This chapter introduces the wide-ranging textual culture which grew up in medieval Iceland and generated the enormous variety of Old Norse-Icelandic written texts. It details the present-day locations of the major collections of Icelandic manuscripts and gives an account of how these manuscripts were preserved and what proportion of them may have been lost. An account of the origins of manuscript production in Iceland and its subsequent history follows, with criteria for dating manuscripts and discussion of different scripts. The effect of the introduction of the printing press is noted. Recent new approaches to manuscript studies, including codicology and greater attention to paper manuscripts and the physical processes of manuscript-making, are also covered. The chapter moves on to address digitization and the standardization of online texts, and concludes with discussion of what the future may hold for manuscript studies, including collaboration between palaeographers and scientists such as geneticists, ecologists and chemists, and the emergence of a new discipline of biocodicology, enabling a holistic examination of the interplay between many different environmental factors.

This chapter approaches previously unexplored perspectives on the codicology of Nag Hammadi Codex I, a unique early Christian manuscript. Several hitherto overlooked features regarding scribal style and codicological features are discussed, and it is argued that these can help us understand the background of the codex, both within the history of early Christian book culture and in terms of who produced it. The chapter demonstrates that Nag Hammadi Codex I, one of the first multi-quire codices from antiquity, was most likely produced as an ad hoc solution to sloppy scribal work. Thus, it offers grounds for rejecting the hypothesis that Codex I was constructed on commission by a professional bookseller as a commercial product, as some scholars claim. Finally, it is argued that Nag Hammadi Codex I should be viewed as one of the earliest examples of what was to become the standard technique of ancient book manufacturing.

This chapter explores the connections of orthography to paleography and codicology, and the dependence of historical orthography on the materiality of writing and printing environments. It explains that orthography is one of the tools of paleographers, and a key to understanding (deciphering) the written language of ancient and medieval texts, whereas codicologists investigate nonlinguistic (and nonorthographic) peculiarities of early manuscript books (codices). Orthographic research, however, in some cases helps estimate more precisely the origins of codices (time and location). The chapter also presents some of the ways in which the materiality of writing and printing historically has directed the development of orthographic features (e.g. symmetricity of upper and lower cases, dependence on the limitations of printers’ type sets). The author introduces the dichotomy between the perceived durability and perishability of a text at its creation phase, and reveals its impact on the differentiation of orthographic approaches such as the historical simultaneous double orthographies of various European languages (i.e. printed versus handwritten manuscripts, books versus newspapers).

The most widely copied plague treatise in medieval England was the one attributed to John of Burgundy. Despite such widespread dissemination, its main period of production in the British Isles seems to have been limited to the Middle Ages, as it never appeared as an English early modern printed edition, being superseded by different plague tracts. Nevertheless, despite the lack of a printed edition, handwritten copies of John of Burgundy do survive after 1500. They are hitherto neglected witnesses to a treatise that formed the foundation of medical response to the bubonic plague in the British Isles for 200 years and whose cultural reach and influence were much greater than is often acknowledged. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the manuscript context of these late survivals of the John of Burgundy tract and examine their contents, noting any evidence of continued use of the treatise and developments in medical or religious discourse.

Chapter 1 introduces the overall argument of the book: that the scribes of manuscripts of English literature in the fifteenth century were interested in their own craft conventions, in abstract conventions of page design and in the text as an abstract verbal artefact, and were less concerned to exploit the material features of the manuscript. It sets out the implications of the argument for the study of material texts and material agency, and advocates the value of craft theory for bringing to life the scribes’ work. It ends by noting the methods of the book, which combine codicology and textual criticism, quantitative methods and literary critical interpretation.

In an era with no established copyright law, very limited printing with type, and surrounded by handwritten volumes, how did one determine if a written work was authentic or a forgery? How did one talk about books? This chapter answers these questions by highlighting two thinkers, Angelo Decembrio and Angelo Poliziano. Decembrio wrote a dialogue, On Literary Polish. In it, his interlocutors discuss how to stock a library. As part of that conversation, the question arises of how to tell if a book is forged. Modern readers gain an unparalleled look into how Renaissance thinkers discussed manuscripts, what value they placed on tradition, and how correct judgments about literary authenticity often lived right next to those we now deem incorrect. Poliziano came to maturity at a time when most of what we now possess of ancient Greco-Roman literature had come to light. Confronting this mountain of newly available texts and with trial and error, he developed techniques that have become part of modern ways of editing and reading texts. Elsewhere he gives us testimony of how the vocabulary surrounding books developed, even as he stands as a signal figure in the history of philology.

In an era with no established copyright law, very limited printing with type, and surrounded by handwritten volumes, how did one determine if a written work was authentic or a forgery? How did one talk about books? This chapter answers these questions by highlighting two thinkers, Angelo Decembrio and Angelo Poliziano. Decembrio wrote a dialogue, On Literary Polish. In it, his interlocutors discuss how to stock a library. As part of that conversation, the question arises of how to tell if a book is forged. Modern readers gain an unparalleled look into how Renaissance thinkers discussed manuscripts, what value they placed on tradition, and how correct judgments about literary authenticity often lived right next to those we now deem incorrect. Poliziano came to maturity at a time when most of what we now possess of ancient Greco-Roman literature had come to light. Confronting this mountain of newly available texts and with trial and error, he developed techniques that have become part of modern ways of editing and reading texts. Elsewhere he gives us testimony of how the vocabulary surrounding books developed, even as he stands as a signal figure in the history of philology.

Shows how scholars can interpret a manuscript from the way in which it is described in a catalogue, with a particular focus on the booklet as the key unit of manuscript production.

The physical make-up of manuscript books: their divisions into quires and booklets, and the manner of putting the parts of the book together.

Chapter 4 considers the complexities of how to judge paper, and paper’s affordances in making books. The chapter begins by surveying the writings of some medieval commentators on paper, from Peter the Venerable, through the Italian humanists, to the late-medieval English Paston family in their letters. This chapter then considers the variety of books written on paper and the problems associated with the interpretation of their value. It is all too easy to classify paper books as being of lower status, lower quality and ephemeral intent. Paper had a multiplicity of potential uses. The arguably aesthetic hierarchies often applied to paper manuscript production do not take into consideration the quality of paper, nor the different types of paper in circulation. This chapter considers how the differing sizes of paper work together in book production. I also return in this chapter to the question of choice, exploring whether, in the current state of research in medieval book production, scholars can find an alternative way of describing differences between materials and artefacts which does not involve judgements about superiority or status. The chapter argues for a more nuanced understanding of paper codices.

This chapter introduces the life of Mani as mediated through the history of Manichaean Studies. It follows the field’s genesis in the confessional polemics of the Reformation to the twentieth century where repeated new and unexpected manuscript discoveries have allowed for an advancement of the field through textual studies and philology. Texts that survive in a wide variety of languages, ranging from Latin and Greek through Coptic, Arabic, various Middle Iranian languages including Parthian and Sogdian, even Uighur and Chinese. This chapter reconsiders the many variations of the life of Mani as depicted in Manichaean, apocryphal, pseudepigraphical and polemical texts in the light of these new discoveries and the scholarship that preceded it.