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Copyright of Quarterly of the History of Material Culture / Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej is the property of Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article deals with a seventeenth-century manuscript copy of the Qur'an from Malta held at the University of Pennsylvania (Ms. Codex 1904). The manuscript's copyist can be identified with Muḥammad al-Tāzī, also known as Baldassare Loyola Mandes (1631–1667), an alleged Moroccan prince who converted to Christianity and gained considerable fame in Catholic countries for his missionary activity and anti-Islamic polemics. In spite of the large number of contemporary sources and modern studies on him, some aspects of his life still remain elusive. Several passages of the accounts of his Islamic past appear nebulous, and, in particular, his royal descent continues to raise doubts. On the one hand, the University of Pennsylvania Qur'an represents a unique document of his pre-conversion life. On the other hand, it bears witness to a peculiar but little-studied form of manuscript production in early modern Europe, represented by books copied by Muslim scribes under conditions of captivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after William Caxton had established his printer's shop in Westminster, he described himself as a citizen and conjury—the latter a term he seems to have coined in order to describe how seriously he viewed his role and activities as a sworn member of the London Company of Mercers. A generation later, the London Grocer and copyist Richard Hill demonstrated an affinity with the Caxton view on metropolitan citizenship and mercantile values. The survival of a varied collection of Hill's transcriptions in a single manuscript provides a range of evidence to support this conclusion. Across a thirty-year career as copyist, Hill retained an interest in preserving material he had begun transcribing as a London apprentice and young man. As his career progressed, he augmented his collection with songs, carols, and other miscellaneous informational, didactic, and polite reading materials. Such varied texts represented (for Caxton, Hill, and many of their contemporaries) the metropolitan mercantile tastes and values that Hill wished to preserve, as a citizen and conjury in his own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quarterly of the History of Material Culture / Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej is the property of Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Karaim is a severely endangered language belonging to the Turkic language family and its only surviving dialect is Northwest Karaim with speakers in Lithuania and Poland. In the past few years numerous Karaim translations of the Bible have been discovered. Some of these are among the oldest texts written in this language. The authors present some of the oldest Karaim texts known today as well as recently discovered Karaim translations of the entire Tanakh. It is shown how these recent research results have broadened our knowledge regarding the Karaim written heritage. Furthermore, some preliminary conclusions are drawn on the relationships among the manuscripts and the biographies of the copyists and translators involved in their creation. Textual similarities between sources created separately in communities located far from one another in the regions of Crimea, Lithuania, Volhynia, and Galicia suggest that a common Karaim tradition of Bible translation must once have existed. Moreover, the textual complexity and the use of sophisticated translation techniques in the oldest known texts support the claim that they were based on older texts or on a well-established oral tradition of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Americana y Argentina is the property of Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zbornik Radova Vizantološkog Instituta is the property of Institute for Byzantine Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay describes a signe de renvoi that appears in Hebrew manuscripts from the tenth century up to the eighteenth. This sign can be found in almost all geographic regions in which Hebrew manuscripts were copied and in all literary genres. Unlike graphic signes de renvoi which appear in Hebrew manuscripts, the sign described in this paper consists of two Hebrew letters: דך. In the first part of the paper the various ways in which manuscript copyists employed this sign are described in detail. The second part describes the ancora sign, which can be found in Greek, and later also in Latin, papyri and manuscripts from the first century b.c.e. until the fifth century c.e. and attention is being called to the graphic and functional similitude between these two signs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence within Elizabethan music collections of antiphons and motets with explicitly Catholic themes has long been a source of interest and historiographical argument. The old theory that the inclusion of such pieces reveals covert Catholic beliefs among early modern collectors has been undermined by recent historical research, and it is now more frequently taken as evidence of their education and discerning musical taste. This article argues that the most important shared characteristic of this musical corpus is not its Catholic origins, but the status of its composers as (nearly always) both British and already