[split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections

[Helmut Winkler]

I'd really like to see a list of alleged corrections in the ms..

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I knew the list of course, but i don't see a correction (on a shave or otherwise) and i don't know any others either. I repeat: I'd really like to see a list of alleged corrections in the ms..

[Torsten]

I knew the list of course, but i don't see a correction (on a shave or otherwise) and i don't know any others either. I repeat: I'd really like to see a list of alleged corrections in the ms..

Please note that they are only possible corrections. It is also possible that sometimes two quill strokes were used to write 's'. 

I wrote in 2014 about the hypothesis that the scribe was frequently changing 'e' into 's' (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 31f). 

Back in 2014 Nick Pelling wrote a blog post about errors and corrections (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

[ReneZ]

Could we have examples where e's were changed into s ?

[Helmut Winkler]

I think I've read most of the halfway serious literature, no one has to tell me: what bothers me are statements about corrections that just can't be seen and that nobody can show these corrections or give you a list, not to mention scribal errors if you don't know what should have been written somewhere

[Koen G]

If corrections were done through scraping, would we necessarily be able to see them on the scans?

[-JKP-]

I can give a list of corrections. I started documenting them years ago. I just don't have TIME to hunt it up and add more examples to flesh it out for an audience.

I abandoned the task of collecting and documenting the corrections (and anomalies) because it was clear after a couple of dozen folios that there were lots of corrections. That's all I needed to know. When you create four transcripts you see EVERY character many times and you note the patterns. It isn't necessary to screensnap them or to record them to know that they are there.

There is learning and there is proving. As far as glyph shapes and corrections are concerned, I was learning, not trying to prove anything. I wanted to solve the VMS, not discuss it every day for the rest of my life!


It's like the palaeography. I've spent over a decade collecting samples to match the text on f116v. I don't need samples to know it's text that is typical for the early-mid 15th century. I can see that at a glance, so can any palaeographer. But all the nonpalaeographers cannot, so I spend untold hours documenting it so I can prove it to a lay audience ("lay" in the strict sense of palaeography, not research or history in general, since there are many who are skilled in other areas). I considered the palaeography to be more worthy of study than corrections because it MIGHT fill in some holes in the provenance. Corrections are low priority. I know they are there. If people don't believe it then they can create a few transcripts themselves (I've made four). It takes two or three months to create and double-check a really good accurate transcript.

[Helmut Winkler]

If corrections were done through scraping, would we necessarily be able to see them on the scans?

I think we should be able to see it, but as far as I remember there has been a thorough search on the original

[arca_libraria]

If corrections were done through scraping, would we necessarily be able to see them on the scans?

I think we should be able to see it, but as far as I remember there has been a thorough search on the original

I know this isn’t a very helpful answer, but I’m going to share it anyway My research means that I have worked with a lot of manuscripts in the flesh, and so I am familiar with working with them up-close as well as digitally. In short: sometimes you can see scraping-erasures and sometimes you can’t, and that applies whether you are looking at the real MS or digital images. Scraping-erasures can be much easier to see when you are looking at the actual manuscript, so it’s normal to see corrections in a real MS that are not visible in the digital images of the same manuscript. On the other hand, scraping can be hard to see if it’s just one letter - if a whole word has been removed and overwritten then that tends to leave a more visible mark. 

Scraping erasures show up really well on goat and sheep parchments in comparison to calf parchment.

In the paragraph above I said that you can often see erasures in the real MS that are not visible in the digital images, but for very small erasures one of the main advantages of digital images is that you can zoom in a lot and go character-by-character to look for weird ink as well as spots of unusual texture that would otherwise be hard to see in the lighting conditions of most reading rooms.

Beyond using our human eyes and the visible light spectrum on either a real manuscript or digital images, some spectroscopic and raked-light techniques can make erasures easier to see. You could potentially manipulate the existing digital images of the VMS MatLab or Python to over-enhance various artefacts - but I assume this has been done?

[ChenZheChina]

Could we have examples where e's were changed into s ?

Maybe this one in line 25 of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is not firm enough, but I think it might be one of the “corrections”, or “e with accents”.

   

In this case, it seems to me that the writer first wrote qoeeedy Sheeal and then added two strokes above, to make it qoesedy Sheeerl.

This “a” does seem to be somehow split into two parts, but this is not the only example where “a” is written in this way. In line 28 of the same page, we could see qotain, whose “a” is also written in this way.

What strikes me here is the rare combination “rl”.

1. There is only one occurrence of the combination “erl”.
   
2. In all other cases of combination “rl”, the letter “r” and “l” are far from each other, making two letters clearly recognizable.
   

[-JKP-]

...


What strikes me here is the rare combination “rl”.

Yes, I agree.

It jumped out at me.