UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Pieces

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

“Pieces of Old Clothing or Even Viler Things”:

The Utilization of Paper in Jewish and Christian Books in Medieval Italy and Iberia,

a Quantitative Approach

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Library and Information Science

Stephanie Geller

2019

Stephanie Geller

2019 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

‘Pieces of Old Clothing or Even Viler Things’:

the Utilization of Paper in Jewish and Christian Books in Medieval Italy and Iberia,

a Quantitative Approach

Stephanie Geller

Master of Library and Information Science

University of California, Los Angeles, 2019

Professor Ellen Pearlstein, Chair

Culture is often proposed as a determinant factor in the decision to use paper as a material support for medieval manuscripts. Specifically, scholars frequently assert that European Jews were more willing to adopt paper as a support than Christians. However, the scholarly field has yet to consider an exhaustive quantitative comparison to support this claim. This study utilizes a quantitative codicological method to infer whether paper usage was truly influenced by cultural factors in Medieval Italy and Iberia. In so doing, this paper also evaluates the extent to which quantitative research can be done using digital resources from cultural institutions with holdings relevant to the geographic and temporal areas of interest to this research. Finally, the data

ii gathered is compared to two online databases of medieval manuscripts to extrapolate the accuracy of the results.

iii

The thesis of Stephanie Geller is approved.

Johanna Drucker

Miriam Posner

Ellen Pearlstein, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2019

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... vi Introduction ...... 1 Part I: Historical Background & Previous Research ...... 6 Paper Arrives in Europe ...... 6 European Technical Innovations...... 12 Part II: Data Collection and Evaluation of Sources ...... 19 Defining a sample ...... 21 Evaluation of Institutions ...... 24 Traditional Cataloging and Metadata Standards ...... 28 Institutions with Accessible Data Jewish Theological Seminary ...... 30 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana...... 31 British Library ...... 32 Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico...... 34 Findings and Analysis ...... 34 Part III: Comparison with Other Databases ...... 38 Other Databases Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts ...... 39 SfarData ...... 41 Conclusion ...... 44 Appendix A: Glossary of Papermaking Terms ...... 50 Appendix B: Tables and Figures ...... 52 Bibliography ...... 62

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I must express my deepest gratitude to my committee for their support and advice. Professor Ellen Pearlstein and Professor Johanna Drucker, in particular, shared with me a seemingly endless well of encouragement and advice. Without their astute and considerate feedback on my research and writing throughout this process, this paper would still be an unrealized spark of curiosity.

I originally applied to this program because of Professor Ellen Pearlstein and her impact in bridging the Department of Information Studies and the Conservation of Archaeological and

Ethnographic Materials program. It was in her conservation courses that I was first introduced to the physical aspects of books and their materials, which sparked the interest that lead to this topic.

I am still awed by my good fortune in studying under Professor Johanna Drucker. The carefully weighed consideration with which she approaches every subject has been inspiring and adds substance to the support she gives to her students. Much of my success is owed to her encouragement in the pursuit of this topic and every area of research I have broached under her guidance.

I must also thank the British Library for providing free data services to researchers.

Without that service, this research would not have been possible.

Lastly, I would also like to express my gratitude to my peers that supported me over these past two years. Their comradery has kept me sane. I would especially like to thank Yoonha

Hwang, who has graciously read over much of this work. Without her attentive review, this paper would be unintelligible.

Introduction

Pick up any book that addresses the shift from parchment to paper as a material support, be it a history of paper or a chapter on medieval manuscripts in an anthology about the history of the book, and there is a good chance the author mentions culture being a major influence in the decision to either use or reject paper. The slow and late adoption of paper is usually attributed to the association of paper with the Muslim world and Islam. Some authors continue in this reasoning and state that Medieval Jews, unlike their Christian counterparts, adopted the material more readily. Ronald Deibert, for example, states that “Resistance was probably due to a combination of its relative fragility, craftsmen’s inertia, and religious bigotry. The Abbot of

Cluny, Peter the Venerable was probably not alone in having a contempt for paper because of its association with the ‘infidel’ Jews and Arabs.”1 The Abbot of Cluny’s quintessential quote that

Spanish Jews wrote their religious texts on material made from “pieces of old clothing or even viler things” appears in many works on this subject, though it is rarely accompanied by any other evidence supporting the claim that culture was a motivating factor in the choice of material support.2

Fortunately, the past half-century has seen a drastic increase in the number of Western

Islamicists and Hebraists interested in Medieval Iberian history and, though to a lesser extent, the history of paper in that region. This influx of linguistic and cultural specialists has produced significant discoveries in documentary and archaeological evidence. Recent discussions have shifted focus to concerns over impermanence as the primary factor deterring the use of paper.

1 Ronald Deibert, “From the Parchment Codex to the Printing Press: The Sacred Word and the Rise and Fall of Medieval Theocracy,” in Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia : Communication in World Order Transformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 63.

2 Oriol Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain (Madrid: Empresa Nacional de Celulosas, 1978), 100.

Despite this, the idea that cultural xenophobia, specifically against Jews and Muslims, was the primary or at least an important barrier to its adoption remains present even in contemporary discussions of the subject. There remains also a paralleling of Jewish and Muslim Iberians, despite the fact that, starting in the eleventh century with the massacre of the Jewish population in Granada, Jews enjoyed a much less privileged status in Muslim Iberia than they had previously.3 The next two centuries were a time of increasing religious intolerance in Muslim

Iberia because of the increased conquests, riots, and shift in power from the relatively liberal

Caliphate of Cordoba to the more conservative Almoravids rules and then the completely intolerant Almohads.

A brief note about the history of Muslim Iberia, Al-Andalus, seems appropriate. The peninsula was initially conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate in 711 and was a dependent emirate of that Caliphate until 756 when it became independent (Fig. 1).4 The ‘Golden Age of Al-

Andalus’ was that of the Cordoba Caliphate, which spanned from 929 to 1031. This was also the golden age of Sephardic culture as the Islamic government guaranteed the right of Jews to worship and govern themselves to some extent provided they “accepted subjugation to the rule of

Islam and paid the special taxes concurrent with” this status, known as dhimmi.5 Infighting and increasing Christian military aggression resulted in the Caliphate fracturing into independently ruled taifas, a period which lasted about 50 years. Divided, Muslim Iberia was beginning to feel the pressure of the Christian military forces and had suffered some losses, so Yusuf ibn Tashfin, the Almoravid ruler of what is now known as Morocco, was invited to defend the peninsula

3 Yôm Tôv Assîs, The Jews of Spain : From Settlement to Expulsion (Jerusalem: The Rothberg School for Overseas Students [The Hebrew University of Jerusalem]; Dor Hemshech World Zionist Organisation, 1988), 15.

4 Bernard F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 56.

5 Reilly, 59.

2 against Christian military advances (Fig. 2). In the eleventh century, Fernando I and his son

Alfonso VI of León were the first Christian rulers to “make major and permanent territorial encroachments” into Al-Andalus.6 Almoravid rule was able to “restore Muslim unity and throw the Christians back on their heels,” but its century-long rule saw continued conflict with the

Christian kingdoms to the north and increasing, albeit slow, forfeitures of territories to Christian forces (Fig. 3).7 In the mid-twelfth century, a political force, led by Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur and known as the Almohads, also from Morocco, took over the Almoravid territories and again

“restored the balance of power in Spain”.8 Upon securing power, the Almohads did away with dhimmi status, meaning any Jews or Christians living in their territories with the choice to convert to Islam, be put to death, or move elsewhere. In 1211 an alliance of Christian kings, with the help and support of Pope Innocent III, waged war against the Almohads under the leadership of the Castilian monarch Alfonso VIII.9 Despite Alfonso VIII dying only two years later, the

Christian effort was buoyed by internal disorganization and strife within the Almohad empire and by external forces such as troops on their way to the fifth crusade who made a detour at the bequest of the Bishop of Lisbon in 1217.10 By the middle of the thirteenth century only the

Emirate of Granada remained, though as a “tributary vassalage to Castile.” (Fig. 4)11 That small territory would survive another two and a half centuries until it was incorporated into the Crown of Castile in 1491.

6 Reilly, 96.

7 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 194.