dead. By interrogating late Elizabethan and early Jacobean discourse surrounding the British past, and the ways that the past was investigated and evidenced—particularly the study of funerary monuments and other material culture—I reveal that Tudor copyists explicitly invoked tropes of memory and memorialization in their copies of contemporary and earlier music, which link their collections to broader notions of developing national identity. In so doing, they shifted the emphasis of their collections, allowing problematic Latin motet texts to acquire new meaning within mainstream Protestant thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ars Bilduma is the property of Ars Bilduma and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the manuscripts of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the refrains following each strophe, as well as the rubrics preceding each poem, are copied in red ink, into spaces left after the copying of the body of the text in black ink. This creates two specific constraints: the need to fit text into predetermined spaces, and the repetition inherent in copying the same text many times over. The task was probably delegated to junior copyists, meaning that many pages have more than one hand represented. Close study of the copying of refrains reveals that the copyists used a range of devices to vary and justify the text of refrains, and that copying could proceed across the whole page rather than column by column. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the characterization of the collective portrait of the lower bureaucracy of the West Siberian provincial institutions in 1895-1917. The relevance of this topic is caused by the constant search for the best ways to transform gubernatorial power and recruitment. A representative source base is used for both published and unpublished materials from the State Archive funds of Tobolsk and Tomsk. It is shown that among the younger clerical staff, trends characteristic of the entire bureaucratic apparatus of the Russian Empire were observed: an increase in the number of “professional” officials, a general increase in the educational level and rejuvenation of the staff. It is noted that, despite this, until 1917, the problem of the extremely “modest” financial support of the offices remained unresolved. It is indicated that the sums allocated for hiring lower servants had not changed since the mid-90s of the 19th century, and the events that took place in the country invariably increased the required living wage, which negatively affected the life of officials and their families, they were actually on the verge of survival. It is concluded that this state of affairs was for young clerical staff only an additional incentive for professional growth and further career aspirations.

This short article goes beyond other scholars' arguments about the identity of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 86's main scribe by checking the sources cited by those scholars and examining some sources not previously cited. The identification of the scribe-compiler and first owner as Richard de Grimhill (d. ca. 1207-08) turns out to be better supported than some scholars have thought. In contrast, previously claimed connections among Richard de Grimhill, various other persons named Grimhill, and Grimhill manor turn out to be unsupported. The article not only contributes to our discussion of Digby 86, but also reminds us that it may be worthwhile to consult older scholarship more often than we tend to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the circulation of manuscripts in the Mzab Valley in southern Algeria during the 9th–10th/15th–16th centuries in an attempt to identify the most prominent copyists in the region. The primary aim of the paper is to highlight the importance of manuscripts for the Mzab's Ibadi Muslim community in this period and to demonstrate its impact on the intellectual and cultural life of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Knihovna is the property of Library Institute of the Czech National Library and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Auf der Basis von gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen versucht der vorliegende Beitrag, die Rolle des Universitätskollegs der Peruginer Sapienza Vecchia im 15. Jahrhundert zu rekonstruieren; ein besonderes Augenmerk richtet er dabei auf die deutschen Gruppierungen und auf die 70er und 80er Jahre, die mit der Einführung des Buchdruckes eine Wende im kulturellen Leben der Stadt markierten. Die 1362 von Kardinal Niccolò Capocci gegründete Domus Sapientiae stellte für die ausländischen und insbesondere deutschen Studenten, die Perugia als bevorzugtes Ziel wählten, eine unverzichtbare Anlaufadresse dar. Das Kolleg behielt eine gewisse Zahl an Plätzen ausländischen Studenten vor; dieser Umstand führte möglicherweise dazu, dass viele von ihnen im Rahmen ihrer italienischen peregrinatio eine Studienetappe in Perugia einplanten. Ein reicher Quellenbestand im Staatsarchiv von Perugia öffnet überdies neue Perspektiven auf die familia des Kollegs, die die Grenzen der zwangsläufig eng begrenzten und – sozusagen – elitären akademischen Welt übersteigt. Die Annahme, dass die Studenten von persönlichen Dienern begleitet wurden, die dann in den Hausdienst des Kollegs übertraten, wirft neues Licht auf eine Erfahrung, die vielleicht gar nicht so isoliert war, wie gemeinhin angenommen wird. Ferner war