CHS iMouseionVirtual Research Environment

Fundamentals

MediManus is an extensive digital repository for the manuscripts containing ancient Greek medical texts that have been preserved in libraries all over the world. Manuscripts are not ordinary books. Whereas all copies of printed books are the same until a new, revised edition is published, each manuscript is different. Being copied by hand, they are in the writing typical of each scribe. Even more: those copied by the same scribes may differ not only over time, but also according to the type of book, from notebook for practitioners to deluxe book for wealthy patrons. What makes the study of manuscripts more difficult is that, unlike printed books, they do not have an imprint, with a year and place of production. But this is their interest: they need to be investigated to possibly identify their time and place of origin, as well as their history from their origin to their present location in libraries all over the world. Their history is sometimes astonishing. The present section features fundamental introductory notions for the correct understanding of manuscripts and, by way of consequence, productive use of the platform MediManus. It will be developed over time to provide more information as necessary.

  1. Extant manuscripts
  2. Destruction of books and libraries
  3. Identification of manuscripts
  4. Four special cases

    a. Palimpsested parchment manuscripts

    b. Collaborative copy

    c. Restored manuscripts

    d. Composite volumes

  5. Numbering of folios and pages
  6. Texts in the manuscripts
  7. Illustrations and diagrams
  8. Catalogues of manuscripts
  9. Editing ancient texts
  10. Tradition
  11. New Codicology and Paleography
  12. Digital manuscripts

1. Extant manuscripts

Manuscripts of Greek classical texts, whatever their content (medicine, literature, the Bible, liturgy or other), were produced in the Byzantine World or during the Byzantine period (until 1453). With very rare exceptions, they are not anterior to the 9th-10th century. Handwritten reproduction of texts was pursued in the Greek World during the Tourkokratia (1453-1831) and slightly later. In medicine, these post-Byzantine manuscripts are generally identified as iatrosofia, that is, books of popular medicine. In the West, Greek classical and later texts began to be printed as early as the late 15th century. Nevertheless, many were also copied by hand—whether they were printed or not—from Italy to Germany and from the Ionian Islands to Spain until late into the 16th century. Many of these later manuscripts were made upon request for the libraries that were assembled at that time or for study, for scholars. After most classical texts were available in print, scholars continued to reproduce texts—or fragments—by hand for personal study, annotations, compilation of lexica or other works of erudition until the 19th century.


2. Destructions of books and libraries

Repeated transformations of the book and writing from the 5th century BCE to the development of printing—from papyrus rolls to codices, from parchment to paper, from majuscule to cursive minuscule—led to discarding items in an obsolete type at each transformation. Books were also damaged, abandoned or lost through the passing of time and also thoroughly damaged through destruction of entire libraries caused by natural disasters, warfare, and all kinds of devastations. As a result, knowledge of ancient Greek medicine in current research inevitably represents merely a fragment of the ancient medical landscape.


3. Identification of manuscripts

Each manuscript is identified by means of the following string of elements as per current standard codicological and library practice:

  1. City and country
  2. Library
  3. Collection
  4. Shelfmark

All these identifiers can be provided in English or in the original language of the country. Examples: Vatican City, Vatican City, graecus 284 and Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, graecus 284 Paris, National Library of France, Coislinianus graecus 333 and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Coislinianus graecus 333 Latin names of collections are usually italicized as per scholarly standards.

4. Four special cases

Manuscripts may be complex. Here are four special cases: palimpsesting, collaborative copy, restoration, composite volumes.

a. Palimpsested parchment manuscripts

Palimpsests are parchment manuscripts in which the original text has been washed out to allow reuse of the medium. The palimpsesting process might result in 3 different situations (with reference here to medical texts): • a medical text has been washed out; • a medical text covers an anterior one, washed out; • a medical text written on a washed-out folio has been erased (washed out) and another text, non-medical, has been written on the folio.

