Author Topic: Talking of tiny writing...  (Read 1466 times)

Offline jrvalverde

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Talking of tiny writing...
« on: November 13, 2019, 03:03:06 AM »
Cutting a long story short...

This is from an ancient book. The large script looks to my untrained eyes as Visigothic. The two coins are 1 cent of Euro coins.

Offline jrvalverde

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The long story
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2019, 03:33:48 AM »
When I was young, Psychoanalysis was still a major trend in Psychiatry and Freud's and Young's works were very popular, specially "The interpretation of dreams". As soon as I could I bought myself Freud's works. Among them I found this in one of his correspondence letters:
Quote
When I was a young student, the thrive to read the immortal "Don Quixote" in Cervante's original led me to learn, without teacher, the beautiful Spanish language.
Sigmund Freud. Vienna. 7 may, 1923
.

Which I thought was pretty cool! And from then on, I strived to read, whenever possible, literary works in their original language. Even when I do not know the language, I still try to get the books, often, if possible, as bilingual editions (original and translated). Over the years I have collected what I consider a lovely library.

Flash forward 35 years. I recently found on a book fair this book, which I found interesting for several reasons. First, it was  fac-simile of an ancient manuscript, second, the manuscript was in an attractive round hand, and mostly, I was told it contained in the side comments some of the earliest words in Spanish and Euskera (Vasque). The glosae (annotations) also seem to contain some words of German origin.

That's what the previous image is. To get a sense of proportion, let me say that the original was in less than quarto (which would roughly correspond to less than A5 nowadays). To further help, I included in the picture two coins of 1 cent of Euro. The first one looked too big, so I added the second one, on its side so you can compare the size of the tiny writing with the thickness of a 1cent Euro coin. The side note that is close to it is slightly larger, but some of the annotated words in the middle of the text are barely as high as the 1 cent coin.

Now, for the book, it is written in Visigothic hand. An insular hand used in Spain until the VIII Century. So, the codex must be earlier than that. I love that script: compared to Gothic, it is round, and (to me) much more graceful, though it has some quirks that make it difficult to identify a few letters. It is, obviously, in Latin. I don't really know its writing date.

But the tiny notes... those seem to have been written when the codex was in the North of Spain in an area under Euskera and Castillian influences, and been added by a monk who wanted to clarify the meaning of some words. Latin had been the language throughout most of the Middle Ages, and the notes were written at a time when some people started to have trouble understanding it due to its evolution to local languages. By most estimates they should be dated somewhere in the X or IX Centuries.

Besides the linguistical aspects, the reason I bring this up, is because it helps get a sense of proportion. These notes were written by someone who didn't know Latin well (if he had, he wouldn't have needed to add the notes), so was not too educated (maybe at the beginning or the middle of his monastic education?). He (no sexism intended, the codex came from a monks' Monastery) must have been making his own ink and quills with somewhat primitive tools out of birds feathers. And have cut a straight point to his nib capable of writing this tiny.

To me, that's amazing. He must have had a really good command of the tools, the craft and the hand. This book has been the reason I decided to recover my Latin --you know, in the old times, Latin was an integral part of secondary education, and further, it was the Lingua Franca of Medicine (e.g. Anatomy books had the names in Latin and local languages).

I add a second picture of another page, where the Visigothic script can be better appreciated:
« Last Edit: November 13, 2019, 03:58:02 AM by jrvalverde »

Offline jrvalverde

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Re: Talking of tiny writing...
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2019, 03:46:32 AM »
The colors... They have faded over time. I suppose the header was in red, the illustration in red, yellow and green, and the text in black. It would be interesting to know how the inks were made. I can read the title of the page as "PASSIO BEATISSIMORUM MARTINUM, COSME ET DAMIANI."

I can also make out "in dieb(u)s illio rabdio cleatuno c^a maximiano imperatoribus, etc.

I must recognize it takes me a lot more work to decypher the rest of the text. Still, the round shapes of the letters are (to me) lovely, and considering the Visigothic script predates Caroline minuscule by some 500 years, atonishing. BTW, that is not a nice sample of the script, it seems this was a manual that was handed over the ages and not written in "calligraphic" hand, just as a student reference in a quick "scribble".
« Last Edit: November 13, 2019, 04:06:32 AM by jrvalverde »

Offline AnasaziWrites

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Re: Talking of tiny writing...
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2019, 11:11:27 AM »
Is there a title to this book (the facsimile, I mean)?

Offline jrvalverde

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Re: Talking of tiny writing...
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2019, 04:26:17 PM »
The book I have is hard bound in red, the cover is "Glosas emiianenses", and is published by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia). Actually I got it at the official Spanish representation booth. They had a few other manuscripts, and I felt they were rather cheap. I think that the person in the booth told me they are old editions sold on sale (this one is dated 1977). I guess there is not a huge readership for these books and that at some point storing the remnants of an old edition becomes expensive and its better to get rid of them on sale.

Yep. Just checked on Google. The first hit for "Glosas emilianenses ministerio educacion ciencia" leads to it and lists it for 11.95 EUR + VAT.

On a side note, another gorgeous book I got some 20-25 years ago, is "Les plus beaux manuscrits des poètes français" from "La memoir de l'encre" of Editions Robert Laffont. I found it on FNAC at Pau, at the South of France during a trip and also grabbed it immediately. This was more expensive, but is a great resource: it reviews the best French poets through the ages, giving for each a one page biography, then one or more samples, one page manuscript by the author (or copyist) and in front the "translation" to modern French. Goes from the Middle Ages to XX Century in 400 pages. That is, it covers a really good number of poets, poems and hands. It's on Amazon, but costs 170 EUR new (20 second hand). In abebooks.fr it is listed for 3.99 EUR! with free shipping to France. Well worth it if you understand French and love Poetry.

On the early Internet and flight times, it made sense. Whenever I traveled abroad I would return with a backpack loaded of books. Nowadays it would be prohibitive to fly with that weight and most of these manuscripts are freely available in digitized form on the Internet. Usually from the corresponding National Library. I know. I've chased many in the last years. But I still get paper copies from time to time when I can afford them (I'm a diehard).
« Last Edit: November 13, 2019, 04:31:13 PM by jrvalverde »