Chapter 11. Page Numbers, Signatures, and Catchwords
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Warning Concerning Copyright Restrictions The Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If electronic transmission of reserve material is used for purposes in excess of what constitutes "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. BOOK PARTS EDI TED BY DENNIS DUNCAN & ADAM SMYTH OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS l PAGE NUMBERS, SIGNATURES, AND CATCHWORDS ~ 139 'Thislessoun ye schulen fynde writen al out tofore in the xxv leef of these leefes,' says an explanatory note in bright red ink in an early fifteenth-century manuscript. Apparently the leaves 'ben markid . on the I right side of the leef, in the higher part of the margyn'.1 They are indeed numbered, just as described, so that the top-right corner of the very page bearing this note says 'xxvi folium' ('the twenty-sixth leaf') in the hand of the scribe who copied the main text. The 'lessoun' is a Bible reading, and the note occurs within a lectionary, a collection of readings arranged for the liturgical year. The thought of a reader six centuries ago navigating via numbers might seem familiar, for today we still use numbering to find our way when reading. But there are stranger elements here too: the numbers mark leaves, rather than pages; no one today would feel compelled to highlight, in such explicit terms, the exact positioning of numbering on the page; and the numbering does not even apply to the whole book, as the 'xxvi folium' is in fact folio 282 in the manuscript as a whole. This particular outbreak of leaf numbering-foliation- is a boutique navigational aid designed for this specific lectionary, and the lectionary only takes up one section within the manuscript. The note anticipates readers who are unfamiliar with the idea of foliation, and is at pains to explain the system in detail. So, then, this note reminds us that there were in the past multiple systems for identifying books' parts, and that the one we take for granted today-page numbering, or pagination- is not a natural feature of the codex format itself. In fact, the best approach to the various book parts discussed below is a consideration of just what is essential to the codex. Pairs of leaves folded into gatherings or quires make the codex a codex.2 The physical separation of each leaf from the others permits movement within the text with a speed and precision impossible on scroll or roll. This is a boon both to readers, who can cross-reference and wander, and to producers, who can rearrange or replace books' component parts. However, the codex ofleaves grouped into gatherings only permits precise navigation; it does not actively encourage it. Producers and readers therefore desire systems which track codices' physical structures explicitly. Identifying leaves and the gatherings into which they are grouped makes production easier, and identifying leaves and pages makes reading easier. The codex therefore sometimes 1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud M isc. 388, f. 282"; orthography, punctuation, and word division silently modernized. I am grateful to Cosima Gillhammer for bringing this example to my attention. 2 The word for several pairs of leaves-several bifolia-folded together into one binding unit varies across different subfields wi thin codicology and bibliography: crudely speaking, these units tend to be called 'quires' in manuscripts and 'gatherings' or 'signatu res' in printed books. I use 'gathering'here throughout to mean a unit of folded leaves regardless of the nature of the book in which it survives. The confusing multiple meanings of 'signature' are briefly discussed below. 140 1/!. DANIEL SAWYER manifests systems which mark its constituent parts: catchwords, gathering and leaf signatures, foliation, and pagination. All of these features can serve as evidence in book history, but they resist rapid incorporation into literary-critical arguments. Rarely is a scholar able to argue from one of these that, say, a particular audience was expected, or a particular effect invited. Moreover, catchwords, signatures, and numbers are also small markings, and so offer limited material for the detailed study of scribes' hands or printers' metal (Fig. 11.1). Nevertheless, these parts identify the book's most fundamental structures, and so demand attention. We can best understand them by separating out their purposes and audiences. For gatherings, leaves, and pages are distinct entities, and the systems which track them are aimed at different uses and users. To perceive the book through each of these systems in turn is, therefore, to cycle through varying understandings of the codex. Summarized together, their histories show how the book moved gradually and unevenly towards increasing predictability and uniformity. Not all parts of this movement were inevitable, and some of these systems were rejected at points along the way: this is a process of decline and disappearance as well as one of development. SIG ATURES Signatures and catchwords are the systems discussed here which might be least familiar today. 