8 O’Callaghan, 234.

9 Reilly, The Medieval Spains, 135.

10 Reilly, 136.

11 O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, 358.

By the middle of the twelfth century, Iberian Jews in areas under Almohad rule were fleeing for friendlier environs, including to Christian Spain. By the time paper had begun being manufactured in Spain the ‘golden age’ had just ended and just a century later Jews were no longer welcome in Almohad controlled lands. Nonetheless, such claims about friendly relations between Jews and Muslims in the peninsula continue to persist. In 2016, the Italian paper historian Sylvia Rodgers Albro asserted that “paper came from Valencia and Catalonia in Spain, where Muslim and Jewish cultures co-existed and were involved in the paper industry from the eleventh century."12 It is striking that such claims are still being made, even despite renown paper historian Oriol Valls i Subirà’s 1978 claim that “until the fifteenth century none of the paper manufacturers in Spain were Jewish” though he does allow that Jews were involved in the trade of paper, if not its production.13

The aim of this research is to resolve the question of cultural influence as a determinative in paper usage by using a quantitative approach. Quantitative codicology is the application of quantitative methods of evaluation and analysis to the field of codicology. Codicology, the study of the book in codex form, is driven by the belief that codices are “sophisticated products deserving to be researched in their own right as part of the cultural and social history of the

Middle Ages.”14 Quantitative codicology seeks to conduct this research using measurable data

12 Sylvia Rodgers Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, First edit (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2016), 15.

13 Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain, 132.

14 Malachi Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach,” ed. Nurit Pasternak, trans. Ilana Goldberg (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Preprint, 2018), 48. http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/manuscripts/hebrewcodicology/Documents/Hebrew-Codicology- continuously-updated-online-version-ENG.pdf.

4 from a large corpus of manuscripts, treating individual manuscripts not as solitary expressions in isolation from each other, “but as a member of a group, viewing manuscripts as a population.”15

This paper endeavors to use this methodological framework to determine the extent to which a cultural preference is evidenced in the surviving books from the Middle Ages, here defined as the sixth through fifteenth centuries inclusive. These centuries comprise what is generally agreed upon to be the Middle Ages in Europe. While the sixth through tenth centuries are included, they are too early in the history of European paper to yield any data other than to emphasize how long Europe went without paper, and thus how quickly it was taken up as a support, especially once certain technical innovations were introduced. The end of the fifteenth century is a natural stopping point as moveable type printing was beginning its spread through

Europe and the ability to produce far larger quantities of books at one go give paper a clear advantage over parchment given its capacity for mass production. This study is limited to manuscript books, which were still competing with their printed counterparts during the fifteenth century. The choice of material support in manuscript books would likely have changed as printing became more commonplace past the fifteenth century. Manuscripts could be written on paper because of its increasing abundance, acceptability, and lower price than parchment.

Alternatively, they could be written on parchment because of an association between ‘traditional’ styles (parchment and hand penning books both being the traditional means of creating a book) in terms of them being the ‘old way’ or in producing what could be considered a more luxurious volume. The scope is likewise limited geographically to the Iberic and Italian peninsulas. These two locations were selected because they represent the place paper was first introduced to Europe and the place from which it spread to the rest of the continent.

15 Beit-Arié, 49.

In seeking answers to these questions, this study also evaluates the extent to which research on the material support of medieval book cultures can reliably be done with the numerous online catalogs and databases available to researchers. The research itself seems relatively straightforward. First, search the catalogs of a few institutions with sizeable holdings of Jewish and Christian Manuscripts for paper and parchment manuscripts, restricting results to the dates and geographic regions of interest. Then it is a simple matter of recording the number of instances of paper vs parchment being used and comparing the results between the two groups. Medieval European manuscripts are being digitized with such increasing frequency that there seems to be a new digitization project announced daily. Surely with such large quantities of

Medieval manuscripts currently being examined, their essence captured page-by-page, there must exist equally extensive and equally accessible bibliographic data that is ripe for analysis.

Part I: Historical Background & Previous Research

Paper Arrives in Europe

In order to understand any data gathered, a general understanding of how, when, and why paper came to Europe is first necessary. As will be seen, the ability to classify manuscripts by their material support and recognize any potential inconsistencies would be deficient without an understanding of the history of paper in Europe. In summarizing the spread of paper through the

Middle East and Europe, Hebrew codicologist Melachi Beit-Arié states that

“In the manufacture of Hebrew books paper was quickly adopted, first in the lands of

Muslim civilisation, especially in the Middle East and, at a slower pace, also in North

Africa and Spain, thus becoming the standard writing support. This said, in the lands of

Christian Europe (except for Byzantium) parchment was replaced by paper only in the

late Middle Ages.”16

Cordoba, and less frequently Toledo, are often mentioned as very likely manufacturing their own paper prior to this date because of their significance as cultural hubs of intellectual, and thus also textual, exchange and cultivation. However, there has yet to be any support for this in documentary or archaeological evidence. Until a few decades ago, the mid-twelfth century was the earliest verifiable date for a paper mill in Europe. Thanks to new discoveries there is strong evidence and corroborating documentation that paper was being manufactured on the

Iberian Peninsula from at least the mid-eleventh century. This first verifiable paper manufacturer appears in the city of Xàtiva (Spain) where the name ‘Abu Masafaya’ appears in a document reporting his ownership of a paper mill in 1056.17 Beit-Arié corroborates this this mid-eleventh century date through three letters from the Cairo Geizah. In one of these letters a “Daniel b.

Azariah Gaon of Palestine, written to Fustat, c. 1050-1060, Daniel Gaon asks the addressee to

or ("אנדלםי"( find a trained scribe and to purchase for him good paper, ‘not Egyptian, but Spanish

whose format is large.’”18 )"אטראהלםי"( that of Tripoli

One of the obstacles in this search is that mills were not always identified by what product they produced in contemporary documentation, especially earlier documents dating to the early years of paper use and production. Paper historian Oriol Valls i Subirà maintains that in examining these early documents, one can distinguish paper mills from agricultural mills by the

16 Beit-Arié, 212.

17 Jonathan Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Masaifa and Mescufa are also used in scholarship instead of Masafya.

18 M. Gil. 1983. in Malachi. Beit-Arié, The Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book : Studies in Palaeography and Codicology (Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1993), 37.

7 type of grinding mechanism described. According to him, the term ‘mortar’ was used to describe the grinding mechanism in agricultural mills whereas ‘millstone’ indicated the mill produced paper.19 He uses this distinction to make the connection between the general description of mills around the Roman Bridge in Cordoba by al-Rāzi (977), al-Idrīsī (1154), and Ibn ‘Abd al-Mun’im al Himyari in his fifteenth-century geography, although only the last of these authors makes such a distinction between the two types of milling.

Water powered mills had been in use since Roman times. Their frequency of use during this time is not agreed upon by scholars of the technology, but Örjan Wikander has asserted that

“the vertical-wheeled water mill was in widespread use throughout the Roman Empire from at least the first half of the second century C.E” based on archaeological evidence from around two dozen sites.20 The use of mills in the Middle East is less well studied, but scholars agree that milling began to be adopted in Islamic countries in the seventh or eighth centuries. The increased application of water-powered mills to a variety of industrial applications has led some to argue for a European industrial revolution of sorts in the Middle Ages. However, Adam Robert Lucas has argued successfully against the notion of European exceptionalism in this regard.21

Regarding the use of mills for paper production, “The earliest use of waterpower for papermaking was reputedly in Samarkand in the eighth century, followed in the tenth century by

Iraq, Iran, and Syria, while Spanish waterpowered paper mills date from the middle of the

19 Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain, 91.

20 Adam Robert Lucas, “Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds : A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe,” Technology and Culture 46, no. 1 (2005): 7.

21 Lucas, 10.

8 twelfth century.”22 As has already been stated, this mid-twelfth century date has been eclipsed by the year 1056 for the beginning of paper manufacturing in Iberia.

As with production, information on how and when paper was used in Iberia is scarce.

