Codicology

Codicology (Latin codex " book" and -logy ), and manuscript studies, an auxiliary historical science, the scientific study of the handwritten book. It is therefore limited to the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ie mainly the period 500-1500. Your joins the Inkunabelkunde. Concerns of codicology are questions about the nature and process of creating a medieval codex. Here, especially the handicraft and technical aspects of production, such as the question of the Beschreibstoffen ( papyrus, parchment, paper), ink and pens, location, binding, book decoration or provenance envisaged. The book is thus treated as an archaeological artifact and considered as part of primary tangible tradition by passing it recorded, and accurately describes. The codicology is closely related to the paleography.

History of codicology

In the 19th century the manuscript studies, next to the library history, Inkunabelkunde and bibliographic instruction, a key component of Library Science. The term " codicology " however, came only after the Second World War in France and Belgium. He was used as a first of the Paris Hellenist Alphonse Dain 1944-1949 and released as the Charles Samaran ( 1879-1982 ), a Parisian palaeographers, coined term " Codicographie " from. Dain understood the study of the history of the manuscripts and their collection, the study of their nature and their cataloging task as codicology. He also graduated from Scripture, because there was already the paleography. She was also regarded as a tool of philology.

This changed in 1950, because the Belgian manuscript librarian and editor of the magazine " Scriptorium ", François Masai ( 1909-1979 ), called for an independent scientific discipline. Along with the art historian Léon MJ DELAISSE formed of a description of the codicology as " archeology of the book" whose concrete object are the book and its technical aspects, the results can be used by the historical disciplines.

Today it is mainly operated by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and libraries with large manuscript collections, from whose work an extensive cataloging of medieval manuscripts originated.

Methods

For the exploration and accurate description of a code of various scientific disciplines are used. Philology and History serve mainly the temporal and linguistic classification of a text. However, it also uses statistical data to create family trees, so-called stemmata for the individual texts. Here, the temporal and regional spread of writing and forms of jewelry are included. In this way, you can set texts, which occur in several codices, in a chronological order.

It is aimed to find individual peculiarities of the individual manuscripts, which can be seen in the dimension of the single band, the cover, the writing material of the sheet and position result, even when the line marking and also the design of the font mirror. Possession notices are also an important feature of the tradition history. Also marginalia, such as the so-called pen glosses, are increasingly coming to the attention of medieval studies. In addition, the used primarily in art history watermark and the cover customers lined on, with the help of the age of a book may be limited accuracy of about five years.

The chemistry also plays a major role. Analysis of the writing material ( parchment or paper) and the ink and the colors used for painting in the book, for which there were several hundred recipes often leave to conclusions on the age of the manuscript. Certain techniques or color and ink recipes were used only in certain regions, which can give clues to the origin. These recipes and techniques were detained in workshop books and have been passed down from generation to generation. However, one can determine on the basis of preserved copies of these rules and regulations that many go back to a few Greek and Latin works, and so real individual recipes are rare.

Important collections

There are now some very good online databases where according to medieval manuscripts can be researched - both in German and in the Anglo-American world.

• The codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis the University of Cologne have about 500 manuscripts, mainly from the German-speaking countries after that are listed with photos.
• The ' Marburger Repertory German manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries ', Philipps - University Marburg recorded in the form of a descriptive catalog of German -language manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries (excluding Notes and minimum entries in Latin manuscripts ).
• The codices Electronici Sangallenses capture the St. Gall manuscript inventory.
• The Department of Special Collections of the University Library of Graz has an online catalog, which lists its stock of over 2000 manuscripts. Some of these are already provided with detailed descriptions and paleographical available in digital full-text version.
• There are also for Austria a catalog of illuminated manuscripts of the 8th - 13th Century.
• The British Library has several large collections, such as the Harleian Collection, which are also searchable through the online catalog. Here there are large Anglo-Saxon works such as Beowulf or the Lindisfarne Gospel ( Book of Lindisfarne ).
• Similarly large is the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, whose catalog is easy to browse. The works are all viewable online in very good quality.
• The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has created an extensive catalog of their manuscript collections.
• In the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Collegeville / Minnesota can find 90,000 manuscripts from Austria and Spain.