Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/178

162 Towards the latter part of the 13th century the letters grow rounder ; there is generally more contrast of light and heavy strokes ; and the cleft tops begin, as it were, to shed the branch on the left. nrm ptrn ec mlottgrcuS>mc roocac Tno&atn a?wc 3ku ftE fcno c&tnta atiaTrSb Tcnuayrtv- ar a Charter of Edward I., 1303 A.D. (More cum periinentiis in mora que vocatwr Inkelesmore continentewi se in longitudine per medium more illius ab uno capite Abbas et Conuentus aliquando tenueriuit et quam prefatus Co ) In the 14th century the changes thus introduced make further progress, and the round letters and single-branched vertical strokes become normal through the first half of the century. Then, however, the regular formation begins to give way and angularity sets in. Thus in the reign of Richard II. we have a hand presenting a mixture of round and angular elements the letters retain their breadth but lose their curves. Hence, by further decadence, results the angular hand of the 15th century, at first compact, but afterwards stralin and ill-formed. M <330m*n<r English Charter, 1457 A.D. (and fully to be endid, payinge yerely the seid successours in hand halfe yere afore that is next suyinge xxiij. s. iiij. d. by evene poreiouws.) Palimpsests. A class of MSS. must be briefly noticed which, on account of the valuable texts which many of them have yielded, have a particular interest. These are the palimpsests. The custom of removing writing from the surface of the material on which it was inscribed, and thus preparing that surface for the reception of another text, has been practised from early times. The term palim psest is used by Catullus, apparently with reference to papyrus ; by Cicero, in a passage wherein he is evidently speaking of waxen tablets ; and by Plutarch, when he narrates that Plato compared Dionysius to a fiifrxiov iraXi^ffrov, in that his tyrant nature, being 8v<TfKTrvTos, showed itself like the imperfectly erased writing of a palimpsest MS. In this passage, reference is clearly made t o the wasliing off of writing from papyrus. The word irai/j.tyi)<rTos can only in its first use have been applied to MSS. which were actually scraped or rubbed, and which were, therefore, composed of a material of sufficient strength to bear the process. In the first instance, then, it might be applied to waxen tablets ; secondly, to vellum books. There are still to be seen, among the surviving waxen tablets, some which contain traces of an earlier writing under a fresh layer of wax. Papyrus could not be scraped or rubbed ; the writing was washed from it with the sponge. This, however, could not be so thoroughly done as to leave a perfectly clean sur face, and the material was accordingly only used a second time for documents of an ephemeral or common nature. To apply, therefore, the title of palimpsest to a MS. of this substance was not strictly correct ; the fact that it was so applied proves that the term was in common use. In the early period of palimpsests, vellum MSS. were also washed. The ink of the earlier centuries was easily removed with the sponge, and at-the moment when this was done it may be sup posed that the pages presented a clean surface. In course of time, however, by atmospheric action or other chemical causes, the ori ginal writing would to some extent reappear ; and it is thus that so many of the capital and uncial palimpsests have been successfully deciphered. In the later Middle Ages the knife was used ; the surface of the vellum was scraped away and the writing with it. The reading of the later examples is therefore very difficult or alto gether impossible. Besides actual rasure, various recipes for effac ing the writing have been found, such as, to soften the surface with milk and meal, and then to rub with pumice. In the case of such a process being used, total obliteration mu.st almost inevitably have been the result. To intensify the traces of the original writ ing, when such exist, various chemical reagents have been tried with more or less success. The old method of smearing the vellum with tincture of gall restored the writing, but did irreparable damage by blackening the surface, and, as the stain grew darker in course of time, by rendering the text altogether illegible. Of modern reagents the most harmless appears to be hydrosulphurate of ammonia ; but this also must be used with caution, and should be washed oft when it has done its work. The primary cause of the destruction of MSS. by wilful obliter ation was, it need hardly be said, the dearth of material. At certain periods, from political or social changes, the market was interfered with, and production or importation failed. In the case of Greek MSS., so great was the