The destructive force toward anything and everything Arab following the Reconquista, in addition to the razing of Xàtiva by Philip V (Felipe) in 1707, virtually erased any primary sources of information with very few exceptions. Malachi Beit-Arié reminds us that:

“One should take into consideration the probability that paper manuscripts were much

more vulnerable to destruction than parchment manuscripts, thus, it is very likely that the

surviving manuscripts do not represent the real proportion of the writing materials.”23

Ibn Abd Rabbih (860–940) was the first Iberian writer to mention paper. His work Al-

ʿIqd al-Farīd, a proto-encyclopedia, discusses the best type of writing instrument to use on papyrus, parchment, and paper.24 Jonathan Bloom, however, notes that the author likely encountered paper not in Iberia, but in another Islamic country during his pilgrimage to Mecca.25

The oldest surviving Iberian paper book is the Mozarabic Missal from the Library of Santo

Domingo de Silos dated to either the second half of the tenth century by some or between the years of 1040 and 1050 by others.26 In contrast to what would be expected, given that Arab merchants were the ones who imported paper to the Iberian peninsula, the earliest surviving

22 Lucas, 28.

23 Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology : Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981), 21.

24 Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 87.

25 Bloom, 87.

26 Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain, 102.; Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 87.– This document has also been referred to as the “Mosarabic Breviary and Missal in Silos.”

Islamic work on paper from this region is at least a century younger, dated 1139-40.27 This drastic departure from what would be expected is “a direct consequence of the Reconquista. In order to eliminate all copies of the Koran from the formerly Muslim areas of the peninsula once the Moors were driven out, the Catholic church and state ordered the wholesale destruction of all

Arabic manuscripts.”28 The earliest surviving paper document produced in Italy is the Mandato

Bilingue written in Greek and Arabic by Adelaide, the Countess of Sicily, in the year 1109. The paper used in this document was produced in the same style as nearby Islamic North Africa, indicating it was likely imported from that region.29

Most contemporary scholars point to the perceived impermanence of paper as the primary reason for delay in the adoption of paper. Bookmakers sometimes addressed this concern by creating a text block using both parchment and paper. This practice is peculiar to Iberia, Italy, and Byzantium, never spreading to the rest of Europe. Malachi Beit-Arié describes this phenomenon in the context of Hebrew manuscripts but notes that “The use of this technique in

Hebrew manuscripts correlates to the similar practice found in Arabic and Latin manuscripts written in Spain.”30 He argues this was done in order to protect the paper, citing the use of parchment for the outer (first and last) quires in a text block. He has also found, though less frequently, instances where bookmakers glued strips of parchment to the inner fold of paper quires so as to strengthen the binding and protect the paper from the stitches required.

27 Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 85.

28 Bloom, 89.

29 Bloom, 209.

30 Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology : Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts, 39.

Unsurprisingly then, the adoption of paper did not follow a simple linear progression.

Paper was both a technical improvement, allowing for increased production and informal scribblings, and a dangerous material support for precious bureaucratic documents in need of preservation for years to come. This danger is manifested in the edicts by numerous

Mediterranean rulers who banned its use in their administrations. One such ruler was the Holy

Roman Emperor Frederick II who in 1220 and 1231 “prohibited the use of paper for notarial instruments” in his territories in Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento, and their surrounding areas.31 Parma followed this example, prohibiting the use of paper for official documents in 1236.

The paper used in the regions of Italy over which Frederick II reigned would likely have been imported from Spain as Spanish paper was exported all over the Mediterranean region during this period. Paper had only recently begun to be manufactured in Italy and had likely not yet been established in the soon to be renowned town of Fabriano. However, this outright ban does more to support the assumption that paper was widespread in Medieval bureaucracies than deter from it. There would be no need to forbid the use of a material if its use were rare.

Conversely, the embargo on luxury goods from Islamic countries placed by Pope Nicholas IV in

1291 likely contributed to the rise of paper manufacturing in Italy.32 A demand for paper had already been established and not being able to import the product meant that another means of procuring it was necessary. The papal prohibition may well have created footholds in the Italian paper market for thirteenth-century manufacturers already operating in places such as Genoa,

Amalfi, and Sicily.

31 Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography : Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Daibhm O. Cróinin and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 12.; Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, 16.

32 Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, 17.

Evidence of this popularity is also seen in edicts of an inverse nature; as paper became more popular rulers sought to prevent this valuable resource from absconding into foreign lands: in 1274 “King James (Jaume) I of Aragon (reigned 1213–1276) prohibited the sale of rags to merchants from Perpignan, … [and] … in 1306 an embargo was placed on exports to France including paper.” 33 In passing this embargo, the king became the first Monarch in Europe to fully embrace paper as the material support for his vast bureaucracy.34 Residing between these two extremes, a contemporary of King James I, “King Alfonso the Wise of Castile, also used paper, but limited its use to lesser categories of documents, such as commercial permits, routine financial records, broadcast mailings, and passports.”35 One explanation for the difference in the willingness to embrace paper by these two monarchs is that James I’s territory included Xàtiva, arguably the most productive and important city for the production of Spanish paper during this time. Outlawing, or tempering the use of, paper would thus have not only been a cultural assault on his newly conquered territory but would have been a significant blow to the local economy.

European Technical Innovations

A practice unique to areas that used ‘oriental’ paper was polishing sized paper with a stone. 36 Polishing rendered the writing surface smoother and easier to write on. At what point in the process this took place is still debated, however, there is compelling evidence that scribes themselves polished sheets of paper before using them. Beit-Arié champions this theory and cites

33 Jonathan M Bloom, “Papermaking: The Historical Diffusion of an Ancient Technique,” in Mobilities of Knowledge, vol. 10, 2017, 59–60, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44654-7.

34 Mark Kurlansky, Paper : Paging Through History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016).

35 Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, 208.

36 i.e. originating in Iberia, North Africa, and the Middle East, opposed to ‘occidental’ paper from the rest of Europe. The distinction is based on differences in sizing which is explained in more detail below.

12 examples of burnished paper, penned by immigrant Sephardic scribes, which he identifies by their distinct writing style, found in areas outside of the regions known for this practice such as

Italy. Burnishing did not appear on paper used by local Italian scribes, supporting his assertion that it was the scribes themselves who performed this task. He notes as well some instances where only strips of the paper—the lines being written—were burnished, providing further evidence for this hypothesis.37

One feature largely unique to ‘oriental’ paper is a zig-zag pattern made by dripping water on a piece of drying paper, much the same way papermaker’s tears are formed. The function of this pattern is not known with certainty, but the most compelling theory asserts that it was used to thin the paper along the edge where the paper would be folded, allowing an easier fold and reducing the amount of bulk along the spine of a book.38 These zig-zags have also been found on documents in Iberia and North Africa written on paper originating in Italy from the fourteenth century, pointing to a manufacture of paper in Italy specifically for exporting to these countries.39

Changes in the construction of molds were another area of European innovation, though it is not certain whether Italians or Iberians were the innovators. Molds for making paper in the

Far East were usually a wooden frame with thin strips of bamboo for support. However, “in the

Islamic lands where bamboo was not available the screen appears to have been made from materials such as plant fibers stiffened with oil and horsehair.”40 According to Bloom, the

37 Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach.”

38 Estève, J.-L. 2001, as quoted in Bloom, “Papermaking: The Historical Diffusion of an Ancient Technique.”

39 Bloom, Paper Before Print : The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. It has also been asserted that these lines were decorative attempts to mimic the look of similar marks found on parchment (Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain.) or to indicate the paper’s grain (Bloom, Paper Before Print).

40 Bloom, “Papermaking: The Historical Diffusion of an Ancient Technique,” 60.

13 innovation of using metal wire for the mold originated in Valencia and moved from there to

Italy, but there have also been scholars that believe the opposite is true.41 Neil Harris points to the extant metallurgy industries in Fabriano as support for the practice beginning there, hypothesizing that papermakers there, familiar with the capabilities of their neighbors, took advantage of the industry around them to experiment and adapt Arabic techniques to suit their circumstances.42

Wire frames made possible the creation of watermarks. The earliest known watermarks are found on Italian documents dating to the late thirteenth century. The most common date given is 1282, referring to a document discovered by Charles-Moïse Briquet in a Bolognese archive.43 However, Neil Harris argues that Briquet’s own uncertainty of the 1282 date, coupled with the fact that this document has yet to be rediscovered and more thoroughly analyzed, requires a less exact date, preferring instead “the second half of the 1280s”, though such a distinction is all but trivial unless one is studying thirteenth century Italian watermarks.44 Even after gaining popularity, watermarks remained uncommon in Iberian paper production. While there is an abundance of surviving documents bearing watermarks from the late middle ages in

Spanish archives, the paper itself was not manufactured locally but imported from Italy.

