13th to 15th centuries. In this sense, this article emphasizes the possible provenance of the manuscripts, their physical features, language and content, as well as their connection with other texts included in various documentary corpora.

Keywords: Chrétien de Troyes; manuscripts; French medieval literature; materiality; literacy.

"This article claims a critical return to the study of the main manuscripts of the “heretical” book written by Marguerite dicta Porete (Le Mirouer des simples ames) for analizing codicological aspects which neither the editions, nor the modern translations, have taken into account. In doing so we propose a series of analysis of the so-called Chantilly manuscript (Musée Condé, ms. F xiv 26, cat. 157) and the manuscripts of the Latin
tradition kept in the Vatican Library (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 4355; Cod. Rossianus 4; Cod. Chigianus B IV 41; Cod. Chigianus C IV 85 and Vat. Lat. 4953) based on the marginal marks (manicules, nota bene and iconography) which identify those books more as reading devices than as mere material supports of a text. We will show how these elements provide us with information about the text transmission and its reception (its reading)."

La recherche porte sur les sources antiques et chrétiennes (la seconde partie portera sur les sources arabes et juives), parfois non identifiées, ou citées de façon muette, que Raymond Martin utilise dans son ouvrage. Les deux éditions du Pugio Fidei (XVIIe siècle) n’étant pas indexées, il n’existe aucune étude d’ensemble sur cette question et les études partielles sont très peu nombreuses.
L’analyse de détail (menée systématiquement, en relation avec les bases de données dont on dispose aujourd’hui) montre que la plupart des citations païennes et chrétiennes sont de seconde main et qu’en ce domaine, les emprunts à Thomas d’Aquin, souvent muets et parfois très étendus, sont beaucoup plus nombreux que ne le laissaient entendre les études antérieures. L’étude de ces citations nous informe à la fois sur la « bibliothèque » utilisée par l’auteur du Pugio fidei (en partie reconstituée, au terme de cette démarche), sur sa méthode de travail et sur l’étendue de ses connaissances. Elle intéresse donc l’histoire des bibliothèques (celle du couvent dominicain de Barcelone a disparu, sans véritable inventaire, au début du XIXe siècle), du texte et de son auteur.

Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constant use and exposure to the elements or been deliberately cut up to be reused in other fashions or sold on the collectors' market, the fragments produced by these destructive circumstances still have much to tell modern scholars about the medieval codices of which they were once a part. Through a series of six case studies focusing on a disparate array of fragments, this essay demonstrates how scholars can use the University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts to help recover the hidden histories of fragmentary manuscripts.

Due to its central location the Chaghadaid ulus played a key role in the interregional diplomatic connections in the Mongol period. Unfortunately, comparing to the other three uluses of the Mongol Empire we have a very limited number of written sources concerning the Chaghadaid realm. The aim of the present paper is to show how the
new results of the philological study of the Old Uyghur and Middle Mongolian documents can throw new light upon our knowledge about the diplomatic practices in the Chaghadaid ulus. The paper concentrates on the two most important institutions which facilitated diplomatic relations: the chancelleries and the postal system.

This study examines MS Escorial T.I.6—Alfonso X el Sabio's Libro de açedrex, dados e tablas (1283)—and the relations of its text, images and ideas to Alfonso's ambitious political and cultural enterprises.  Games such as chess, backgammon, and dice are presented in Alfonso's treatise as co-extensive with legislation and other cultural products aimed at the shaping of the moral and civic character of his subjects. As ruler of a nascent nation-state and would-be empire, Alfonso perceived games as not just entertainment but also political technologies capable of representing and re-shaping existential and political realities and ideals.  Ludic tools of control and signs of the growing impersonality of domination, the Alfonsine games thus, like his laws, marked the transfer of authority from the person of the king to abstract sets of rules and to subjects regulated by their own desire to be part of the games of emerging modern powers.