If the texts in palimpsested manuscripts under the second case above can be read (though possibly with some difficulty), those in the other two cases need use of appropriate multi-spectral technology to be identified and deciphered. An inventory of the manuscripts of these manuscripts has been compiled by Harlfinger et al. 2006, with a total number of 15 items. 1

[1]: Dieter Harlfinger, Carl Wolfram Brunschön, Maria Vasiloudi, “Die griechischen medizinischen Palimpseste (mit Beispielen ihrer digitalen Lektüre)”, in Carl Werner Müller, Christian Brockmann and Carl Wolfram Brunschön (eds.), Ärzte und ihre Interpreten. Medizinische Fachtexte der Antike als Forschungsgegenstand der Klassischen Philologie (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 238). Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2006, pp. 143-164.

Palimpsested manuscripts are usually accompanied by such indications as: • scriptio infima: in the case of two processes of palimpsesting, for the very first text; • scriptio antiqua or scriptio inferior: in the case of one reuse, for the deleted text; • scriptio superior: in the case of one or two reuses, for the recent text.

In addition to reading, palimpsests in which the text has been erased present a further difficulty. Since palimpsesting required to dismember manuscripts and resulted in breaking the sequence of the folios in the original form of the palimpsested codices, washed-out folios were used as they were available and sometimes not even to copy the same manuscript. As a result, palimpsested folios, be they in the same or in different manuscripts, are often scattered throughout these manuscripts in a somewhat disconcerting, but still identifiable order. The manuscripts with such folios are listed here and their texts are identified without folio numbers to avoid long strings of folio numbers.

b. Collaborative copy

Some manuscripts can constitute a unitary volume from a textual viewpoint but may result from collaboration by various copyists working in coordination. In addition to being different from a paleographical viewpoint, such collaborative manuscripts may be—and often are—not homogeneous from a codicological viewpoint. Each of their parts are usually distinguished and treated as manuscripts in their own right identified by their folio numbers in the volume that they contribute to constitute.

c. Restored manuscripts

Manuscripts might sometimes have suffered the damage of time, be it because of intensive consultation or events of all kinds. They may have been restored through various degrees of intervention. Entire sections may have been recreated or the portions of their texts that were either lost or became illegible have been reintroduced, sometimes employing a different model than the one of the original text. In some cases, manuscripts have been restored twice, resulting in increased heterogeneity, possibly both codicologically and textually. In each of these instances, the manuscripts, their components, or their restorations are treated as distinct items due to their codicological and, at times, textual individuality, despite being cataloged under the same shelfmark in the libraries where they are preserved. All such parts of the manuscripts are identified by their folio numbers following the shelfmark of the volume. Example: the manuscript of Florence/Firenze (IT), Medicea Laurenziana Library/Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 75.2 is a 12th-century manuscript, in which the first and last parts are on a different medium, have been written by a different hand than the body of the manuscript, and date to the 14th century. The parts of the manuscript are identified as follows: 75.02, ff. 29-282, for the original body of the manuscript 75.02, ff. 01-28, 283-309, for the first and last part, respectively.

d. Composite volumes

Some contemporary volumes contain manuscripts (or groups of loose leaves) originally distinct that have been bound together within a single cover for the purpose of collection management. These items may vary in medium, dimensions, and writing, and can result in thematically coherent corpora or collections of heterogenous materials conveniently grouped together due to their comparable dimensions. All such manuscripts are virtually decomposed in their components, and each such component is treated as a discrete unit identified by a number added to the shelfmark of the volume. Such number indicates the sequential position of the manuscript under consideration in the volume artificially created by binding together several items. Example: Manuscript Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College Library, 076/43, is made of 8 manuscripts identified by a number from 1 to 8 with pages sequentially numbered from 1 to 227. The items with medical content are the following: 076/43, MS 3 = ff. 035-141 076/43, MS 4 = ff. 142-174 076/43, MS 6 = ff. 206-211 076/43, MS 7 = ff. 213-219 076/43, MS 8 = ff. 220-227

5. Numbering of folios/pages

Pages of manuscripts are traditionally numbered by folio (and not by page), that is, each leaf is identified with a recto and a verso. Numbering of folios proceeds as follows:

Example: I + 233 + IV΄ folios or I + 233 + IV΄ ff

6. Texts in the manuscripts

Whereas some manuscripts contain only one work, others collect several works that might be by the same author (e.g. Galen), form a coherent group (the Hippocratic Collection), constitute a set of treatises on a medical topic (sphygmology, for instance), or form heterogeneous collections. In all cases, texts in manuscripts are identified with the following three elements in the sequence below:

Author’s names and titles are in Latin according to traditional scholarly practice. Works of contested authenticity are listed under the author’s name as per the manuscript tradition or the scholarly use. In this case, the author’s name is either put between brackets (e.g. [Aristotle]) or preceded or followed by the term Pseudo-, either in full or abbreviated (e.g. Pseudo-Aristotle and Ps.-Aristotle, or Aristotle (Pseudo-) and Aristotle (Ps.). Titles are always italicized. Examples:

Anonymous texts that are not identified by specific titles but rather by general terms or brief descriptions, should be assigned a Latin title that accurately represents their content and facilitates future use and referencing. These titles must be in Latin and italicized.

Examples:

When the parts in the manuscripts correspond to chapters or books of a work, the titles are followed by the number of books or the chapters (Liber [singular], Libri [plural] for the books, abbreviated Lib.) between parentheses. This term Liber, Libri, or Lib. is not italicized. Example: Galenus, De simplicibus (Lib. 6-11) When the texts in the manuscripts are not complete, but contain only parts of the work, the title is followed by the abbreviation frag. (for fragment) between parentheses.

In some cases, titles may be followed by Latin terms between parentheses, such as:

Exact determination of the folio/page of beginning and end of the texts (with recto or verso for folioed manuscripts) should be established by examination of digital images or through personal analysis. Resulting data may diverge from information in currently available catalogs, be they scholarly printed catalogs or online websites.

7. Illustrations and diagrams

Several Greek medical manuscripts contain illustrations that are usually omitted from manuscript catalogs, but may be analyzed in art history, especially when they constitute a notable polychrome corpus. Their illustrations must be considered as components of the manuscripts in their own right. Visual diagrams that clearly articulate the divisions of theoretical concepts and ideas presented in texts must be regarded similarly, as independent units of content. Both illustrations and diagrams must be identified by Latin titles referring to the represented personages, objects or scenes for the illustrations, and the notions under analysis for the diagrams. Latin titles must be italicized.

Examples:

8. Catalogues of manuscripts

Manuscripts are studied (“described”) in the catalogues produced by the libraries where they are currently preserved or by researchers from other institutions in contact with the libraries. These catalogues may offer different levels of comprehensiveness. Codicology has substantially developed recently, starting in the last quarter of the 20th century. Nevertheless, in many libraries, available catalogues are still 19th-century ones, which can now be accessed on the Internet.

9. Ecdotic: editing ancient texts

Many manuscripts contain the same texts. It is common practice in scholarly research to ignore these iterative copies in favor of concentrating on the original form of the texts and the earliest treatment of the scientific questions under consideration. This focus is predicated on the belief that the many copies of ancient texts and the repeated examination of scientific topics have led to gradual transformations—indeed, alterations—of the original content and essence of the ancient heritage, including its textual fidelity.

This practice, originating in the Renaissance, is reflected in Ecdotic—the scholarly discipline of critical editing of ancient texts considered as the most accomplished scholarly endeavor of classical studies. In ecdotic methodology, copies, referred to as codices descripti, are disregarded on the basis of the principle of eliminatio codicum descriptum (elimination of copies). This eliminatio aims to limit the number of witnesses to be considered in the editing process and to select only one or very few that are believed to have more accurately transmitted the work to be edited.