Two innovations in the production of paper that were certainly Italian, were situated instead within the mill itself. The first was the shift from a horizontal to a vertical wheel, which

41 Bloom, “Papermaking: The Historical Diffusion of an Ancient Technique.”

42 Neil Harris, “A History of Handmade Paper. The Basic Problem,” in Paper and Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence (Lyon: Institut d’histoire du livre, 2017), 9–22. Dr. Harris is the Professor of Bibliology and Library Studies at Università degli Studi di Udine.

43 Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach.”

44 Harris, “A History of Handmade Paper. The Basic Problem.”

14 was an adaptation made by other craftsmen to help with activities such as the “mechanical pounding or spinning devices” used in ironwork and cloth weaving.45 The other innovation was the mechanization of the rag beating process. This was achieved by shifting to a row of water powered stampers which were fitted with different heads that alternatively shredded, beat, smashed, and hydrated the rags. Pulp made in this manner has fibers that are much more uniform, which in turn makes better-quality paper in terms of texture and thickness.46 This “row of stampers produced an evenly macerated paper pulp more quickly and using less physical labor,” which allowed for an increased production of higher-quality paper.47

That Italian papermakers adapted manufacturing techniques from other craftsmen is unsurprising given that, for example, in Fabriano there was no papermakers guild until 1326 even though papermakers were established enough in the city that in the years 1283 to 1300 there were eight ‘master’ papermakers listed in the registers of the city.48 That isn’t to say that

Fabriano papermakers were unrepresented in the guilds of their town, rather their profession was absorbed into the Arte delle Lana (wool) guild.49 In fact, the same words, gualchiera or valchiera, were used to refer to both papermills and fullers’ mills.50 This liaison was fortuitous as it allowed papermakers ready access to woolen felts which they utilized in the drying process, a practice called couching. This practice applied light pressure to the sheets which resulted in paper of a more even thickness than papers dried in other ways, which can result in pulp

45 Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, 4.

46 Albro, 36.

47 Albro, 34.

48 Albro, 12–13.

49 Albro, 27.

50 Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking. The word gualca means waterwheel.

15 accumulating in the center or edges of the sheet or chain and laid lines so pronounced that they render the writing surface uneven.51

Yet another Italian innovation in papermaking, and arguably the most important innovation in regard to its adoption in Europe, is sizing. While there are no extant contemporary sources on Medieval Iberian sizing practices, Arabic sources, including an eleventh-century document by North African author Mu‘iz ibn Badis, indicate that sizing was typically done with a starch paste made from either wheat or rice.52 Some researchers argue these were two distinct steps in the process, while others consider them to be two distinct sizing options.53 Because of its practice in Arab controlled lands, paper finished with starch sizing is sometimes referred to as

‘oriental’ paper in the literature. Examination of surviving manuscripts shows that this process was brought to Al-Andalus by Arabic merchants and continued well into the fourteenth century.54

Once Italy began producing their own paper on a larger scale in the thirteenth century, they quickly adapted the process and used a gelatin base in lieu of a starch base for the paste.55

Paper made with gelatin sizing is likewise referred to as ‘occidental’ paper. This innovation has been credited with allowing the spread of paper both throughout the Italian peninsula and to the rest of Europe. Unlike starch, gelatin makes the surface of the paper much tougher. This makes

51 Harris, “A History of Handmade Paper. The Basic Problem.”

52 Nor is there of European sizing practices before 1693. Karen Garlick, “A Brief Review of the History of Sizing and Resizing Practices,” in The Book & Paper Group Annual (Washington, D.C.: Book and Paper Group, American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1986), 97, http://cool.conservation- us.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/annual/v05/bp05-11.html. Martin Levey, “Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and Its Relation to Early Chemistry and Pharmacology,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 52, no. 4 (1962): 1, https://doi.org/10.2307/1005932.

53 Garlick, “A Brief Review of the History of Sizing and Resizing Practices.”

54 Garlick, 96.

55 Garlick, “A Brief Review of the History of Sizing and Resizing Practices.”

16 the paper friendlier to European pen nibs and, more importantly, much more resistant to mold.

While starch fares well in dry climates, the seasonal dampness that characterizes much of the

European climate is ideal for mold spores. Both Aragon and Castile are dry climates, whereas the

Italian peninsula receives a significant amount of rain during the winter. Thus, there were real differences in paper’s potential for decay, and thus differences in the grounds for concern, between these three kingdoms, which helps explain the early Italic laws prohibiting the use of paper for official state purposes.

Because gelatin is more likely to spoil at high temperatures, sizing became a seasonal activity that occurred in the cooler months of September through June.56 Much in the same way that the local wool industry influenced the practice of couching, the development of animal gelatin as a sizing agent is often attributed to the existing tanning industry in the city which also occupied itself with the production of parchment for markets in larger urban areas in Italy such as Rome. Why this practice came to be specifically in Fabriano in the thirteenth century and not another city at an earlier time is as yet unknown. While Fabriano certainly did enjoy a range of urban guilds from whom to borrow materials and manufacturing methods, so too did other towns in Italy.

Albro notes that while the best gelatin is made from the remains of lambs, sheep, and goats, gelatin from pigs was not considered usable for this endeavor.57 While the animals being used were likely not slaughtered in a way that aligns with kosher standards, the animals themselves are not inherently unclean. Thus, gelatin sizing was unlikely to be an factor in the decision to use paper by Jewish bookmakers since pigs were not used in its production,

56 Albro, Fabriano : City of Medieval and Renaissance Papermaking, 71.

57 Albro, 39.

17 something that would certainly deter a Jewish scribe. Albro’s findings are, to some extent, unsurprising as the animal used in the production of gelatin was not specified in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century North African polemic surrounding the appropriateness of Italian paper for use in writing Qurans. Abu Abdallah ibn Marzūq al-Hafīd’s early fifteenth-century fatwa on the subject, entitled “A Decision . . . concerning the permissibility of writing on paper made by

Christians,” addresses the issue of the ‘purity’ of Italian paper.58 The issues raised by concerned

Muslims, and addressed in the fatwa, pertain only to the paper made of Christian rags, which were potentially impure, and that bore watermarks with Christian symbols such as crosses.

This concern arose because Italy had begun exporting paper almost as soon as they began making it, and during the fourteenth century had completely saturated not just the Spanish market, but also most of the Mediterranean and European markets. It is curious Italian paper was able to infiltrate Spanish market, when Spanish paper had recently dominated the Mediterranean market in much the same way. One reason may be due in part to the increasingly perilous social situation of many of the Muslim papermakers who had dominated the industry, resulting in a decline of paper production. While Muslims were sometimes allowed to stay in recently conquered areas because of the value of their trade, such as in 1244 when Xàtiva fell to James I

(the Conqueror), increasingly discriminatory laws and tariffs often forced Muslim papermakers to relocate to friendlier locales.59 However, paper manufacturing had declined in other regions on the Mediterranean as well, such as Algeria where Ibn Marzūq wrote his fatwa. Thus, religious intolerance can only partially explain the decline in Spanish papermaking. It is likely one catalyst

58 Leor Halevi, “Christian Impurity versus Economic Necessity : A Fifteenth-Century Fatwa on European Paper,” Speculum 83, no. 4 (2017): 917–45; Bloom, “Papermaking: The Historical Diffusion of an Ancient Technique.”

59 Valls i Subirà, The History of Paper in Spain, 137–44.

18 alongside the superior quality, durability, and cost of Italian paper thanks to the manufacturing innovations previously discussed.

Conclusion

Paper was certainly in frequent use, so much so that rulers felt the need to step in and moderate its use or export. One reason for the hesitancy to embrace this new medium was its susceptibility to mold and the potential loss of important bureaucratic documents. In wetter, colder climates paper’s relative fragility to parchment was readily apparent. These preservation concerns bolstered the reputation of Italian papers, sized with animal gelatin instead of starch, as being of superior quality. The improvements the Italians made on beating the rags to achieve uniform fibers and the advent of watermarks as a sort of proto-branding helped Italian manufacturers establish reputations for providing high-quality papers at prices commensurate with local producers, ultimately leading to Italian paper manufacturers overtaking the Iberian market almost entirely by the end of the Middle Ages.

