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Re: VMs: dating the VMs
At 11:01 22/02/2004 -0800, Manfred Staudinger wrote:
Normally you don't write on vellum from scratch but instead you use a piece of
paper and make a copy of it on vellum. When we talk about dating the VMs then
we mean only this process of copying! The paper which was used might be
older,
how much we cannot know.
I would extend this is two directions (probably obvious but anyway useful
note: I am trying to see things from the perspective of a late-medieval /
early modern scribe; so "you" is not "someone among us, 21th c.
readers/writers" but an ancient scribe).
1) Normally you don't write a *book* from scratch. Either you copy it from
an exemplar (if it is somebody else's work) or you assemble it from notes,
minutes, etc.
2) The source you are copying/assembling from can be older: "you" may be a
XVI c. scribe copying a Cicero's oration...
The leaves show plenty of space but I cannot remember a single vellum ms. from
say before 1500 which was not written tightly (because of the costly
material). On
those old mss. you can see thin lines for carefully planing the space
available
for
the later writing. By the way, I would guess such a format-free writing on
vellum
does not occur before the second half of the 16th century ie after 1550. Any
other opinions?
Space around the writing area is difficult to estimate: most codices have
been trimmed and re-trimmed. Space *inside* the writing area (i.e. how much
the writing itself is tight or loose) greatly depends upon the writing
'style' and/or technique (I have a peculiar dislike for the concept of
"writing style", whence the quotes). As Nick Pelling just pointed out,
there are writings (mainly in the early-medieval and _antiqua_ traditions)
which exhibit a looseness (or, better, non-tightness) comparable with the
Vms writing. In general, these considerations are to a considerable extent
subjective and then rarely decisive, even if often worth noting.
The absence of ruling surprised me. I have to confess that I cannot
correlate this with a date (mainly because of my ignorance); I would have
assumed that vellum ruling was the norm (with possible, rare, exceptions).
Compared with the relative crudeness of the drawings, this might indicate
the Vms is not a *final* product, but an intermediate step of a longer
process (not necessarily actually carried to its end).
Maurizio
Maurizio M. Gavioli - VistaMare Software
via San Bernardo 5, I-16030 Pieve Ligure, ITALY
http://www.vistamaresoft.com/
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