Introduction 1

introduction 1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

How many manuscripts currently survive in the world? What frac- tion of manuscripts has been lost since their production? What numbers of manuscripts were copied in the last two millennia and where were they copied? Can certain numbers of manuscripts be seen as an indicator of medieval output? Th is study was triggered by such questions as well as plain curiosity. We should begin by posing a preliminary question before we start answering our fi rst question on the numbers of manuscripts currently surviving worldwide. What do we mean when we use the word manuscript in this study? Th ough the question sounds simple, the answer is not. A hand-written text, literally a manuscript, can be written on all kinds of materials. Oft en only part of the original text may still survive aft er a couple of centuries of use. Occasionally tiny scraps of parchment may be found in the bindings of Early Modern printed books, they are all that is left of what once was a medieval manuscript. Such scraps, cuttings or loose leaves are called codicological entities, and as such we treat them similarly to complete manuscripts. In the chapter on methodology, in Paragraph 2.1, we will start by defi ning what we consider to be a manuscript. One should realise that manuscript production estimates given in our study do not include texts that are essentially single sheet manuscripts (as deeds or charters), nor do our numbers include scraps of papyrus or frag- ments of letters deposited in repositories at synagogues or mosques. We limited our study principally to manuscript books. Nevertheless, despite all our eff orts it remains a somewhat fuzzy sample from surviving texts. A second cautionary remark is that of all numbers to be shown later on, probably only the fi rst one or two digits are relevant. Th e other digits (sometimes up to fi ve) are shown only because these fi gures will be used as intermediary results for further calculations. We want to prevent propagation of errors by a too early rounding off of the relevant digits. As far as we know the fi rst question, how many manuscripts survive in the world, has as yet not been answered. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein who wrote extensively about the printing press as an agent of change 2 chapter one states that we have no fi gures for medieval scribal production.1 In her book she fi rst cites Michael Clapham, and then continues: “A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed: more, perhaps, than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330. The actual production of ‘all scribes of Europe’ is inevitably open to dispute. Even apart from the problem of trying to estimate numbers of books that went uncatalogued when destroyed, contemporary evi- dence must be handled with caution, for it often yields false clues to the numbers of books involved. Since it was customary to register many texts bound within one set of covers as but one book, the actual numbers of texts is not easily ascertained.”… “Thus the total number of books produced by ‘all the scribes of Europe’ since 330 or even since 1400, is likely to remain elusive.”2 In a note Elizabeth Eisenstein states that Michael Clapham’s state- ment becomes more plausible if ‘all the scribes of Europe’ do not include the Byzantine scribes. Nevertheless her principal character- ization of medieval production rates of manuscripts is embodied by the word ‘elusive’. For a slightly less elusive number, that of the currently surviving numbers of manuscripts, we at least, did not fi nd any estimates, though we did fi nd a few on the size of certain subsets. Jonathan Bloom off ered an estimate of 600,000 remaining Arabic manuscripts.3 Raphael Posner and Israel Ta-Shema indicated that probably some 60,000 Jewish manuscripts survive.4 Recently Jos Weitenberg et al., suggested the current global total numbers of Armenian manuscripts to be 30,000.5 For the medieval German-

1 E.L. EISENSTEIN, The printing press as an agent of change. 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979), vol 1, p. 11. 2 E.L. EISENSTEIN, The printing press …., vol 1, p. 45, citing: M. CLAPHAM, “Print- ing”, in: A history of technology II, from the renaissance to the industrial revolution, C. SINGER, E.J. HOLMYARD, A.R. HALL and T. WILLIAMS (eds.) (Oxford, 1957), vol 2, pp. 377-411, p. 377. In this quote Elizabeth Eisenstein does not make the actual numbers less elusive, but she puts individual texts on a par with books. This may easily lead to misunder- standings, as the number of copied individual texts is quite different from books, which may contain up to several different texts. 3 J.M. BLOOM, Paper before print, the history and impact of paper in the Islamic world (New Haven, 2001), p. 93. 4 R. POSNER and I. TA-SHEMA, ed, The Hebrew Book, a historical survey (New York, 1975), p. 20. 5 J.J.S. WEITENBERG, Th. M. VAN LINT, H.L.M. DEFOER and W.C.M. WÜSTE- FELD, Armenië, middeleeuwse miniaturen uit het christelijke oosten (Zwolle, 2001), p. 55.