Part II: Data Collection and Evaluation of Sources

How then do books of this era reflect these assertations made about shifts from parchment to paper as a preferred material support? While paper historians can make arguments based on the documents they have encountered, they often do not distinguish between diplomatic and codicological artifacts, and quantitative analysis is infrequently employed. As such, this study utilizes quantitative codicology as its methodology but does so using the existing bibliographic data instead of hands-on investigation. It examines the repositories of several institutions identified by Melachi Beit-Arié in his article “Hebrew Manuscripts and the

Singularity of the Collection of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma” as having the most important

19 collections of medieval Jewish books worldwide.60 He includes the Biblioteca Palatina, Oxford

University Libraries, Bibliothèque National de France (BnF), British Library, Vatican Library,

University of Cambridge, Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University in his list, and thus these institutions were evaluated as potential sources of data for this study. The Catálogo

Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (CCPB), an online catalog compiling the bibliographic holdings in public and private institutions in Spain, was also included because it provides ready access to a vast trove of bibliographic information that has obvious geographic ties to the areas being studied. Where possible, data on region (Italy or Iberia), date (century), culture (language), and material support (paper, parchment, or a mix) was gathered from these institutions and analyzed to determine what trends, if any, exist between these four variables. In these comparisons, the proportion of the total texts using paper for two populations (e.g. Jewish and

Christian books in fifteenth-century Italy) was subjected to a two-sided hypothesis test with a

95% confidence interval. This test calculated a P value. The significance level was set at the standard level of 0.05, meaning only differences with P values less than 0.05 would be deemed statistically significant, which is to say there is a 95% probability that the difference between the two proportions is not due to chance. In the description of the results below, the terms

‘significant’ and ‘statistically significant’ are used exclusively for proportions that were compared in this way and whose P values were lower than the specified significance level of

0.05. As a comparison, data was also gathered from the online databases provided by the

Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania and from Beit-Arié’s

60 Malachi Beit-Arié, “Hebrew Manuscripts and the Singularity of the Collection of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma,” Materia Giudaica 7, no. 2 (2002): 213–16.

20 own database, ‘SfarData’. This data was similarly analyzed and compared to the findings from the institutions described above.

Defining a sample

As this study seeks to identify the comparative rate of adoption of paper in Jewish and

Christian books, it stands that there must be a means of determining what constitutes a book and how to identify that book as intended for either a Jewish or Christian reader. The latter was determined by language. Any text in Hebrew, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, or any other language specific to Jewish populations was deemed to be intended for a Jewish reader, whereas Latin,

Greek, and vernacular languages were classified as Christian. While a linguistic classification scheme is obviously imperfect, it is based on knowledge of the texts Jews consumed in the

Middle Ages. Hebrew was the language of primary education for Jews throughout the diaspora, and Hebrew characters were adapted to write vernacular languages resulting in hybrid forms which could become languages in and of themselves such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Italian, and

Yiddish.61 However, albeit a good heuristic, this generalization excludes transcultural works created and consumed by learned Jews and Christian Hebraists. For example, in Judah ibn

Tibbon’s twelfth-century ethical will, Ibn Tibbon admonishes his son’s lack of aptitude and interest in Arabic and declares that “the greatest men of our nation did not achieve their greatness or their lofty heights but through their Arabic writing.”62 The exclusion of these works from this type of examination is especially unfortunate because their transcultural nature mirrors the

61 Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. N. R. M. (Nicholas Robert Michael) De Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2–4. ; Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides : The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, First edition. (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 57–59.

62 S. J. Pearce, “‘Examine Your Hebrew Books Monthly and Arabic Books Bimonthly’: Autobiography and Bibliography in the Islamic West,” in The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition: The Role of Arabic in Judah Ibn Tibbon’s Ethical Will (Indiana University Press, 2017), 47.

21 transcultural introduction of paper to Europe. In this way, they could be an interesting addition to the investigation of the role cultural agency played in the choice of material support.

The problem of what constitutes a book is equally complicated. In pursuing this research question, decisions had to be made about whether to include record books, personal notebooks, collections of documents, and the like. Ultimately, it was decided that a “book” would mean a single textual object purposefully created to include pre-defined contents. As such record books and notebooks were not included nor were collections of documents which could span multiple decades (or centuries) and understandably include a wide array of materials. One of the challenges of this project became determining whether a particular book was an object that copied a predefined series of documents into a single work, or whether it was a group of independent documents compiled and bound together at a later date. When possible, notes in the catalog record were used to determine this, but in their absence, it was assumed that the work was a collection of individual documents and not included in the data set. Pentateuch scrolls were also excluded from the sample data because the Sefer Torah, the five books of Moses (i.e. the Pentateuch) has strict religious guidelines requiring that it be written as a scroll on vellum and thus there would not have been the choice between paper and parchment.

Similarly, fragments of fewer than 10 folios were also routinely removed from the sample data since it would be impossible to extrapolate whether that fragment was representative of the text as-a-whole. The century of production was another point where executive decisions were made as to classification and inclusion. Generally, by expanding the date range to span 100 years, most works could easily be classified. When the range of possible dates spanned two

22 centuries, the century most represented by those dates was chosen.63 When given dates spanned two centuries equally, a conservative approach was taken and the manuscript was classified in the later century. While this approach no doubt gave preference to later centuries, a better way of approaching this problem could not be determined.64 Similarly, manuscripts composed of both paper and parchment were combined with those made exclusively of paper for analytical purposes. While imperfect, the goal of this research was to determine cultural willingness to use paper, and partial use is evidence of willingness to use.

The most obvious limitation to this survey is the question of how representative this corpus is to the reality of book cultures in these communities. One can never know how representative surviving materials are of their time, especially in the case of Jewish books which had to contend with discrimination, recurrent violence, and expulsion in addition to the normal ravages of time. The best estimations one can make in this regard are to look at library inventories contemporary to the period in question. Joseph R. Hacker performed a subject analysis on the inventories of 114 Jewish Libraries from the late middle ages and found that religious texts and their commentaries were among the most popular texts.65 This was also seen in the results gathered from individual institutions which supports the idea that, at least in terms of content, they may be representative of the books that existed at the time. The inventories do not, however, reveal the representativeness of the extant books as they pertain to material

63 That is to say, a manuscript described as being produced between 1050 and 1125 would be classified as 11th century because 51 of those years fall in the 11th century, whereas only 24 fall within the 12th century.

64 That is to say, a better way could not be found given the temporal, monetary, experiential, and geographic constraints inherent in this particular study. It would of course be better to fly to the country where the manuscript resides, examine it in person (and somehow classify it better than the undoubtedly very knowledgeable librarians, archivists, and researchers who have contributed to its cataloging over the years).

65 Joseph R. Hacker, “Jewish Book Owners and Their Libraries in the Iberian Peninsula, Fourteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean : Hebrew Manuscripts and Incunabula in Context, ed. Javier del Barco, 2015, 87–88.

23 support. Nevertheless, one of the benefits of taking a comparative approach is that, despite the inherent limitations of surviving manuscripts, those limitations can be assumed to apply with some parity to both parties. Thus, while more paper books may have once existed but not survived or been conserved as often as parchment books, the difference between the percentage of books made of paper vs parchment should not be affected by whether the book was made for a

Jew or a Christian—there is no reason to assume that the paper books of either culture survived or perished at different rates.

Evaluation of Institutions

Not all the aforementioned repositories had means of accessing data about their collections that were conducive to this type of research. The institutions studied can be divided into three major categories: those whose holdings are not searchable online in a database or catalog format, those whose collections are searchable but not in a way conducive to this research, and those whose collections are rich enough in their item level description to be usable as a research source. The searchable catalogs and databases can be further divided by the richness of their bibliographic data; some contain only sparse data from which a study on material supports is not possible, some contain data in the item level descriptions alone, and some allow the user to use material support to tailor results.

The Biblioteca Palatina in Parma falls into the first category and was the least amenable to this type of research. Their fondi parmanese e palatino, which have over 2,600 manuscripts, of which at least 1,400 are written in Hebrew, are only available through manuscript or print catalogs—there exists no online, searchable catalog. The University Library (UL) at Cambridge had similar problems. While some manuscripts appear in a difficult to use catalog, and many have been fully digitized and can be searched through the digital library, the results were in the

24 dozens at most. The mention of this collection in the article by Beit-Arié, coupled with the fact that the UL itself points users to the five-volume printed catalog of its manuscript holdings as being the most thorough resource available, implies that the sparse search results were not representative of the manuscripts actually housed in the institution. The volumes, which have been digitized and are available to researchers on archive.org, are in English unlike the print catalog at the University of Oxford. Entries begin with information on material support, but a search of the catalog for the terms ‘paper’ or ‘parchment’ would still require review of individual entries since the catalog covers all of the manuscript holdings, so it is not limited to the Middle

Ages. Entries are also organized by collection, so each entry would also need to be assessed for its geographic suitability to the scope of this project.

