VMs: More wax tablet stuff...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

More wax tablet leads, hope you like some of them...

(1) The Paris guild of tabletiers [ie, wax tablet makers] (in French):
	http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/sfhad/vol3/art11/corps.htm

However, tabletiers only *made* the tablets, not used them.

(2) An SCA take on wax tablets - what they were, how to make them, etc
	http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/tablets.html

Interestingly, this also mentions the famous portrait of "Fra Luca Pacioli 
working out a problem from an open printed copy of Euclid's Elements onto a 
very large waxed tablet (Levinson 245-247)" - one of my favourite "sacred 
geometry" pictures. :-)

(3) Another SCA take on wax tablets:
	http://www.zip.com.au/~zebee/tablet.htm

Small wax tablets (fist-sized) were called "pugillare", but other names 
included diptycha, cerae [cera = wax], ceracula and tabellae. Small ones 
may also have been used as luggage tags.

This page also notes cheerfully that "Julius Caesar wounded some of his 
lethal assailants with his stylus."

(4) A Celtic church history mentions wax tablet writing implements
	http://www.celticorthodoxy.org/warren003.shtml

	"Sometimes the monks wrote on wax tablets, ceracula, pugillaria,
	tabulae, with a hard pointed instrument, graphium, or stimulus.
	'Cum in agro ipse sederet allato angelus Domini ceraculo
	eum litterarum docuit elementa.'

(5) A detailed history of book production mentions wax tablets extensively...
	http://www.bookrags.com/books/nglbs/PART5.htm

Amongst many other things, this describes Trithemius predating 20th Century 
scientific management by, oh, 400 years or so:-

	Under Abbot Trithemius of Sponheim, subdivision of labour was
	carried to its extreme limit. One monk cut the parchment,
	another polished it, the third ruled the lines to guide the
	scribe. After the scribe had finished his copying, another
	monk corrected, still another punctuated. In decorating,
	one artist rubricated, another painted the miniatures. Then
	the bookbinder collated the leaves and bound them in
	wooden covers. Even in the case of waxed tablets, one
	monk prepared the boards, another spread the wax. The
	whole process was designed to expedite production

	<...> These tablets were called ceratae tabellae, tabellae
	cerae, or simpty cerae. The name of a book, caudex,
	codex, was first given to these tabellae when they
	were strung together to form a square "book."

(6) However, note that
	http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/lt-antiq/98-11-01/0050.html

	Without specific references to the RB passages in question,
	I have my doubts that "tabulae" always refers to wax tablets.
	One also must not make too much out of the plural, as well
	cf. litterae = epistola). I think this word often indicates an
	indeterminate writing support used by notaries, hence they
	are called "tabelliones".

(7) Tabelliones/notaries get a mention here in this history of book-keeping 
page, which (of course) dwells extensively on Fra Luca Pacioli's 
double-entry book-keeping:
	http://accfinweb.account.strath.ac.uk/df/a1.html

	Girald of Wales (c. 1220) was surprised similarly that at
	Bologna his creditors called in tabelliones to record his
	debt(Opp. RS, iii, 290-1). Statistics confirm the numerosity
	of professional recorders in Italy: the Milan census of 1288
	counted 440 butchers, 12 Doctors of laws and 1500 Notaries!

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....