About "From our notebooks"

The manuscripts that are now kept in libraries worldwide are not just simple copies of valuable ancient texts. A philology of these texts and their manuscripts—going beyond the traditional definition of philology—unveils deeper meanings and layers within both the texts and the manuscripts. This exploration reveals more than what is immediately visible: it uncovers the processes of knowledge-making, the sometimes-hidden odyssey of texts and manuscripts, the history of collections and the universe of library auctioning, and many other peculiarities that may not be obvious to readers. Our thorough investigations during a Grand Tour of libraries over decades has led to the creation of a unique collection of paleographical, iconological, codicological, philological, and scientific observations, along with many other distinctive features now stored in an archive—Our Notebooks. Such findings are presented here. They include texts and manuscripts that contradict established scholarly beliefs, remarkable illustrations, clever mnemonic devices, or scientific drawings that suggest a method of observing nature that predates the so-called Scientific Revolution. This is a journey into the textual, codicological, scientific, and medicinal vault of the Ancient World, as partially documented by the surviving manuscripts and texts that have been meticulously examined directly from the original codices—not from images, whether they are old sepia lithographs, outdated black-and-white photographs and microfilms, or the latest digital images consulted on a computer or the Internet.