The University of Oxford has several options for accessing bibliographic data about its collections, but because of the lack of accessibility to its Hebrew holdings, data ultimately was not surveyed from their collections. Their main point of access is the online card catalog of their

“oriental manuscripts,” which is extremely difficult to use.66 Searching for “Hebrew” as a language returns 20 results per page of an unknown total pages or total results. The date of creation and place of origin are rarely given. Likewise, material support is almost never mentioned, and when it is, the information is not descriptive (i.e. “Fragments of leather scroll,

&c.” in MS.Heb.c.58(P)) There are also digitized versions of nineteenth-century print catalogs available on the Hathi Trust. These do contain information on material support, but often no localization, unless explicitly stated, other than a characterization of the script used.67 For

66 Oxford classifies all Hebrew script manuscripts as part of their ‘Oriental Manuscripts’ and not ‘European Manuscripts’ regardless of where they were created. The catalog is available at: http://allegro.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/orientalmss/

67 Available at: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012104684

25 example, MS 2438, which is a copy of the Pentateuch, is described as having characters “which are Italian cursive”. This manuscript is also given the description “Span. squ. char. with vowel points and accents ; 2 coll., small fol., vellum, ff. 199.”68 While the researcher may be tempted by either description to locate the item as variably Italian or Spanish, script is not always a reliable source. Immigrant scribes are the best example of how unreliable scripts can be. A text written in Italy by a Jewish scribe who had immigrated there from Spain would, on the surface, appear to be a Spanish manuscript. Likewise, unless it is made explicit in the work itself, there is no mention of the date of production. There is also the Bibliothecae Bodleianae Codicum

Manuscriptorum Orientalium Videlicet, a PDF scan of the 1787 catalog of “oriental” manuscripts.69 Although its entries begin with information regarding material support, the catalog is difficult and cumbersome to use due to its format; the text being a scanned book written entirely in Latin. Additionally, because the document dates to the eighteenth century, it misses the major acquisitions which took place in the late nineteenth century. In contrast, the

Digital Bodleian has a more user-friendly search mechanism. Unfortunately, the information is still difficult to obtain, and the majority of manuscripts have yet to be digitized.

The BnF and their digitized collection Gallica was sadly very limited in the number of manuscripts that fit into the parameters of this study; only seven medieval (0501-1500 C.E.)

Hebrew manuscripts from Spain or Portugal and sixteen from Italy were found using the online catalog. This seemed surprising given Beit-Arié’s praise for the collection, so further investigation revealed that quite a lot of the 1,495 Hebrew manuscripts in the collection were

68 Bodleian Library, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford, Including Mss. in Other Languages ... Written with Hebrew Characters, or Relating to the Hebrew Language or Literature;and ... Samaritan Mss., ed. Adolf Neubauer (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1886), 862, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112084991048.

69 Available as a PDF at: https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOADI10485/00001/pdf

26 from these regions. The problem may be that, while there are a number of manuscripts with titles such as “Prières juives (rite romain) (hébreu)”, the catalog entry doesn’t indicate anywhere that the item was created in Rome or Italy.70 Without that information being present outside of the title, there is no way for the catalog to recognize that it fits the parameters. Because of this limitation, the only way to gather data from the BnF is by opening and recording relevant information from each individual record. To fully gather comparative information, the researcher would have to go beyond the 1,495 manuscripts in the ‘Hébreu’ collection of the manuscripts department. They would also have to search through the relevant collections at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal as well as the named collections within the Manuscript Department. Nor would there necessarily be any great reward for doing so. The Prières juives previously mentioned, for example, does not include any information about material support in its catalog description.

Digitized copies of the manuscripts allow researchers to determine material support in instances where that information is not included in the catalog record. While the quality of the images is good enough that it is easy to tell the material of a particular manuscript, it could still be difficult to the untrained eye and the researcher would need to click through every sheet in order to discern if any folios were of a different material. Likewise, objects may be rebound with new endpapers and the untrained or hasty researcher could count that as an example of a mixture of paper and parchment when, in reality, the original text block was written on exclusively parchment. Clicking through every page of a manuscript is also less efficient than examining the physical artifact, thus negating the point of this project—utilizing the quantifiable data already in existence in lieu of physically handling thousands of manuscripts.

70 [Jewish prayers (Roman rite) (Hebrew)] Ms. Hébreu 615.

Columbia University looked promising at first glance. The manuscripts in their collections are incorporated into their library catalog and it is possible to limit search results by

“Country of Publication.” Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the results returned objects that are microfilm and online resources as well. After filtering those out, there remained fewer than 200 results from Italy, many of which were single leaves (or bifolia) or accounting books, and in going through them it became clear that while the Hebrew manuscripts were reliable in recording information on material support, entries for Latin and vernacular manuscripts did not exhibit the same thoroughness.

Traditional Cataloging and Metadata Standards

In order to understand this diversity regarding catalog records, one must understand the standards and guidelines for cataloguing medieval manuscripts. MARC21 includes a field for recording the physical medium of an object. The field 340, subfield a, is mapped according to

RDA standard 3.6, which the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging Policy

Statement (LC-PCC PS) requires only for graphic materials and recommends only for historical audio recordings, and the British Library Policy Statements provide no information regarding whether this is required or recommended.71 One would reasonably expect, however, that old and rare books would require different standards. After all, a handwritten book from the fourteenth century presents significantly different challenges than a romance novel printed in 2017. The

Rare Books and Manuscript section of the Association of College and Research Libraries provides a guide for the Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials, with a specific guide for

Manuscripts (DCRM[MSS]). In it, material support is included as an optional element under

71 American Library Association, Canadian Federation of Library Associations, and CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, “RDA Toolkit,” 2010, sec. Resources: “BL PS” and "LC-PCC PS", http://access.rdatoolkit.org/.

“Other physical details.”72 Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early

Modern Manuscripts (AMREMM), was created to address the “different characteristics of pre- modern manuscripts [which] call for a more historically informed approach to their cataloging” if the medieval manuscript is ever to become integrated into library catalogs.73 In AMREMM, information about material support is included as one of the “basic set of elements must be included in all manuscript catalog records.” 74 However, this requirement is qualified with ‘if applicable,’ so a cataloger could justify not recording this information if they so desired. The guide also specifies to use the term ‘parchment’ in all instances, not differentiating it from vellum, although ‘vellum’ was far and away the preferred term in British Library records.75

However, all of the above guides were devised in the twenty-first century so any earlier cataloging would not have had the benefit of these guidelines or recommendations. The Anglo-

American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) date to 1967, so late twentieth-century catalogers would have referenced its rules in the creation of catalog records. Section 4 is dedicated to Manuscripts and subsection 4.5C1 specifies that the material support should be recorded “if it is other than paper,” but does not specify a preferred vocabulary between parchment and vellum, using both in the examples given.76 AACR2 also indicates three levels of detail that can be followed depending on the needs of the institution. Only the second and third levels of description require

72 Bibliographic Standards Committee, “DCRM(MSS)” (Chicago, 2016), 86. Support is 5C1

73 Gregory A Pass, Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts (Chicago, 2003), xii.

74 Pass, 6.

75 Pass, 43.

76 American Library Association, Associations, and CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, “RDA Toolkit,” sec. Resources: AACR2: 4.5C1.

29 the notation of ‘other physical details,’ so a cataloguer following the minimum requirements would not feel compelled to note the material support of the object in front of them.

Knowledge of these standards can only be presumed for institutions in the English speaking North Atlantic. The BnF’s Archives and Manuscripts Division follows standards described in Description des manuscrits et fonds d'archives modernes et contemporains en bibliothèque (DeMArch).77 This standard defines 33 elements for the description of manuscripts and archival materials, though it allows catalogers to use their own discretion in determining which of those elements are necessary for the item in front of them.78 Section 2.5, physical description, names support as one of the features to be described and refers to physical descriptions as an “indispensable” element for researchers to find what they’re looking for.79

Nonetheless, the standards state that each institution should judge for themselves the degree of detail they feel necessary to include. Given that the inclusion of material support is not required for manuscripts following most cataloguing standards even today, it is unsurprising that so many of the catalogs neglected to include this information in their catalog.

