This thesis aims to study the origin and development of Maghribī round scripts, i.e. the highly distinctive writing styles employed in the Arabic manuscripts and documents produced from the 4th/10th century onwards in the western Islamic world, and more specifically in the Iberian Peninsula, North-West Africa, and the Balearic Islands. In order to reconstruct the activity of Maghribī calligraphers, copyists, and secretaries, and to follow the development of their practices, the present work lists and discusses the earliest dated material written in Maghribī scripts, in chronological order: 123 non-Quranic manuscripts, 25 Quranic codices and fragments, nine chancery documents, and two private contracts, all of which produced between 270/883 and 600/1204. The palaeographic analysis of the scripts has made it possible to distinguish between different Maghribī sub-styles and 'schools' of calligraphy, some of which have been given a new definition. A particular attention has been devoted to the geographical and historical context in which these scripts developed - i.e. Umayyad al-Andalus - and to the cultural, and even ideological implications of their use and diffusion throughout North-West Africa. Codicological aspects have also been taken into consideration, such as the quality of scribal supports, the composition of quires and gatherings, the methods of ruling the pages, the choice of inks and pigments of different types, the style and techniques of illumination. Where possible, the autoptic study of the material has been combined with the information offered by primary sources of various kinds (historical treatises, biographical dictionaries, handbooks for notaries ...) so as to present a comprehensive picture of the Maghribī scribal tradition until the Almohad period. The resulting image is that of a calligraphic culture as rich and sophisticated as the eastern one, which constituted a key element in the creation and promulgation of the Andalusī identity throughout the Mediterranean, but whose formative process and full aesthetic range were still poorly understood.

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My doctorate is a study of the manuscript transmission of Cicero’s Epistulae ad Atticum: a twenty-book corpus comprising one book Ad M. Brutum, three books Ad Quintum fratrem, sixteen books Ad Atticum and a pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula ad Octauianum. I have made a complete reinspection and partial recollation of the eighty-odd fully extant manuscripts, and reconstructed a new stemma codicum that may be used for both historical and editorial purposes. My thesis consists of four chapters, following the transmission of the corpus of Ad Atticum from the Middle Ages down to the Renaissance and the beginning of printing. In Chapter 1 I discuss the top of the stemma: Petrarch’s (1304–74) rediscovery of these letters in the Chapter Library of Verona in 1345, and the beginning of their dissemination in fifteenth-century Italy, thanks to the Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) and two humanists of his circle: Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437) and Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444). Editors of Cicero’s letters believe that the top of the stemma is bipartite, and that bipartition reflects separate strands of mediaeval transmission: I argue against their reconstruction and put forward a new pluripartite stemma. In Chapter 1 I also consider manuscripts independent of the Verona archetype: these witnesses survive only in tiny fragments and scattered readings cited by sixteenth-century critics. In Chapter 2 I study the northern Italian progeny of the Veronese archetype: here too I have significantly improved on the editors’ work, thanks to collation of a larger number of independent manuscripts and a more articulated understanding of the intricate dynamics of contamination affecting this branch. In Chapters 3 and 4 I investigate the Florentine transmission of the corpus of Ad Atticum. In Chapter 3 I study the closer descendants of the copy of the Verona archetype that in 1393 came from Milan to Florence at Salutati’s instigation. In Chapter 4 I focus on the thirty-odd descendants of the manuscript that in 1408 the humanist and Papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) copied for Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464). The comprehensive stemmata that I put forward in Chapters 3 and 4 are completely new, since hitherto there has been no systematic attempt to map the genealogy of Salutati’s manuscript.

This thesis is concerned with the supervised manuscripts of the works of Christine de Pizan (ca 1364-ca 1430), the first female author who could make a living from the products of her pen. During her long and prolific career as an author, she composed numerous works for noble and royal patrons of France, which were made into manuscripts by Parisian scribes and illuminators. Scholars have argued that Christine supervised the production of these manuscripts. Moreover, on several occasions the hypothesis has been raised that Christine also copied several of them herself, thus acting as scribe X alongside two other scribes, called P and R. The aim of this thesis is twofold: firstly, to gain a better understanding of the production process of the supervised manuscripts of Christine de Pizan's works and of the role played by the author; secondly, to develop and test a new methodology for distinguishing between scribal hands in medieval manuscripts. An account of Christine de Pizan's life and a survey of all surviving supervised manuscripts of her works clearly show that she had extensive knowledge of how they were made. Monotextual manuscripts of her works were often produced in series, in an attempt to economise and speed up the production process. The manuscripts of Christine's collected works show a production and editing process that resembles modern-day printing-on-demand. This thesis further demonstrates the use and success of the Scribal Fingerprint, a new and objective method of distinguishing between scribal hands that consists of three palaeographical core differentiators and two additional differentiators. A Scribal Fingerprint examination of the handwriting in MS Harley 4431, the most recent of the four surviving manuscripts containing Christine's collected works, generates highly heterogeneous differentiator values for the thirteen folios that were analysed. This analysis is combined with an examination executed by GIWIS, an innovative computer application for handwriting analysis. Both strngly suggest that MS Harley 4431, thought by some scholars to have been transcribed entirely by scribe X, was in fact copied by more than one scribe.