In recent decades, textual history has notably transitioned from the production of literature— whether fictional, scientific, or other—to reception. This shift opens new perspectives not only for the edition process, but also for the understanding of the transformation(s) of texts. Unless the original of a work in an autograph copy by the author can be identified—which might be the case for more recent works--, ecdotic no longer searches to identify or reconstruct the most ancient form of a text supposed to be the original one, since this objective might not be attainable. Editing consists now in reproducing the versions of the texts that users did read at any point in time.

10. Tradition

In this shift of the focus, transformations within a corpus formed by the multiple copies or the renewed analysis of a subject over time are now analyzed as interventions, ranging from minor adjustments to more substantial modifications. Such transformations are viewed as attempts to reappropriate the work or subject matter in question, facilitate their integration into changing contexts or update their content, all while eliminating the inevitable noise generated by the errors unavoidably generated from manual transcription, potential misinterpretations of the subject, or any factor influencing the reproduction or understanding of the information received.

This transition from production to reception reveals that the multiple copies of the same works or the recurrent study of identical or closely related subjects result from an intellectual engagement performed in se and per se that escaped in earlier studies without even being regarded at best as the transmission of the ancient legacy, in a perspective that has been prevalent until relatively recently. The concept of transmission acquires a new meaning and becomes tradition.

11. New Codicology and Paleography

In the second half of the 20th century, the study of ancient manuscripts emerged as a discipline in itself known as Codicology. Study of manuscript no longer is an ancillary technique for textual criticism aimed at providing evidence to justify the eliminatio codicum descriptorum based only on rigorous philological analysis (see above, under Ecdotic).

By examining book-making in all its components, codicology has the potential to determine the year or period of the manuscripts and, ideally, also the place of their production, and also to identify the milieu where manuscripts were created, be it a library, a study center, a scriptorium (center of copy) or, in the case of medicine, a hospital, as well as the conditions of all kinds, not only cultural, but also social, economic and political, under which codices were produced.

The nature, characteristics and quality of the medium may provide significant hints, as well as the dimensions of the page and the utilization of its surface, the calligraphic quality (or not) of the writing, or the presence of illustrations—whether in color or drawn with ink—and decorated title pages, headings, or initials letters of chapters or any significant divisions of the works.

Codicology can also bring to light elements that suggest the intended use(s) of manuscripts, whether for learning or study, personal notes, or clinical research and practice in the case of medicine.

The study of writing—Paleography—also went through substantial revision and affirmed more explicitly the status of the written word and the very act of writing as objects of historical inquiry in its own right. Its results complement codicological data. Identification of the types of writing used by the copyists may reflect the trends of the time, be typical of the production of a workshop (scriptorium), or also reveal the social and economic conditions in which books were produced. They might hint at possible commissions and use(s) of the books, from preservation of the ancient legacy and assembling a library collection to individual reading, study and even active teaching and research.

12. Digital Manuscripts

Digitization is an ongoing endeavor in both prominent and smaller libraries across the world. While some libraries have completely digitized their collections, others have not yet, and some others have not initiated any digital reproduction of their holdings to date.

Digital reproductions available on the MediManus platform are supplied by the libraries that possess the manuscripts. These reproductions illustrate the diverse methodologies employed by the libraries to digitize their collections. In many cases, each image includes either the recto or the verso of a folio in a single image, or the verso of one folio and the recto of the following folio in one image. The images can be in color, directly made from the manuscripts, or in black and white, derived from microfilms of varying quality. Regardless of the image type, libraries may or may not adhere to the IIIF standard (International Image Interoperability Framework).

Similarly, the referencing of images varies among libraries. Some libraries replicate the folio numbering found in manuscripts, utilizing Roman numerals for guard leaves and Arabic numerals for the main body, with the addition of the letters r or v to identify recto and verso, respectively. Conversely, other libraries assign a sequential number from 1 to n to the images of the manuscripts, which does not align with the folio numbering in the manuscripts but rather corresponds to the sequence of the digital images for each manuscript. Additionally, some libraries may choose not to assign any numbers to their digital images. While certain libraries maintain a consistent referencing system across all their collections, others adopt a mixed approach, employing different systems for various manuscripts.