Re: VMs: dating the VMS

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 fion@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I was thinking of an way to date the ms. Roughly the history of numerals
> could be broken in the following periods:
>
> 1. ... Roman numerals (XIVL)
> 2. Roman numerals (XIVL) and/or Old-Style Arabic numerals (23l5...7^9)(Trans)
> 3. Old-Style Arabic numerals
> 4. Old-Style Arabic numerals and/or New-Style Arabic numerals (2345...789) (Trans)
> 5. New-Style Arabic numerals ...
>
> Notes
> - 2. and 3. are transition periods.
> - Old-Style l(lambda look a like)=4 and ^=8
> - New-Style is modern,current style
>
> Based on the facts that on one of pages numbers 12345 are written in the
> new-style and page numbering is done on the old-style, it looks like the
> ms was written in period 4.

See http://paleo.anglo-norman.org/medfram.html (and click on numerals) and
http://paleo.anglo-norman.org/empfram.html (and click on technical
points).  It appears that from an English paleographical perspective,
simply using arabic numerals exclusively would date the paginator and the
annotator to some time after the middle 16th Century, though another
source says that arabic numerals were widestpread in Europe from the
middle of the 15th Century
(http://www.paratype.com/help/term/terms.asp?code=18).

In addition, this approach to dating would provide a terminating bracket
of sorts, but not an actual date for the manuscript.  That is, the ms.
must have been in existence when it was paged and annotated, but for how
long?  The consensus is that these elements were added some time after the
ms. was prepared, and not by the preparator.

Dating the materials used might be another approach, leading to a leadng
bracket.  The vellum had to exist before it was written on.  It was likely
new at the time, but might not have been.  I don't know what the
technology is there.  Obviously such testing would require the full
cooperation of the Beinicke Library!

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