Copyright Policy: eHumanista does not charge fees for submission or publication of articles. The content of eHumanista is licensed under the Creative Commons BY. It can be shared and distributed in any format. It can be adapted, transformed and created under the following conditions: Acknowledgement: Authorship must be clearly stated and a link the original text and to this license must be provided, expressly indicating if changes have been made.

http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/

http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.span.d7_eh/files/sitefiles/ehumanista/volume31/ehum31.fajardo-FINAL.pdf

... Autores: Susan Boynton; Localización: Traditio: Studies in ancient and medieval history, thought, and religion, ISSN 0362-1529, Nº 57, 2002 , págs. 189-217. Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. Acceso de usuarios registrados Usuario. Contraseña. Entrar. ...

The article describes the history of the European lexicographic tradition from the 8th to the 15th century with
the particular attention devoted to those vocabularia and glossaria which contain Polish glosses. The author
discusses the terms such as: dictionarium, vocabularium, granarium, rosarium and glossarium. All the
locations of the 15thcentury Latin lexicographic sources which include Polish words are enumerated and
new research perspectives are shown, in particular those concerning the problems which are awaiting further
examination.

This article showcases a cloak-and-dagger visual sequence of imperial murder.  The unique imagery is found in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, the most ambitious illustrated history produced in the Mediterranean between late antiquity and the thirteenth century.  Its illustrations were executed in Sicily at the court of Roger II in Palermo around the middle of the twelfth century. 
Employing approaches developed in narrative theory and insights derived from studies of translation and adaptation, this article analyzes how the visual narrative selectively 'foregrounds' the bloody drama of the demise of emperor Leo V at the hands of his challenger Michael the Amorian.  In this dialogic adaptation, an episode of Byzantine history was creatively restaged for visual display to a Sicilian audience.  Produced in a place that was conversant in Byzantine culture, yet not bound by its political, ideological or representational constraints, the visual narrative navigates a novel third way between the Byzantine text and the manuscript's Sicilian context.

Resumen: Diferentes grupos de poder han recurrido a la capacidad persuasiva de la literatura profética de carácter apocalíptico para construir sus discursos. Un buen ejemplo es la obra de Telesforo da Cosenza (1356-1390), aparecida en un momento de gran inestabilidad de la Iglesia occidental. El Ms. 2667 de la BGH es uno de los testimonios más tempranos de esta obra en Castilla. Su elaboración en Córdoba, en un círculo próximo a Diego de Anaya, permite acotar las singularidades de su recepción, así como nuevas consideraciones acerca de la producción libraria castellana.


Abstract: Different groups with considerable power have shaped their discourses using the persuasive capacity of the apocalyptic prophetic literature. One example of this is Telesforo da Conseza’s work (1356-1390), which emerged during a time of great instability for the Latin Church. Ms. 2667 of BGH is one of the earliest testimonies of his works in Castile. This was accomplished in Cordoba, next to Diego de Anaya’s circle. This information allows to narrow down the singularities of its reception and new considerations regarding the book production in Castile.

Review of Catherine A. Bradley and Karen Desmond, eds, The Montpellier Codex: The Final Fascicle, Contents, Contexts, Chronologies, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2018), pp. 351, 2 colour + 17 b&w illust., £75. ISBN: 978-1-78327-272-3.

After a brief survey of the rich reception of [Quintilian] throughout the Middle Ages, the contribution focuses on two key types of sources: the florilegia of classical authors, and the two extant medieval full rewritings of the Maiores (the so-called Excerpta Parisina and Excerpta Monacensia, both anonymous). Three florilegia are specifically taken into account, namely the Florilegium Galli- cum, the Florilegium Angelicum, and the Florilegium Morale Oxoniense; for all of them, the treatment of the original text and the relation with the direct tradition of the Maiores are considered. Also, the current stemmatic reconstruction of the transmission of the first two florilegia is challenged according to new evidence. In the last section of the paper, attention is called to the text of the Excerpta, which has not received any philological examination since 1905; and an attempt is made to collect and assess evidence pointing to the possible ascription of the Excerpta Parisina to Adelard of Bath.

I libri elencati nel più antico inventario provano che il convento di San Domenico, a Bologna, fu sede di un 'studium' in grado di offrire una preparazione in campo teologico e filosofico di alto livello ed ebbe maestri che seppero offrire strumenti - ovvero testi - aggiornati e di grande valore scientifico. In questo articolo è offerta una prima analisi della raccolta libraria tuttora conservata del convento domenicano.