consumption of old books, for the sake of the material, that a synodal decree of the year 691 forbade the destruction of MSS. of the Scriptures or the church fathers imper fect or injured volumes excepted. The decline of the vellum trade also on the introduction of paper, as already noticed above, caused a scarcity which was only to be made good by recourse to material already once used. Vast destruction of the broad quartos of the early centuries of our era took place in the period which followed the fall of the Roman empire. The most valuable Latin palim psests are accordingly found in the volumes which were remade from the 7th to the 9th centuries, a period during which the large volumes referred to must have been still fairly numerous. Late Latin palimpsests rarely yield anything of value : often the first writing precedes the later one by only a century or two; and some times both hands are of the same age. In the earlier examples, many of the original texts were sacrificed to make room for patristic literature or grammatical works. In many instances MSS. of the classical writers have been thus destroyed ; and the sacred text itself has not always been spared. On the other hand, there are instances of classical texts being written over Biblical MSS. ; but these are of late date. It has been remarked that no entire work has been found in any instance in the original text of a palimpsest, but that portions of many works have been taken to make up a single volume. These facts, however, go rather to prove, not so much that only imperfect works were put under con tribution, as that scribes were indiscriminate in selection of material. An enumeration of the different palimpsests of value is not here possible (see "Wattenbach, Schriftwesen, pp. 252-257) ; but a few may be mentioned of which facsimiles are accessible. The MS. known as the Codex Ephraemi, containing portions of the Old and New Testaments in Greek, attributed to the 5th century, is covered with works of Ephraem Syrus in a hand of the 12th century (ed. Tischendorf, 1843, 1845). Among the Syriac MSS. obtained from the Nitrian desert in Egypt, and now deposited in the British Museum, some important Greek texts have been recovered. A volume containing a work of Severus of Antioch of the beginning of the 9th century is written on palimpsest leaves taken from MSS. of ti&- Iliad of Homer and the Gospel of St Luke, both of the 6th century (Cat. Anc. MSS., i. , pis. 9, 10), and the Elements of Euclid of the 7th or 8th century. To the same collection belongs the double palimpsest, in which a text of St John Chrysostom, in Syriac, of the 9th or 10th century, covers a Latin grammatical treatise in a cursive hand of the 6th century, which in its turn has displaced the Latin annals of the historian Granius Licinianus, of the 5th century (Cat. Anc. MSS., ii. , pis. 1, 2). Among Latin palimpsests also may be noticed those which have been reproduced in the Exempla of Zangemeister and Wattenbach. These are the Ambrosian Plautus, in rustic capitals, of the 4th or 5th century, re-written yith portions of the Bible in the 9th century (pi. 6) ; the Cicero De Rcpublica of the Vatican, in uncials, of the 4th cen tury, covered by St Augustine on the Psalms, of the 7th century (pi. 17; Pal. Soc., pi. 160); the Codex Theodosianus of Turin, of the 5th or 6th century (pi. 25) ; the Fasti Consulares of Verona, of 486 A.D. (pi. 29) ; and the Arian fragment of the Vatican, of the 5th century (pi. 31). Most of these originally belonged to the monastery of Bobbio, a fact which gives some indication of the great literary wealth of that house. The new photographic processes are particularly well adapted for the reproduction of palimpsests, for the reason that, however faint the subject, it is nearly always intensified in the negative. By using skill and judgment, with a favouring light, photography may be often made a useful agent in the decipherment of obscure palimpsest texts. Mechanical Arrangement of Writing in MSS. In the papyrus rolls the text was written in columns, generally narrow, whose length was limited by the width of the material, allowing a margin at top and bottom. In books, if the text did not extend across the page, it was usually written in two columns. A few instances, however, are known of MSS. which have more than two columns of writing in a page. Among them, the Codex Sinaiticus of the Bible lias four columns, and the Codex Vaticanus three columns. In the Fulda fragment of an ancient Latin Bible (Excmpla, 21) the arrangement is one of three columns ; and a late instance of the same number occurs in a Latin Bible of the end of the 9th century in the British Museum (Cat. Anc. MSS., ii. , pi. 45). Besides the practice of continuous writing without distinction of words, which