das Kolleg ein Produktionszentrum von Handschriften, wie die Reihe aufeinanderfolgender Kopisten nahelegt, und spielte eine wichtige Rolle bei der Einführung des Buchdruckes in die Stadt. Wie die nähere Beschäftigung mit einigen Studenten-/Kopisten-/Druckerbiografien zeigt, lässt sich sogar die These wagen, dass das Kolleg der Sapienza Vecchia den Knotenpunkt für den Übergang von der alten Schreibkunst zu den modernen Methoden der Drucktechnik bildete. This article seeks to reconstruct the role of the university college of the Sapienza Vecchia in 15th-century Perugia through an analysis of published and unpublished documents. Special attention is devoted to the German component and to the 1470s and 1480s, which represented a turning point in the city's cultural life with the introduction of printing. The Domus Sapientiae, founded in 1362 by Cardinal Niccolò Capocci, was a fundamental reference point for the foreign students, above all from Germany, who chose Perugia as their preferred destination; indeed, it is possible that the presence of a student college with a proportion of places reserved for foreigners played an important role in the inclusion of Perugia among the stages of the peregrinatio around the Italian Studia; the wealth of documentation preserved at the Archivio di Stato di Perugia also offers a new perspective on the familia of the Casa, which crossed the boundaries of the university world given its restricted and, so to speak, elite nature; specifically, the theory that students were accompanied by personal servants, who then became workers at the Casa, sheds new light on an experience which may have been less solitary than generally thought. Finally, the college was a centre of manuscript production, as shown by the alternation of various copyists, and played an important role in introducing printing to the city. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that the college of the Sapienza Vecchia represented the place of transition from the old scribal art to the more modern typographical craft, as demonstrated by a more detailed examination of the biographies of some students/printers/copyists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 31 keyboard concertos now housed at the Knjižnica Ivana Potrča Ptuj represent a unique sample of early keyboard concertos in Central Europe, including works by the Viennese court composers Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1714–1777) and Wenzel Raimund Birck (1718–1763) as well as two musicians employed at the Graz parish church, Johann Michael Steinbacher (before 1710–after 1740) and Giovanni Antonio Sgatberoni (1708/09–1795). It is assumed that the Ptuj collection of keyboard music stems from the court of Count Joseph Bernhard von Attems, who resided at Dornava from 1754 to 1772. Considering the scribes and the paper quality of the sources, it seems possible that Steinbacher and Sgatberoni may have had a closer relationship to the Dornava court than has been assumed so far.

This article investigates the fragment of Earl Rivers’s Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers extant in London, British Library MS Add. 60577, a miscellany of religious and moral texts produced in Winchester in the second half of the fifteenth century. Although it contains only the chapter on Hermes, it is important as it is the result of a careful re-elaboration of the source made by the copyist. Moreover, contrary to what is believed, the text does not derive from Caxton's 1477 edition, but it contains variants that can be ascribed to only one other witness, contained in London, British Library, MS Add. 22718. The relationship between these two texts suggests the existence of a branch of the tradition of the Dicts unnoticed by scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past I have written about the two copyists of the Gouda Erasmiana manuscripts, indicated by P.S. Allen as Copyist A and Copyist B. The identity of Copyist A has been revealed earlier as Henricus Jacobi Leidensis, a monk in the Stein convent, who was active in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Copyist B, however—who was active around 1590—remained unknown. Further research brought up a name, which I had encountered earlier, but which I did not relate with the Erasmiana manuscripts. It concerns a monk who lived in Stein, but moved to Amsterdam in 1560, long before Copyst B wrote the manuscripts. And died there. This leads to one conclusion: the parts of the Erasmiana manuscripts written by copyist B, did not originate from the monastery of Stein or from Gouda, but were compiled in Amsterdam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belovodsko Handwritten Four Gospels appeared in Austria-Turkish war known as Kocina krajina (1788-1791) when there had been a shortage of liturgical books. It was written by three hands, and signed by the initiator and the main copyist Vicentije Jovanovic born in Podgorica, abbot of the monastery Ljubostinja beforehand, priest monk in exile in the monastery of Hopovo. When he came back in Ljubostinja in 1791 he had taken with him some printed and handwritten books, and among them there were Resurrection Gospels. In the 19th century through Komaranska Church or directly it had been arrived in Bela Voda near Krusevac, where in 1989 it was found in the trunk of priest Zivotije Popovic whose granddaughter Jelena Hadzi Popovic gifted it to Parish Library in Bela Voda, where it is being found today.