Questo volume è il secondo della serie Incunaboli a Catania e contiene la descrizione dei 113 incunaboli (più un caso dubbio) conservati alla Biblioteca Regionale Uni-versitaria di Catania, una volta Regia Biblioteca Universitaria della città etnea. I testimoni a stampa del Quattrocento sono qui studiati e descritti in quanto portatori di informazioni uniche e trattati nella maniera in cui abitualmente si analizzano e si descrivono i manoscritti, considerandoli dunque come un unicum; l'attenzione alle parti paratestuali, alle note di possesso, alle attestazioni di dono, alle note a margine, consente di scoprire nuovi documenti e di registrare nuove testimonianze storiche che offrono sollecitazioni e contribuiscono al diffondersi di una rinnovata sensibilità verso i primi prodotti della stampa e i loro utilizzatori nel tempo e nello spazio.

Abstract. This article proposes a first systematic approach to the manuscript tradition of the Liber de causis. It studies both the manuscript variants and the doctrinal difficulties raised by the transliteration of the Arabic al-ʿaql preserved in the Latin translation. Some authors (such as Albert the Great) interpreted this transliteration as a concept forged by Arab philosophers without an equivalent in Latin. Other authors (such as Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome) do not mention it because they probably knew a different branch of the manuscript tradition. By examining one hundred and ten Latin manuscripts of the Liber de causis (out of two hundred and sixty-five currently known), the article establishes a list of the numerous variations regarding the presence of this transliteration in the text and its forms or spellings (alatyr, alachili, adlahic etc.). This analysis enables a better understanding of both Albert’s position and the hitherto unsuspected diversity of the transmission of the Liber de causis in the Latin West.

In 1917, Josep Masdeu, the monastery archivist of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, identified four songs written down in some blank
spaces of a paper-based notarial book of the village. In 1935, Higini Anglès, a musicologist of recognized prestige, made them public and
since then, they comprise the songbook of Sant Joan de les Abadesses, the unique troubadour catalogue in Catalonia including both the
text of the songs and their equivalent musical notation to be performed. From that moment on, the manuscript has been studied in many
occasions from a linguistic and musical point of view. The manuscript, currently preserved at the National Library of Catalonia, includes
some other text passages of legal topics which we analyse in depth because they delimit the exact chronological period of the song writings.
Our study, therefore, has been focused on three main purposes. In the first place, we revise the contributions made so far regarding the
description of the document. Next, we build up the archivistic history of the manuscript, from the moment it was discovered until it was
deposited in the library mentioned above. Finally, we frame the overall context of the songbook production based on the extraliterary and
extramusical texts.

This article discusses London, British Library, Additional MS 15268, a late 13th-century witness of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César made in Acre. Stemming from the double premise that a text’s purport is affected by the context in which it is read and therefore cannot be explained in terms of authorial intention only, and that each manuscript offers a singular rendition of the text, this article considers how Additional 15268 enacts a politics of identity that relies on, yet also challenges, the communities to which its readers think they belong. Placing my analysis within the communicative praxis enabled by the manuscript, I suggest that Additional 15268 resorts to a pictorial ‘Crusader style’ and an Outremer French scripta to uphold a possible model of identity for its readers. However, because such models are contentious, I discuss how these same features may provoke diverging views, notably concerning female warriors, Byzantine style, and Outremer French. My claim is that by triggering engagement in its readers, the manuscript is a political agent that impacts its readers beyond what it is intended for.

The Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely read works of the early Middle Ages, as is evidenced by the number of surviving manuscripts. August Eduard Anspach’s handlist from the 1940s puts their number at almost 1,200, of which approximately 300 were estimated to have been copied before the year 1000. This article, based on a new manuscript survey of the early medieval manuscripts transmitting the Etymologiae, brings the number of known surviving pre-1000 manuscripts transmitting the Etymologiae to almost 450. Of these, 84 well-preserved codices and 24 fragments contain the canonical Etymologiae, i.e., they reflect the integral transmission of Isidore’s work as an encyclopedia, while 300 well-preserved codices and 21 fragments reflect the selective or non-canonical transmission of the Etymologiae, principally not as an encyclopedia. Due to the uneven survival rates of manuscripts of canonical and non-canonical Etymologiae, it seems likely that the latter accounted for perhaps as much as 80-90% of manuscripts transmitting Isidore’s work before the year 1000. Four non-canonical formats emerge as having been particularly influential in the early Middle Ages: the separate transmission of the first book of the Etymologiae as an ars grammatica; the compilation of various catechetical collections, sometimes in question-and-answer form, from books VI, VII, and VIII of the Etymologiae; the incorporation of material from books V and IX into law collections; and the incorporation of segments from books III, V, VI, and XIII into computistic manuals. The surviving manuscripts suggest that the latter format emerged in the insular world, while the others are more distinctly Carolingian. Northern France and northern Italy emerge as the two most important regional hubs of the copying of the Etymologiae in the ninth and tenth centuries. While in the former region, non-canonical formats seem to have been the most important vehicle of the transmission of material from Isidore’s work, in the latter, the canonical format may have been more influential, indicating that there existed regional differences in the reception of the Etymologiae.

Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over five hundred years of continuous Byzantine rule. At a stroke, the region's Greek Christian inhabitants were cut off from their Orthodox compatriots in Byzantium and became subject to the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic popes. Nonetheless, they continued to follow the religious laws of the Byzantine church; out of thirty-six surviving manuscripts of Byzantine canon law produced between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the majority date to the centuries after the Norman conquest.

Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy is a historical study of these manuscripts, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of medieval southern Italy persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule. The first part of the book provides an overview of the source material and the history of Italo-Greek Christianity. The second part examines the development of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts from the last century of Byzantine rule to the late twelfth century, arguing that the Normans' opposition to papal authority created a laissez faire atmosphere in which Greek Christians could continue to follow Byzantine religious law unchallenged. Finally, the third part analyses the papacy's successful efforts to assert its jurisdiction over southern Italy in the later Middle Ages. While this brought about the end of Byzantine canon law as an effective legal system in the region, the Italo-Greeks still drew on their legal heritage to explain and justify their distinctive religious rites to their Latin neighbours.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/byzantine-religious-law-in-medieval-italy-9780198861140

This article describes computer-assisted methods for the analysis of textual variation within large textual traditions. It focuses on the conversion of the XML apparatus into NEXUS, a file type commonly used in bioinformatics.
Phylogenetics methods are described with particular emphasis on maximum parsimony, the preferred approach for our research. The article provides details on the reasons for favouring maximum parsimony, as well as explaining our choice of settings for PAUP. It gives examples of how to use VBase, our variant database, to query the data and gain a better understanding of the phylogenetic trees. The relationship between the apparatus and the stemma explained.
After demonstrating the vast number of decisions taken during the analysis, the article concludes that as much as computers facilitate our work and help us expand our understanding, the role of the editor continues to be fundamental in the making of editions.

Damos a conocer un códice de finales del siglo xv que contiene parcialmente el texto de las Ordenanzas generales de Ávila aprobadas en 1487. Se trata de un manuscrito que, pese a no haberse conservado completo, ofrece diversos atractivos, el principal de los cuales es una serie de disposiciones totalmente desconocidas –hasta hoy se creían perdidas–, que permitirán recuperar por completo esta obra. Presentamos aquí una descripción del manuscrito y de su contenido textual. A continuación, esbozamos un análisis comparativo de los distintos testimonios y finalmente trazamos las pautas para una edición del texto íntegro.

