New Catalogues for Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts?

Abstract

Codicoogical means the substrate material, the quires, the signatures, the dimensions of the page and of the writing area, holes, rules, and page format, the ink, and the ornamentation, when there is one. palaeography is the study f the writing itself. unlike codicology, which is currently ruled by methodology, the study of handwriting is still in its infancy and relies much more in experience than on science. when it comes to the production of catalogues, neither codicology nor palaeography can be indipendent disciplines; both remain auxiliaries of history - especially the history of texts, because a book is essentially the carrier of a text. starting in the tenth century, the traditional texts were supplemented with texts of specific authors (Bible commentarie, halakhic, theological, and ethical tracts, medical treaties, and somewha later, translations into Hebrew or Arabic or Latin philosphy and science). [...] Among the Jews, publication was not subject to institutional authorities and was overseenm by the author himself, who maintained possession of a reference text or 'clean copy'. A very large of Hebre manuscripts were produces by the copist for his own personal use. he was frequently assisted by members of his family; the studia of late fifteenth-century Spain probably resembled a Latin scriptorium, but without the organisation. The manuscripts are the living and perceptiblr trace of the hands and minds of the men and women who wrote them and costituite almost our only opportunity of encounter the 'as they were'. Before it was acquired by a public library, each of these manuscripts had its own specific history. we learn about it through the bills of sale or purchase, signatures, words crossed out by the censor, shelfmarks, stamps, and the binding or what remains of it. the manuscripts also preserve a record of events that people wanted to remember: births, deaths, persecutions, testimony about extraordinary events. We believe that everything is relevant: the making of the book, tha act of copying it, the text, tis readers, the libraries that collected it - all these give the manuscripts a personality, an individuality, a uniqueness that is revealed when one takes into account all these indices, both physical and textual.