This article posits that the fourth stanza of the proem to Book Two of Troilus and Criseyde, a passage that reflects on linguistic change, calls attention to such change by deploying the already-antiquated but still-recognized final -e. The discussion considers first how Chaucer positions language change in Troilus, including the envoy (V, 1793-98), before addressing the careful construction of II, 22-28. Chaucer thus highlights discrepancies between written and oral forms of language as well as geographic and temporal differences. A consideration of the extant manuscripts of the poem demonstrates the attention Chaucer's early copyists paid to his deliberate use of written, but silent, final -e. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, which is a part of the Emerging Standards Project,2 compares two versions of an administrative text from Late Medieval Coventry in order to scrutinise the way in which the copyist changed or maintained the language of the original. Through close reading and quantitative comparisons, this study reveals that copyists have mostly influenced the orthography and morphology of administrative texts. It furthermore shows that the manuscript context should also be considered as a likely external influence when it comes to the lexical level. Finally, it is argued that the influence of the exemplar on the individual copying scribe should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years ago, George R. Keiser showed that the mutilated last quire of Lincoln Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Library, MS 91 had once contained a herbal written in Middle English. He discovered moreover that passages parallel to those reconstructable for the Lincoln manuscript appear in other texts, including an important work called John Lelamour's Herbal after a name mentioned in its explicit, and concluded that Lelamour, an otherwise unknown fourteenthcentury schoolmaster from Hereford, was the author of the original treatise that Thornton and other scribes used for the composition of their own herbals. The present article will present ample evidence which will demonstrate that Keiser's hypothesis on a Herefordian pedigree for this textual family cannot be sustained any longer, and that the origins of this textual family should in fact be sought not too far from Scotland. A linguistic approach based on a collection of scribal modifications, both unconscious and conscious ones (i. e. copy mistakes and changes made on purpose by the several copyists), will be used for the task. This will reveal how linguistic variation between the several manuscripts can be profitably used to reconstruct the dialect of the original translation, which will here consequently be named Northern Middle English Translation of Macer Floridus's De Viribus Herbarum (or Northern Macer for short). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'étude d'un manuscrit ancien relève souvent pour les chercheurs en ce domaine d'une quête relative au contenu de ce dernier. Parmi ceux que le contenant intéresse également, il est possible d'en entreprendre une analyse matérielle sans impact pour l'intégrité de l'ouvrage, à partir d'outils spécifiques dès le moment où ces derniers sont conçus pour et bien maîtrisés. Notre recherche concerne un manuscrit du XVIIe siècle issu d'une collection privée. Il s'agit d'un Mushaf maghrébin atypique ayant à sa marge un corpus de variantes de lectures. Il comporte très peu de renseignements relatifs à sa fabrication mais porte les marques de plusieurs interventions. L'analyse conjointe a été entreprise du fait de l'aspect atypique de cet ouvrage et d'un questionnement portant sur le nombre de mains ayant pu intervenir lors des différentes lectures dans le temps. A la suite de cette analyse conjointe cette étude a permis de mieux comprendre la fabrication du texte, de mieux connaître les matériaux employés pour la matérialisation de ce dernier et au-delà nous permet de livrer une part de l'histoire de ce manuscrit. [To researchers, the study of an old manuscript often consists of the analysis of its content. For those also interested in its materiality it is possible to undertake material analyses without jeopardising the object's integrity by using specific tools, as long as they are properly conceived and mastered. Our research concerns a manuscript of the seventeenth century kept in a private collection: an atypical musḥaf from the Islamic Maghreb, featuring in its margins a peculiar corpus of alternative readings. It contains very little information relative to its production but carries the marks of several interventions. A joint historical and material analysis was undertaken due to the atypical aspect of this work and to answer questions regarding the number of different hands contributing to the editing of the manuscript during the reading process over time. Thanks to this two-fold study, this study allows us to better understand the actual process by which the manuscript was manufactured, to identify which materials were used for this work, and to uncover a part of this manuscript's history.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abū Šāma lived as an historian and a biographer in 7th/13th-century Damascus. Although he took care to transmit a fair copy (mubayyaḍa) of his Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn and the two other chronicles he wrote, drafts of his texts, containing additions and variants he did not authenticate, circulated and were later edited. We refer to these copies and editions as "floating texts". Furthermore, we managed to reconnect two manuscript copies, kept in the British Library, which were made from the autograph of the Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn. Ibn Ṣaṣarā, a famous Damascene qāḍī, copied the text together with Abū Šāma's certificates of transmission (igāza). Afterwards, several scribes accurately transcribed these certificates as if they were part of the text. We therefore label them "fossils". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the life of Miss Ethel Stokes who was significantly involved in several major historical, literary and archival enterprises in early twentieth-century England. She established the Records Preservation Section of the British Records Association, she edited historical records and wrote for publication in works of reference including local and British Record Society volumes, the Victoria County History of England and the Complete Peerage, and she established an independent and successful business as a record agent, Stokes and Cox. The article is the first in a planned series which will study the lives and professional contributions of pioneering women archivists in England. An explanation of the background to this work, a literature review and a justification of the need for this new field of study are articulated in Shepherd's chapter, 'Hidden voices in the archives: pioneering women archivists in early twentieth century England' (Shepherd in Engaging with archives and records: histories and theories. Facet Publishing, London, 2016). In line with the collective biographical approach outlined there, this paper will consider Miss Stokes's family and educational background, her friendships, charitable work and her professional activities and projects, seeking to set her into the context of her own times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Fabre made the notion of « ordinary writing » indispensable. This article considers a species within the genus of ordinary writing, the interstitial writing of medieval scribes. The scribal activity is not a mere matter of reproduction; a scribe moves along the spirals of texts. Let’s take four examples from 13th century Franciscan copyists: in one case, an invention in deciphering illuminated the copied text. Somewhere else, in a very long biblical commentary, a brief passage which appeared detrimental to the scribe’s institution was replaced by an extract from an other commentary. Or the philological concern of an other scribe cleverly fills the gaps that may occur in the model from copyist errors because of some homeoteleuton. At last, in order to preserve some ambivalence, this article presents some wild lapsus calami. Those scribes did not partake of an extra-ordinary creation or speculation. But the fascination for writing could attract them. Taking possession of texts in hand and mind led sometimes to some inventiveness and to passions for words and concepts.

This article analizes the testamentary discourse evolution on the basis of the comparison of a hundred and fifty documents of different syntopies. These documents are also contrasted with the guidelines from the copyists' handbooks of the studied periods. This work's results cast new light on the chronological and geographic variation of this textual type as well as on the linguistic and discoursive uses which characterize it. Furthermore, these outcomes show the relevance of the copyist, as well as that of the enunciation conditions and the historical context in a genre which is commonly believed to be immobile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pair of Sèvres porcelain figurines,The Flute LessonandThe Grape Eaters, are known to be based upon scenes from a theatrical pantomime written by Charles-Simon Favart (1710–1792). A shepherd and shepherdess from the play were illustrated by François Boucher (1703–1770), in paintings that in turn inspired porcelain figures designed around 1752. The porcelains have been regarded as strictly imitative, without crediting the sculptor with any originality. The author seeks to challenge that assumption, by revisiting the original shepherd and shepherdess from Favart's play and analyzing in detail how the painter Boucher and the unknown sculptor of Sèvres provided their own interpretations. It will further be argued that the characterization of the shepherdess evolves, from the play to the painting to the sculpture, from youthful innocence to a more overt erotic complaisance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article questions Winton Dean's classification of Handel's early London copyists, arguing that his methods of distinguishing musical handwritings are unreliable. Dean was misled by the testimony of Elizabeth Legh that her copy of Teseo in the Malmesbury Collection was 'Transcribed by Mr Linike', a viola player who acted as a copyist for the Haymarket Theatre. Dean compiled a list of 'Linike Copies' he dated from October 1712 to c.1725. The Malmesbury Teseo was actually copied by William Babell, the scribe known as rm1 and h2. Several manuscripts listed in Dean's 'Table 4: rm1 Copies' exhibit detailed similarities with manuscripts supposedly written by Linike, Beta, rm4, J. C. Smith Sr and others. These similarities include decorative act and scene titles which Dean admits could all be by the same scribe. That scribe, I conclude, was William Babell, who also copied the musical text of many of these manuscripts. Since Babell's hand is extremely variable, I avoid the usual methods of identifying copyists by shapes of clefs, notes, rests etc. and instead draw attention to idiosyncrasies of spelling and graphic decoration and similarities of binding which indicate that Babell acted as Handel's principal copyist from c.1711 until his death in 1723. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on comparative palaeographic study between the Tenbury Collection, a group of manuscripts housed in Oxford's Bodleian Library, and selected manuscripts by 18th century composer Johann Sebastian Bach, including topics on "Missa Paschalis" by Jan Dismas Zelenka, Johann Friedrich Agricola as the scribe for Bach's "Credo," and the identity of the scribe for GB-Ob MS Tenbury 749.

An essay is presented on the collaboration between 18th century composer Johann Sebastian Bach and his copyists in the so-called Bach's "parody process," and some observations on a number of Leipzig manuscripts of Bach's cantatas from the 1720s and 1730s.