11-12-2025, 11:53 PM
(11-12-2025, 01:09 PM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could these quire numbers have been written just prior to the binding, to instruct the first Binder about the desired order of the quires in the book? Or even by the Binder himself?
This is the normal scenario. In times of early printing (and perhaps also before), it would be common not to write a number, but the first word on the next page.
(11-12-2025, 01:09 PM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the bifolios had been kept unbound by the Author, with no folio numbers, why would he number the quires? he would not need them to keep the sections in whatever order he wanted, and on the other hand he did not seem to care about the order of the Herbal folios.
'Why' is always a tricky question. We know that this was done.
We must assume that the MS author/scribes cared about the order of the pages.
Also, just the quire numbers are not sufficient in case the whole book is dropped (*), so I can only guess that there was another way in which the sheet order within the quires was preserved. I'm just thinking of a temporary thread for that.
(*): Did you ever use punch cards? It is (was) a known and serious risk.