John Gwenogvryn Evans was an important figure in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Welsh Celtic Studies, because he published accurate diplomatic editions of medieval manuscripts that are still used today. He also compiled an important and detailed Report on Welsh Manuscripts for the Historic Manuscripts Commission that was of significant utility to scholars of his day, and still has uses for its detailed description of manuscripts. His extraordinary talent for accuracy in the reproduction of medieval script came to the attention of John Rhŷs, then Professor of Celtic at Jesus College, Oxford. Through Rhŷs he was exposed to the best scholarship of his day, and with the assistance of scholars such as Egerton Phillimore and John Morris Jones, he was enabled to produce work of enduring value. Due to his limited training in Welsh linguistics, and in research methodology, there were, from the start, serious flaws in his interpretation of early Welsh. Later, on losing contact with academic influences due to unwise actions, he fell into a pseudoscientific mentality more common earlier in the 19th century, seeking to find historical fact in poetry of legend and prophecy. Major errors arose from his later inclination to consider the date of a manuscript and the date of the content to be identical, and the ridicule that resulted from his 'amendments and translations' to early poetry so undermined his credibility that he never completed the full range of his intended series of texts. This study traces the origins, manifestations, and consequences of his dual nature through seven chapters. It considers the value of his solid earlier work, and balances it against the follies of his later translations, and seeks to give a fairer view of the value of his work to his own generation, and to those that followed on from him.

Les intellectuels byzantins ne lisaient pas les œuvres anciennes de manière passive : en lisant, ils avaient toujours le calame à la main pour corriger les fautes du texte, ajouter des notes ou des scholies marginales, pour rédiger des commentaires ou pour en tirer des citations, qu’ils déposaient dans des cahiers de notes. L’étude d’un recueil d’extraits permet de s’approcher en quelque sorte du bureau d’un érudit du passé, de comprendre quels textes il lisait, pourquoi et comment il sélectionnait les passages à citer. Le Neap. II C 32 est un des témoins les plus remarquables de cette pratique de lecture active et il constitue le reflet des intérêts de lecture d’un érudit ou d’un groupe d’érudits, qui avait l’habitude d’annoter les passages les plus intéressants de toutes les œuvres qu’il lisait. Le codex a été écrit par un seul scribe : on peut l’identifier comme Georges Galésiotès, célèbre copiste professionnel qui travailla pour la chancellerie du patriarcat de Constantinople pendant la première moitié du XIVe siècle. Le Neap. II C 32 n’est pas d’un cahier de notes mais il représente la mise au propre de plusieurs brouillons, qui recueillaient plusieurs anthologies d’extraits. L’ordre du contenu du Neapolitanus ne semble pas fortuit, mais il correspond probablement à un projet précis. Le codex peut être divisé en trois sections : la première contient les extraits tirés de la Bible (ff. 1-27) ; la deuxième ceux sélectionnés des ouvrages à sujet religieux (ff. 28-149) ; la troisième est dédiée à la littérature profane. L’analyse critico-textuelle a permis de tracer la place des modèles de certaines anthologies d’extraits dans le cadre de la tradition directe des ouvrages présents dans le codex de Naples. / Byzantine scholars did not read ancient authors passively: when they read, they always kept a pen in their hands in order to be able to correct eventual mistakes, add notes or scholia, include commentaries. They often employed books to collect interesting quotes, which they annotated separately in handbooks, so that they were ready to be used in the composition of an original work. The study of an anthology of excerpts allows us to somehow approach the writing desk of a scholar of the past: in doing so, it grants us the possibility to understand which texts he read and why, and also analyze the method he used in exploiting his sources. Ms Neap. II C 32 is an exceptional witness of this form of ‘active’ reading. The codex constitutes the reflection of the literary interests of a group of scholars who used to annotate the most interesting passages they found while reading. The codex was written by an only scribe, i.e. George Galesiotes, who worked for the patriarchal chancellery of Constantinople in the first half of the 14th century. Neap. II C 32 is not a scholarly handbook: it is the fair copy of several handbooks. The anthologies of excerpts included in the manuscript have been organized according to a precise project. The codex can thus be divided into three main sections: the first one is dedicated to the Bible (ff. 1-27), the second one to works of religious nature (ff. 28-149), the third one contains profane authors. Textual-critical analysis allows us to situate some of the anthologies included in Neap. II C 32 within the main manuscript tradition of the authors.

