The numbers of the quires are given in ordinary numbers. This information is dense and uses a kind of code which students of codicology (the study of books and manuscripts) will become familiar with. Ker continues:Ĭollation: 1-6 8 7 8 wants 5, 6 after f. There is a lot of information provided here, including the total number of folios, how the folios are numbered up, the size of the page, and how the text and music is laid out. The modern foliation, 1-413, generally only on the first leaf of each quire, takes account of the missing leaves. ![]() Ker in Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1969-2002), as follows:įf. The collation is a physical description of the book, which makes reference to the number of quires and the number of leaves in each quire.įor example, the Wollaton Antiphonal is described by N.R. 'Collation' also means the technical description or statement of gatherings in the book, often seen in reference works or catalogues of manuscripts. The action of arranging a number of quires or gatherings into book form is called 'collation'. In the illustration above, we are looking at folio 120v, then folio 121r, then folio 121v and finally folio 122r.Īn animated video produced by the Getty Museum demonstrates folios and foliation, and the gathering of folios into quires for binding. The verso is the other side – the reverse, or back. The recto is the page on the right - the first side of the leaf that you encounter when reading left to right. 2, followed by either recto (abbreviated to ‘r’) or verso (abbreviated to ‘v’). You would indicate a particular writing space by the leaf number, e.g. So a quire might have 8 leaves, made from 4 bifolia or a single sheet folded into octavo shape. The word for leaf in Latin is folium, plural folia. Instead of numbering every page, as in a modern book, each leaf is numbered. 120v-122r Folios and foliationīy convention, manuscripts are foliated rather than paginated. Hair side opening, followed by flesh side opening, from book of French romances and fabliaux, This arrangement is part of the aesthetic of parchment manuscripts: it occurs automatically through folding and this seems to have been the most common practice in the Middle Ages. Were you to flick through any parchment manuscript, you would see a similar pattern, of whiter pages (flesh side), then darker pages (hair side), alternating through the openings. The outcome of both methods is that white side and white side are always facing each other, as are coloured and coloured. Now take the octavo booklet – a quire, containing eight folios – and hold the central fold like a book. You could probably take a fourth sheet and fold it one more time again, into a very tiny bundle. Take a third sheet: fold it in half, and then in half again, into octavo shape. Take another sheet: fold it in half again, into quarto shape. ![]() It should still already be folded in the middle: try to have the coloured side facing in. ![]() It was often used for very large volumes. This is the simplest method of forming a quire, but it relies on the sheets being cut independently to almost exactly the same size, which is hard to achieve. Were these leaves to be written up and bound, the gathering would be called a quire. Depending on the number of sheets of paper you have used, it will have either 8 leaves or 10 leaves. Each folded sheet is a bifolium, that is, two folios (leaves), and the whole pile is called a gathering. With a crease in the middle, you now have a pile of bifolia. Once you have a pile of 4 or 5, fold them all in half, putting the short ends together. Take your sheets of paper and place them one on top of another, making sure that you have blank against blank, colour against colour. This is to replicate the difference in colour and texture between the flesh side of the parchment, and the hair side. You will need several sheets of paper which are either coloured or marked in some way on one side only. The descriptions below are derived from Christopher de Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (London: British Museum Press, 1992, pp. There are two ways in which this can be done. Most manuscript books contain several quires bound together. ![]() This generally involved forming them into quires or gatherings, rather like booklets. Once in possession of the sheets of parchment or paper, a scribe would make them into usable units for writing.
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