Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction
- A CODICOLOGY
- B THE HISTORY OF LATIN SCRIPT
- C THE MANUSCRIPT IN CULTURAL HISTORY
- 1 Roman and Christian antiquity
- 2 The early Middle Ages
- 3 The Carolingian period
- 4 From the tenth to the twelfth Century
- 5 The late Middle Ages
- 6 The age of humanism
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts cited
- Index of names and subjects
- Index of authors cited
- Plate Section
3 - The Carolingian period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction
- A CODICOLOGY
- B THE HISTORY OF LATIN SCRIPT
- C THE MANUSCRIPT IN CULTURAL HISTORY
- 1 Roman and Christian antiquity
- 2 The early Middle Ages
- 3 The Carolingian period
- 4 From the tenth to the twelfth Century
- 5 The late Middle Ages
- 6 The age of humanism
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts cited
- Index of names and subjects
- Index of authors cited
- Plate Section
Summary
By and large, it is only in the carolingian period that what we now possess of the literary legacy of Roman antiquity and of the Latin patristic age was first preserved. This legacy nourished education and learning in the middle ages, which was in large measure dominated by the ancient authorities, until the influx of translations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries resulted in a new orientation. Work with these texts is closely bound up with the literary production of the middle ages, is indeed a part of that production.
Because the history of manuscripts in the medieval period begins with this securing of the heritage, I would like to preface this section with a few remarks on how manuscripts were used in the middle ages. Liturgical manuscripts, by virtue of their purpose, were truly functional books, and lectionaries were often supplied at a later date with introductory and closing formulae, while divisions into lections were often added in homiliaries and passionals. Chapter numbers and occasionally instructions for the lectio continua are often added to carolingian bibles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Collations, marginal notes by readers, ‘nota’ signs, and underlinings with a stylus or red chalk are found nearly everywhere. Now and again such traces are clear symptoms of textual reworking, as occurred in the innumerable canonistic, dogmatic, exegetical, and ethical compilations and florilegia.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Latin PalaeographyAntiquity and the Middle Ages, pp. 202 - 211Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990