Institutions with Accessible Data

Jewish Theological Seminary

While the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) contains over 400 manuscript books, its catalog largely lacks bibliographic information crucial to this type of research. It is

77 Bibliothèque nationale de France, “Description Des Manuscrits et Fonds d’archives Modernes et Contemporains En Bibliothèque (DeMArch),” accessed June 1, 2019, https://www.bnf.fr/fr/description-des-manuscrits-et-fonds- darchives-modernes-et-contemporains-en-bibliotheque-demarch.

78 Association française de normalisation and Commission de normalisation Modélisation production et accès aux documents, “Description Des Manuscrits et Fonds d’archives Modernes et Contemporains En Bibliothèque : DeMArch,” 2010, 7, http://www.bivi.fonctions-documentaires.afnor.org/livres-.

79 Association française de normalisation and Commission de normalisation Modélisation production et accès aux documents, 21.

30 possible to search by place of origin but very few entries contain this information and only about half of those entries contain information on material support. Ultimately, only 68 catalog entries yielded enough information to be included in this study. Interestingly, while material support and geographic origin were only rarely mentioned, the color of ink used to write the manuscript was present in every catalog entry examined. That a detail like ink color is so reliably present in the entries indicates that the lack of other information is likely because the cataloger could not confidently position the manuscripts geographically and did not consider material support to be a characteristic worth describing.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

At the Vatican Library, the problem stems instead from the catalog being obtuse and difficult to use. Not only do item level descriptions include information on material support, but it is also possible to run a search with that as a parameter. However, upon beginning the search the fact arose that there are two online catalogs, which appear to be completely distinct from one another.80 One is a more traditional catalog while the other is connected to the ongoing, massive digitization project. Parallel searches in each catalog returned results with no crossovers whatsoever, so both catalogs were utilized to obtain data. This lack of crossover casts suspicion on whether there are other manuscripts that are entirely unrepresented in either catalog, and as to what percentage of the library’s holdings are actually present in the catalog. Additionally, if there exist more than a few hundred results when using the older of the catalogs, the search returns an error stating that there are too many entries to display individual records. While this may not seem like a problem at first, it effectively prohibits the researcher from verifying the data

80 The older catalog no longer seems to be available online as of June 2019, suggesting that those records may be in the process of being integrated into the newer platform.

31 returned or checking for examples that contain both paper and parchment. Thus, a series of separate searches had to be run in order to return small enough sample for individual results to be displayed. The country of origin, century of creation, and material support were specified in each search, which meant at least 80 separate searches were ultimately performed. The 80 searches mentioned do not include the multiple attempts at learning the vocabulary of the older catalog

(e.g. the “date” field represents the century of creation and must be searched as a roman numeral), which had to be done through trial and error since there is no index or guide provided.81

British Library

The British Library’s Archives and Manuscripts division proved a robust source of data.

The data gathered for this research was acquired through the free data services provided by the library. The data was limited to catalog entries within the Archives and Manuscripts collections which had the terms ‘Italy’, ‘Spain’, ‘Portugal’, or ‘Iberia’ and date of production between 0500 and 1500 C.E. Since ‘place of origin’ is not a searchable parameter, the geographic terms listed above were run as a keyword search, which of course meant that many of the results were not appropriate for this research. Over 1,600 catalog entries were sent by email in the form of a ‘csv’ sheet, a corpus which was reduced to 788 items after irrelevant and incomplete records were eliminated. Despite having a separate column for ‘Place of Origin’ and ‘Physical

Characteristics’, only 414 of the original 1,600 contained any data on the physical properties of the text and no entries contained data about place of origin. All of the information about geographic origin and the majority of the information on material support was gathered by

81 Additionally, the older catalog has an English interface, but the search terms must match the catalog records which are in Italian, whereas the newer catalog has translated catalog entries, so the search can be performed in English.

32 returning to the online catalog and going through each item record individually, a process determined to be quicker than reading through an entire, often multi paragraph, ‘scope and content’ section that sometimes had this information buried within.82 Having to do so, however, largely negated part of the purpose of the study which was determining the ability to do this research en masse using online catalogs. While this can arguably be done with the British

Library’s catalog, having to weed through individual entries is only marginally better than reading through a digitized print catalog, and it was having the data already available and organized in a spreadsheet that made this item-by-item approach feasible for this research.

The richness of item level description often varies from collection to collection, or even item to item within a collection. For example, the Burney collection’s 588 items all have subdivisions including extent, which includes a detailed line about material support, and geographic origin. The item level descriptions in the Cotton collection, by contrast, are often not broken down into subdivisions with information about geographic origin sometimes being buried in a title, and only six of the items from Italy or Iberia contained any information on material support. Other collections had different issues. Almost none of the manuscripts in the Harley collection included information about geographic origin, even if the origin was known. A Greek-

Latin dictionary, for example, did not have a recorded place of origin, but did list the scribe as being Zomino da Pistoia, an Italian humanist active in the early fifteenth century.83

82 Even when this is the only option in the online catalog, the ability to more easily search (CTRL+F) one entry online still made using the online catalog faster than doing so within the csv sheet.

83 Harley MS 6313

Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico

The Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (CCPB) was an accidental, but extremely fortuitous discovery. The CCPB combines catalogs from private and public libraries and institutions across Spain into one giant catalog. Although entirely in Spanish, the advanced searching features include the ability to limit results by year and country of origin. Up to 1,000 results at a time can be ‘marked’ and then exported in a variety of formats. The resulting 825 usable records of manuscript books contributed greatly to the research corpus, which had previously been overwhelmingly Italian in its focus. The records were graciously uniform, allowing for exceptionally quick review. Unfortunately, there were very few Jewish books among the results. While this was unsurprising given the increasing cultural tensions, violence, and eventual expulsion of Jews from Iberia at the end of the fifteenth century, only 13 books,

1.5% of the results, were Jewish books. Interestingly, two-thirds (66%) of the British Library’s

Iberian book were Jewish texts.

Findings and Analysis

These four catalogs--the British Library, Jewish Theological Seminary, Vatican Library, and CCPB--yielded almost 2,500 catalog entries which could be used for analysis. Though this number is certainly not proximate to the total number of extant manuscripts produced in these two regions, it was deemed a suitably representative sample compared to both the 1,000 Hebrew books in Beit-Arié’s 1981 study whose scope spanned beyond the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas, and the “database of 17,352 manuscripts produced in eleven regions of Western Europe between

501 and 1500” compiled by Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden in their broader economic

analysis of the book trade from the sixth through eighteenth centuries.84 As expected, the overall

number of manuscripts was more heavily weighted toward the Late Middle Ages, with 98% of

Iberian books and 89% of Italian books dating to the thirteenth century or later.85 Likewise,

Jewish books were not nearly as well represented in the data as Christian books. Jewish books

make up only 27% of Italian books and 19% of Iberian books. That Jewish books would be

unrepresented in the earlier medieval centuries was not wholly unexpected as Malachi Beit-Arié

had already concluded in 1981 that “Hebrew codicology is inevitably late Medieval, due to the

scarcity of existing dated manuscripts from the early Middle Ages.”86 A graphic breakdown of

these results is available in the Appendix included at the end of this document (Figs. 5-8)

Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.41% 0.00% 7.51% 22.78% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 24.21% 36.15% Iberia Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.29% 7.76% 25.73% Jewish 75.00% 41.67% 35.96% 61.00% Table 1: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century, culture and geographic region.

Looking at the table above, Iberia is shown to adopt paper earlier than Italy, with thirteen

works from the eleventh through thirteenth centuries originating in Iberia versus only one in

Italy. Interestingly, this Iberian preference is majorly comprised of Jewish works, which account

for eight of the thirteen books. Additionally, while Christians were slower to adopt paper, the

rate of adoption between Italy and Iberia was almost identical from the earliest example found in

84 Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Charting the ‘Rise of the West’: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 412, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050709000837.

85 1,048 of a total 1,066 manuscripts from Iberia and 1,272 of a total 1,431 manuscripts from Italy.

