07-12-2017, 06:13 AM
So to sum up.
1. After having ascertained that the reason the manuscript has no signs of prick-marks in the outer margin is NOT because the quires were trimmed during a subsequent rebinding (though there's sign of a bit shaved off the odd folio here and there)...
2. I researched where and when bifolia of the same dimensions are known, and found these precise dimensions to be unusual: only 2 exact matches in the entire manuscript collection of the British Library. (and to be clear, I recorded dimensions for covers and the book-block separately, and for folios and text-boxes separately too). Only 2 exact matches.
3. When matching just one measurement, the long side found other manuscripts having the same to be overwhelmingly Jewish works.
4. Paper and mebrane sizes were researched and the results show conscious effort to have them correlate.
5. The regions in which the two exact matches were made agree with what (a) has been said about the manuscript by early evaluations, namely that it agrees with English works and (b) north Italian, which agrees with the body of research done by Nick Pelling first and by me thereafter. Pelling said 'Milan'; my opinion is Padua or, slightly less probably, the Veneto.
For all these conclusions, I published a fair part of the informing research and data.
As an entirely separate matter, in a powerpoint slide slow in 2010, Rene had shown profiles of relative sizes for herbal manuscripts made in medieval Europe. No dimensions were given; the slide was only an illustration that herbals were made in smaller, medium and large sizes relative to one another. Perhaps some inferences were drawn by Rene from that information at the time, but I wasn't at that talk and no-one since then has said anything about it.
The codicological issue of manufacture for bifolia is (as I said) an issue wholly different from whether there were 'big' 'not so big' 'medium' and 'small' format herbals.
I guess each of us deserves credit for the type of work done, the sources used and the inferences drawn. No problem.
1. After having ascertained that the reason the manuscript has no signs of prick-marks in the outer margin is NOT because the quires were trimmed during a subsequent rebinding (though there's sign of a bit shaved off the odd folio here and there)...
2. I researched where and when bifolia of the same dimensions are known, and found these precise dimensions to be unusual: only 2 exact matches in the entire manuscript collection of the British Library. (and to be clear, I recorded dimensions for covers and the book-block separately, and for folios and text-boxes separately too). Only 2 exact matches.
3. When matching just one measurement, the long side found other manuscripts having the same to be overwhelmingly Jewish works.
4. Paper and mebrane sizes were researched and the results show conscious effort to have them correlate.
5. The regions in which the two exact matches were made agree with what (a) has been said about the manuscript by early evaluations, namely that it agrees with English works and (b) north Italian, which agrees with the body of research done by Nick Pelling first and by me thereafter. Pelling said 'Milan'; my opinion is Padua or, slightly less probably, the Veneto.
For all these conclusions, I published a fair part of the informing research and data.
As an entirely separate matter, in a powerpoint slide slow in 2010, Rene had shown profiles of relative sizes for herbal manuscripts made in medieval Europe. No dimensions were given; the slide was only an illustration that herbals were made in smaller, medium and large sizes relative to one another. Perhaps some inferences were drawn by Rene from that information at the time, but I wasn't at that talk and no-one since then has said anything about it.
The codicological issue of manufacture for bifolia is (as I said) an issue wholly different from whether there were 'big' 'not so big' 'medium' and 'small' format herbals.
I guess each of us deserves credit for the type of work done, the sources used and the inferences drawn. No problem.