A la baixa Edat Mitjana i a l'època moderna, els tractats de cirurgia van ser el principal objectiu de la vernacularització de la medicina a tot l'Occident europeu. Per a qui no hi estigui familiaritzat i els consideri des d'una perspectiva presentista, pot resultar sorprenent, sobretot si es constata que no era estrany que els profans en medicina els tinguessin a les seves biblioteques. A partir d'una anàlisi d'aquestes obres, s'exposen les raons del fet, que cal cercar en un contingut molt més ampli i divers del que es podria pensar i —segurament a l'origen d'això— en uns cirurgians que feien més que de cirurgians tal com s'entenen avui i en una societat que havia de comptar amb l'autoajuda mèdica en un grau elevat.
-----
In the late Middle Ages and the early Modern Age, treatises on surgery became the main objective of the vernacularization of medicine in all Western Europe. Perhaps this may seem surprising for those who are not familiarised with the topic or consider it from a contemporary perspective. In particular, when they realise that even the unexperienced in medicine kept some of these treatises in their libraries. Based on the analysis of these works, some reasons to explain this fact will be provided, which point towards a broader and more diverse content than they might think—and perhaps—towards surgeons that were much more than our modern surgeons. And, finally, also towards a society where medical self-help was highly appreciated.

This conference aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to pre-modern manuscripts and manuscript texts. Key topics include:

• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to corpora of pre-modern manuscripts and texts;
• Network analysis as a means of understanding the circulation of texts and transmission of knowledge in the pre-modern period;
• Quantitative study of networks of medieval book exchange and letter exchange;
• Network analysis as a tool of textual criticism and text editing;
• Network graphs as stemmata of texts and genres with complex textual history;
• Networks of co-citation of pre-modern authors and authoritative texts;
• Networks of co-occurrence and compilation of texts in medieval manuscripts;
• Network analysis as a tool for the study of annotation practices and commentary traditions in pre-modern manuscript cultures;
• Network analysis as a tool for the study of citation and reception in pre-modern manuscript cultures.

-----ABSTRACT: Around the year 1000, Muslim physician Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Zahrāwī composed a voluminous medical encyclopedia, Al-Taṣrīf li-man ʿajiza ʿan al-tāʾlīf, the thirtieth treatise (Al-Maqāla al-thalāthūn) of which was subsequently translated into many languages, for embodying a ground-breaking illustrated work on the surgical knowledge and instruments of its time. In Anatolia circa 1465, the Ottoman physician Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu produced his own surgical magnum opus Cerrāḥiyyetü’l-ḫāniyye by rendering this work into Turkish and replicating its instrumental drawings, and adding to it new chapters and supplementary miniatures. In this study, we both confirm the genuineness of the added chapters by comparison with Leclerc’s French translation of Al-Maqāla al-thalāthūn, which similarly appears to contain additional parts, and investigate the nature of the core text annexed from Al-Maqāla al-thalāthūn. In producing the translated portion of his work, Sabuncuoğlu remained for the most part within the bounds of metaphrasis, i.e., literal translation, though with both significant and insignificant instances of paraphrasis based on omission or interpolation. The relatively insignificant instances typical of most medieval works of translation include contributions of adjectival, adverbial or nominal specification, further elaboration and non-essential addition in one or a few words. The longer instances include professional anecdotes interpolated occasionally either with some demarcating verba dicendi or through a seamless transition, and missing lines that appear to have been omitted or to be absent due to their unavailability in the source text(s). By presenting a number of typically exemplifying excerpts, we attempted to specify these divergences of Cerrāḥiyyetü’l-ḫāniyye from Al-Maqāla al-thalāthūn, to which the literature so far has very generally referred as “the contribution of Sabuncuoğlu”. Moreover, we found that the second set of paraphrastic divergences, to which we attributed special significance, provided clues as to the source text(s) of Cerrāḥiyyetü’l-ḫāniyye, by which we propose a connection with the contemporaneous Huntington manuscript.