This doctoral thesis deals with the transmission and reception of the works of Cyprian of Carthage in the early Middle Ages. The process of research combined the study of the manuscript transmission of Cyprian’s works with the study of texts that were (in an immediate way or not) influenced by these writings. The connections between the transmission of Cyprian’s writings and the publishing activities of various groups, from the Donatists in fourth-century North Africa to Carolingian priests, is a central part of the thesis. The appropriation of the Church Father by different groups, including Arian writers in the aftermath the Council of Aquileia, proves not only the sense of authority Cyprian’s works invoked but also the, often liberal, way in which ancient works were used or interpreted. In addition, Cyprian was the first Latin Church Father to connect the concept of the unity of the Church with the office of the bishop. He was therefore influential in medieval ecclesiological thought and in the shaping of episcopal identities throughout the early Middle Ages. The thesis examined how Cyprian’s works functioned as tools of legitimisation for the causes of ninth-century bishops, such as Hincmar of Reims; invocations of priestly and episcopal identity, which were often based on Cyprian’s contribution to Catholic theology, enabled influential bishops to affirm their place in a Christian society as major players in ecclesiastical and secular politics.

We propose a novel approach for analyzing scribal behavior quantitatively using information about the handwriting of characters. To implement this approach, we develop a computational framework that recovers this information and decomposes the characters into primitives (called strokes) to create a hierarchically structured representation. We then propose a number of intuitive metrics quantifying various facets of scribal behavior, which are derived from the recovered information and character structure. We further propose the use of techniques modeling the generation of handwriting to directly study the changes in writing behavior. We then present a case study in which we use our framework and metrics to analyze the development of four major Indic scripts. We show that our framework and metrics coupled with appropriate statistical methods can provide great insight into scribal behavior by discovering specific trends and phenomena with quantitative methods. We also illustrate the use of handwriting modeling techniques in this context to study the divergence of the Brahmi script into two daughter scripts. We conduct a user study with domain experts to evaluate our framework and salient results from the case study, and we elaborate on the results of this evaluation. Finally, we present our conclusions and discuss the limitations of our research along with future work that needs to be done.

In starting the Demotic Palaeographical Database Project, we intend to build up an online database which pays special attention to the actual appearance of Demotic papyri and texts down to the level of the individual sign. Our idea is to analyse a papyrus with respect to its visual nature, inasmuch as it shall be possible to compare each Demotic sign to other representations of the same sign in other texts and to study its occurrences in different words. Words shall not only be analysed in their textual context but also by their orthography and it should be possible to study even the papyrus itself by means of its material features. Therefore, the Demotic Palaeographical Database Project aims for the creation of a modern and online accessible Demotic palaeography, glossary of word spellings and corpus of manuscripts, which will not only be a convenient tool for Egyptologists and researchers interested in the Demotic writing system or artefacts inscribed with Demotic script but also will serve the conservation of cultural heritage. In our paper, we will present our conceptual ideas and the preliminary version of the database in order to demonstrate its functionalities and possibilities.

This thesis examines the uses of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the 150 years immediately following the Norman Conquest. By focusing on the most common types of use evident in the manuscripts, it explores how readers actually interacted with books. It also treats manuscripts as cultural artefacts through which it is possible to observe the literary and social consequences of the Conquest. The Introduction summarises our current understanding of the literary culture of this transitional period. Chapter II, ‘Destruction and Conservation’, examines claims that Norman elites destroyed Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; finding these claims unjustified, it investigates the circumstances in which manuscripts were lost and identifies how readers evaluated the contents of pre-Conquest books. Chapter III, ‘The Movement of Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, looks at the consequent loan, exchange and sale of pre-Conquest manuscripts after 1066. Chapter IV, ‘Updating Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, discusses difficulties which Norman readers encountered with pre-Conquest books, including script, abbreviation, orthography and textual redaction, and examines how these technical features could be modernised. It also investigates more practical modernisations to liturgical books, chronicles and cartularies. Chapter V, ‘Glossing and Annotating’, concerns readers’ reactions to the texts found in pre-Conquest manuscripts, particularly vernacular homilies and translations. It argues that the post-Conquest classroom was essentially trilingual, though Latin became the lingua franca. Chapter VI, ‘Record-Keeping in Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, explores the use of pre-Conquest manuscripts – copies of the gospels, liturgical books and patristic texts – as repositories for records. Chapter VII, ‘The Veneration of Pre-Conquest Manuscripts’, continues this exploration of the symbolic capital of pre-Conquest books by examining how Norman churchmen supported the veneration of particular manuscripts as secondary relics, and introduced new traditions regarding other books. The Conclusion refocuses the findings of this thesis on two key issues: early medieval reading practices and English literature between 1066 and 1200.