An introduction to Greek and Latin palaeography / by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson.

  • Edward Maunde Thompson
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to Greek and Latin palaeography / by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    76/624 page 56
    of Rome, Milan, etc.^ But the tri-columnar .sy.stem appears to have been generally abandoned after the sixth century. The Utrecht Psalter, written at the beginning of the ninth century, in triple columns, is not an instance which counts for later usage, the MS. being only an exact copy of an older codex.^ Usually the later examples are the result of necessity, as in the case of Psalters in parallel versions or languages.'* A late instance, however, of a text arranged in this fashion, without any compelling causes, occurs in the version of the Latin Bible by Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, written in the ninth century, Add. MS. 24142, in the British Museum, and in its companion codices at Paris and Puy.^ The line of writing was ortyo?, versus; ypaixixr], liaea, riga; the individual letters, ypafXjxaTa, grammata, elemenia, characteres, figurae. The first lines of the main divisions of the text, as for example the several books of the Bible, were often written in red for distinction. At fii’st, in uncial Latin MSS., there was no enlargement of letters in any part of the text to mark the beginnings of sections or chapters; yet, in some of the earliest examples, the first letter of the page, without regard to its position in relation to the text, is made larger than the rest. Rubrics and titles and colophons (that is, titles, etc., entered at the ends of books) were at first written in the same style as the text; afterwards it was found convenient, for distinction, to employ different characters. Thus in later uncial Latin MSS. titles might be in capitals or rustic capitals; in minuscule MSS. they might be written in capitals or uncials. The convenience of having the title at the beginning of a MS., instead of only in colophoii-form at the end, was soon recognized; but the use of the colojDhon still continued, the designation of a work being frequently recorded in both title and colophon down to the latest period. Running titles or head-lines appear in even some of the earliest MSS., in the same characters as the text, but of smaller size. As already noticed, the text of early MSS. was, with rare excep- tions, written continuously without sej^aration of the words.^ In the 1 It may also be noted that the most ancient dated MS. in existence, the Syriac MS. of A. D. 411, containing the Recognitions of Clement of Rome (Brit. Mas. Add. MS. 12150), is wi itten in triple columns. - The later copies of this Psalter also maintain the same arrangement. 3 A Psalter in four parallel columns (the Greek and the three Latin versions), A. D. 1105, is in the Bibl. Nationale, MS. Lat. 2195. See Pal. Soc. i. 15G. * Kenyon, Facs. Bibl. MSS. in Brit. Mas., ])1. xv ; Del isle, Les Bibles cte Theodtdfe, Bibl. Ecole dcs Charles, xi. The Royal MS. 1. D. ii in the British Museum, containing a portion of the Greek .Septuagint, has four of its cpiires written in trijile columns, which it is suggested may have been copied from an uncial archetype thus arranged : Facs. Bibl. MSS. in Brit. M^lS., pi. viii. ® The astronomical treatise known as the EiSJfou Tcyr?;, of the second century b.c., at Paris, and the grammatical work bearing the name of Tryphon i^Brit. Mus., Pap. cxxvi), of about 300 B. c., have at least partial separation of words.
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