De Proprietatibus Quorundam Animalium : a Bestiary in the ms. 28 of Avranches Library
https://journals.openedition.org/rursuspicae/540
Manuscript 28 of Avranches is the result of the binding together of two distinct codices in the seventeenth century. It consists of various short religious texts: commentaries and biblical glosses, distinctiones, treatises on vices and virtues, sermons, etc. Among this extensive textual material for preaching use, in the second part of the manuscript (dating from the 13th century), we find a bestiary entitled De proprietatibus quorundam animalium (f. 179-180). This is the unique text on animals surviving from the library of the Mont Saint-Michel Abbey. A short collection of exempla (partly involving animals) is added to the bestiary, and is entitled Ecce similitudines multe de diversis (f. 180-180v). The bestiary and the collection of similitudines seem to form a set; they may have had the same use for the compiler. The bestiary consists of about 30 short chapters, ten of which are perfect copies of the B version of the Physiologus; other chapters can be sourced partly in B or Y, but are often summarized and contain original moralizations which differ from other versions of the Latin Physiologus. I am making the assumption that the author of the bestiary of Avranches may have worked from an incomplete witness to B where the elephant and dove were missing, and where ostrich (asida), panther and aspidochelon were found at the end of the text of the B version, such as in the codex of Bern, Bürgerbibliothek, Lat. 233. The bestiary of Avranches is interesting in two ways: it is an additional (though partial) witness to Physiologus B but is also a mixed work, original in its composition and in some of its chapters, testifying to the reception and use of ancient versions of the Physiologus among 13th century preachers.

Generated by Don Hoffmann The reader should be able to understand most of the repeated VMS words if she/he uses the information shown. The information given also works for most of the single occurrence VMS words. Additional codes, mostly Group I codes, may be required for some. My proposed solution is of the form of cryptoanalytic concept enumerated by Mary E. D'Imperio in The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma on page 29 as: E. The Nature of the Substitution. E.7 Whole words or concepts are represented by single Voynich symbols or by mixed-length Voynich strings (as in shorthand.) My proposed solution's deconstruction ideas are a derivative of Professor Jorge Stolfi's prefix/midfix/suffix or crust/mantle/core ideas, although two of the-fixes have been further broken down into smaller component parts. These-fixes and sub-parts correspond with the six groups of codes shown and enumerated in the paper. My lists of Voynich Manuscript words found two or more times in the text or labels were gleaned from lists generated by Professor Stolfi. .

This study presents the case of the 'library' of a curious late medieval personality: Crux of Telč (1434-1504). During his lifetime, Crux was active in a variety of environments-local schools, university, churches and the Prague chapter, ending up in the Augustinian canonry in Třeboň. Since he was an avid copyist of basically any text he came across, and since he tended to add colophons to his copies, it is possible for researchers to reconstruct his career and his interests. The codices in his 'library' are all multiple-text manuscripts (MTMs), usually of an extremely miscellaneous character. His copies are usually 'creative copies', that is, manuscript versions with a substantial number of unique scribal interventions. The author suggests that Cruxʼs case exemplifies the way in which the boom in information and spread of knowledge in the second half of the fifteenth century were managed.

This is a contribution to the Festschrift for Patrizia Lendinara, exploring what traces of readers and users in glossaries could tell us about how, why and by whom these medieval dictionaries were consulted. Seven manuscripts with glossaries from the collection of Leiden University Library are described and compared with respect to what happens in their margins and interlinear spaces.

This is the publication of a lecture I gave to accompany an exhibition at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel focused on marginal annotations in manuscripts and early printed books from the collection. In the paper I illustrate how the marginal activity shows us the medieval reader, his/her interests, purposes, distractions and associations.

The twelve volumes of the Codices latini antiquiores provide a rich trove of data about the earliest methods of citation-marking in the Latin West. This data indicates that citations from the Bible began to be marked in Christian books by the fifth century. Originally, the preferred method of such marking was by indentation of cited material, but in the sixth century, a different method – the use of a special symbol placed in the margin next to the line containing citations – gained a foothold. Several such symbols were used between the fifth and the ninth century in the Latin West, reflecting conventions characteristic of specific regions, scriptoria and scripts. By the end of the eighth century, one such symbol, a vertical flourish resembling the modern letter S, prevailed as a result of its adoption by the users of Caroline minuscule. Carolingian scribes were responsible for uniformization of citation-marking practices in the Latin West and also for their widespread adoption as a book feature so that it can be estimated that more than half of the manuscripts produced in the Carolingian scriptoria were equipped with S-shaped flourishes. The development in the Carolingian period was a culmination of long dynamic development of citation-marking practices in the Latin West, which seem to reflect different reading strategies and attitudes of distinct groups of book users.