Re: VMs: Costamagna and abbreviation...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 09:59 03/12/2003 -0500, Luis Velez wrote:
> This chapter of a work by Costamagna is about medieval shorthand in Italy, 
> and it even contains some graphic examples:
>
> http://archivi.beniculturali.it/Biblioteca/Costamagna/Capitolo%20quinto.PDF

        Infatta della parola "episcopus" posso scrivere solo "ep" ed avro,
        allora, una abbreviazione per troncamento, ma posso anche scrivere
        "eps", cioe le prime e l'ultima lettera, tralasciando quelle 
intermedie,
        e indicando con una lineetta sovraposta ottero una abbreviazione
        per contrazione. (page 88)

Essentially, Costamagna is saying that you might write "episcopus" either 
by truncating it (to "ep") or by abbreviating it with the first and last 
letters (to "eps"), and then use a overscore over them to signal this 
general process to the reader. This is exactly the kind of semi-systematic 
abbreviation I mentioned recently as having emerged in Northern Italy 
post-Tironian notae.

Costamagna's examples (red --> redditus, vrts --> veritas) are also 
reminiscent of Radcliff's (slightly later) abbreviatory shorthand system, 
which I've mentioned several times on-list.

In the case of the VMs, it could well be that EVA <e/ee/eee/ch> indicates a 
contracted / abbreviated word - perhaps the number of e's represent the 
number of syllables removed?

In fact, I might suggest one possible steganographic solution to this part 
of the VMs' system - that the upper bar of EVA <ch> is in fact 
*steganographically hiding an overscore*. Similarly, where EVA <ee> pairs 
are connected by the feet, perhaps these are *steganographically hiding an 
underscore*?

It may well be that all we're missing is examples of heavily abbreviated 
scribal text from circa 1450 (I'd suggest from near Milan): and that the 
VMs is merely a heavily obfuscated version of this kind of text. Perhaps 
our next best step would be asking a palaeographer (perhaps a former 
student of Costamagna?) to suggest one such text?

Certainly, a number of Latin manuscripts from round this time are quite 
hard to read because of these non-systematic abbreviations... so this seems 
like a plausible way forward for us. :-)

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


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