'Signature' has several meanings (see below), and here I mean specifically written or printed signs indicating leaves' places within gatherings, or gatherings' places within books, or both pieces of information at once. Signatures are usually letters or numbers, and occasionally other punctuation marks, added most often to the bottom margins of recto pages. In manuscripts which feature leaf signatures, the signatures most often number every leaf of each gathering's first half; so in a gathering of eight leaves the first four leaves might be marked i-iv. Gathering signatures, meanwhile, most commonly take the form of a letter or num ber on the recto of each gathering's first leaf, or on the verso of the gathering's last leaf-that is, on one of the exterior sides of the outermost bifolium, where they can be easily found. Signatures allow producers to keep leaves and gatherings in order, and they appear early in the codex's history, in late antiquity.3 Surviving early medieval examples are limited in number but well spread across time and space: gathering signatures appear in, for instance, the sole surviving copy of Books XL-XLV of Livy, copied in fifth-century Italy, and in the 'Vercelli Book' ofOld English homilies and poems, copied in tenth-century England." However, although signatures were known in early medieval European book production, they were not a default option. They proliferated in the thirteenth century and became standardized in the 3 Eric G. Turner, 7he Typology ofthe Early Codex (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 19n), pp. n-8, • Vienna, Ostcrreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Lat. 15; Vcrcclli, Bibliotcca c Archivio Capitolare, MS 1r7. PAGE NUMBERS, SIGNATURES, AND CATCHWORDS ~ 141 Page number - --~~:::::-;;:----'ThtAfmJWimo/flli,1,{fqr, Hl - i l Signature Catchword fh Fig. n.1 'Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, &c' ('First Fo/ioJ, STC 22273 (London, r623), p. SJ, E3r; Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Librory, STC 22273 Fo. I 110. 5. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareA/ike 4.0 Intemational License 142 ¥!, DANIEL SAWYER fifteenth century. In practice later medieval book producers often combined leaf and gathering signatures, so that-again assuming a manuscript of consistent eight leaf, four-bifolium gatherings-the first gathering's first four leaves might be marked A.i, A.ii, A.iii, and A.iv, the second gathering's first four leaves B.i, B.ii, B.iii, B.iv, and so on. This conveniently combined form was rapidly adopted in print in the incunable period.5 In early print, signatures are so ubiquitous that the word has come by synecdoche also to be used to mean 'gathering' or 'quire'. Signatures can be used as evidence of an intended binding order and the loss of material, but they are not always consistent throughout the book and can also be mined for other production information: one copy of the Middle English poem Piers Plowman, for instance, was copied by two scribes and displays multiple overlapping signature systems.6 At minimum, anyone examining or describing a book should check that the signatures match the physical order ofleaves and gather ings. In special cases they also have direct literary-critical applications.7 Seen from the perspective of the history of the book as a whole, signatures are creatures of the period- the very long period, encompassing the entire manuscript age, and much of the history of print- in which books were usually bound some time after their pro duction. Their disappearance is a marker of increasing predictability in the book and of the shift of the responsibility for binding from owners to producers. CATCH WORDS 'Catchwords' can refer to two different book features. First, a word or phrase usually written or printed in the bottom margin on the verso of the gathering's final leaf, matching the first word or phrase of the recto of the subsequent gathering's first leaf, and primarily added to facilitate the correct arrangement of the gatherings during binding. Catchwords of this sort were adopted into early medieval Latin books in Spain and southern France, perhaps around the turn of the eleventh century, possibly from Arabic manuscripts.8 Although they were deployed in early print, catchwords' ' Margaret M. Smith,'Pri nted Foliation: Forerunner to Printed Page umbers?', Gutmberg-Jahrbuch 63 {1988): 58 (fig. 1). 6 Oxford, Bodleian Library, M S Bodley 814; see for example f.