86 Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology : Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts, 9.

35 the twelfth century through the fifteenth. In fact, despite drastically different sample sizes, by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the percentage of Christian books using paper in both regions was roughly equal (7.76% vs. 7.51% and 25.73% vs 22.78% respectively) and the differences were not deemed statistically significant (see Table 8, appendix). Conversely, geography did seem to play a role in the choice of material support for Jewish books. By the fifteenth century, the rate of paper usage by Jewish Italians was equal to the rate of Jewish Iberians in the century prior. In fact, the difference between the rates of paper usage in fifteenth-century Jewish books in

Italy vs Iberia is statistically significant, although the difference in the fourteenth century rates is not. In contrast, none of the centuries showed a significant difference in paper usage between

Italian and Iberian Christian books. Jewish books in Iberia show a markedly larger rate of adoption than their Italian counterparts. The percentages from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are made more extreme by the small overall number of works from those centuries (four total in the twelfth and twelve total in the thirteenth centuries), so small in fact that they could not be tested for significance. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries maintained the markedly higher rates of adoption in Iberia than in Italy seen in the preceding centuries. However, only Jewish books in the fifteenth century had differences in rates between the two regions that were not deemed to be statistically significant.

As regards cultural differences in paper adoption, the difference between rates of paper utilization in Jewish and Christian books from the Iberian Peninsula was found to be statistically significant in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see Table 7, appendix). These two centuries had samples large enough for significance testing: 89 and 100 Jewish books compared to 322 and 302 Christian books in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries respectively. While the sample size of Christian books was around three times that of Jewish books, the difference in the

36 proportion of books using paper was still great enough that it is statistically unlikely to be due to chance alone.

The Italian Peninsula displays similar results. With only one book before the fourteenth century being a mixture of paper and parchment there was nothing to compare, but the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also revealed differences in rates of adoption between these two cultures that were both striking and statistically significant. Sample sizes from Italy were also larger with

95 Jewish and 213 Christian books in the fourteenth century and 260 Jewish and 641 Christian books in the fifteenth century. With these larger sample sizes, it is not surprising that the 28% difference in the rates of usage between 36% and 8% in the fourteenth century, and the even larger 35% difference between 61% and 26% in the fifteenth century, were found to be statistically significant.

Conclusion

The data very strongly suggests Jewish books were more likely than Christian books to utilize paper in their construction. However, the smaller number of books means the percentages are more easily skewed because one instance of a paper (or parchment or mixed material) book has a larger impact on a small sample size than that of a larger one. It is likewise important to note that the data above represents only a portion of the total number of extant manuscripts, both worldwide and at the institutions examined. The initial search results only returned items with geographic information, so an untold number of manuscripts without that data were immediately excluded from the sample set. If a catalog allowed geographic origin as a specific search parameter, any results that had that information in other fields would also be excluded.87 Also, if

87 For example, if the search queried “Italy” in the “place” field, any catalog entries that had not been input in this format, but rather using a more traditional format, would not have shown up in the result list. Using a keyword

37 a specific city were listed in the record without reference to the country it may not have shown up in the results if that information was not linked to its country in the catalog. Even among the entries that did include geographic information for the book, entries with information about material support only constituted about half of the search results. Because of the limitations of descriptions in library catalogs, a large amount of manuscripts in existence that fit the parameters of this study had to be excluded.

Predictably, the catalogs, like the individual entries, often had discernable strengths and weaknesses. The CCPB was the most extreme example; 99% of its books were Spanish, 98.5% were Christian, and 100% dated to the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. This skew was manifest in the other catalogs, of course, but was also evident in some of the catalogs which were not used in this study. One such instance was the University of Oxford where the “Oriental” manuscripts have not yet been privileged in the same way as their “Western” counterparts as regards their online cataloging. These stark differences underline the importance of gathering data from a variety of sources as any single source likely represents the biases of its country’s history, its contributing collectors, its financial overseers, and the catalogers themselves.

Part III: Comparison with Other Databases

Given that the catalogs of many institutions could not be mined for data on their holdings, it was important to have some manner of verifying the accuracy of the data obtained.

Fortunately, there are existing databases that have the potential to be used in this capacity. The

Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM) and SfarData were chosen for their wide scope

search instead solves this problem but also has the potential to return irrelevant results where those terms appear in subject fields, provenance entries, or other contexts.

and level of detail respectively. That is not to say that either of these databases were assumed to

be accurate measures on their own. However, if the data from two or all three sources match, this

would give strength to the argument that the data presented is accurate, or at the very least that

the inaccuracies present in all of them are largely inescapable. Although SfarData is only

concerned with books written in Hebrew scripts, comparing it to the data obtained on Jewish

books would permit tentative extrapolation to the accuracy of Christian books as well.

Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts

Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.89% 0.52% 3.06% 19.11% 35.93% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 25.00% 23.08% 31.19% Iberia Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 5.26% 12.07% 26.21% 38.69% Jewish 18.18% 16.67% 33.85% 50.00% Table 2: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century, culture and geographic region.

The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM), run through the University of

Pennsylvania, is incredibly impressive in its scope. The database’s interface is very user friendly

and the results page lends itself well to further refinement when results are too broad. The

database pulls its data from library as well as bookseller catalogs. This is a huge advantage as it

means manuscripts that are not in publicly accessible collections may still appear in the SDBM.

The downside, of course, is that individual entries for manuscripts are sometimes repeated, and

although this has been caught and a unifying entry made in an impressive number of cases, for

some reason both individual entries still appear in results instead of the unifying entry. Also,

materials are listed as independent entries, so manuscripts that are a mix of paper and parchment

are counted toward both the total number of parchment manuscripts and paper manuscripts,

never as “paper and parchment” manuscripts. That is to say that if there are nine codices, three of

which are made entirely of parchment, three entirely of paper, and another three made from a

mixture of paper and parchment, the results will return 9 individual entries but display the

material breakdown as “Parchment: 6; Paper: 6”. While this can be easily remedied with smaller

quantities, it would be a long laborious process to go through each entry when there are larger

quantities. In the same vein, unless the researcher had reason to notice a discrepancy, it would

likely go unnoticed.

The information was also, of course, only as good as its source. One tenth century Italian

manuscript from the BnF, for example, was described as being composed of both paper and

parchment. If true this would have been revelatory give the history of paper already discussed.

The earliest surviving paper document in Italy only dates to the twelfth century, by comparison.

The “other info” section of this entry reveals that while the original document was made of

parchment, there were seventeenth-century restorations which were done with paper. A similar

issue exists within the eleventh century with one entry described as both paper and parchment. In

this case however, the catalog record for the manuscript, which is also from the BnF, no longer

exists.88 Thus, there is no way to determine whether this is a true early example of paper, or if the

situation is similar to the previously mentioned tenth century manuscript.

Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.41% 0.00% 7.51% 22.78% Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.89% 0.52% 3.06% 19.11% 35.93% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 24.21% 36.15% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 25.00% 23.08% 31.19% Iberia Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.29% 7.76% 25.73% Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 5.26% 12.07% 26.21% 38.69% Jewish 75.00% 41.67% 35.96% 61.00% Jewish 18.18% 16.67% 33.85% 50.00% Table 3: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century, culture and geographic region. Blue rows represent the data collected from independent catalogs and green that from the SDBM.

88 MS 724 at Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal.

In comparison to the data collected from individual catalogs, with the exception of Jewish books in Iberia, there was evidence paper being used in books a full century prior to that found in the individually collected data. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the rate of paper use in

Christian books in both Italy and Iberia was higher across almost every century in the data gathered from the SDBM. What is surprising is that, apart from thirteenth-century Italy, the proportion of Jewish books that utilized paper was consistently lower in the SDBM regardless of geographic origin or century of production. Possibly due to these consistently lower rates, only two populations were found to be similar: fourteenth and fifteenth century Jewish books from

Iberia [Table 10]. The other five rates of adoption with sample sizes adequate for comparison were all found to be so different that it was significantly unlikely due to chance.

SfarData: The Codicological Data-Base of the Hebrew Paleography Project

Jewish 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Italy 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3.92% 13.33% 36.55% Iberia 33.33% 40.00% 13.51% 47.13% 69.33% Table 4: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century and geographic region.

SfarData is the online database of the Hebrew Paleography Project, the initiative and decades long endeavor of historian and Codicologist Malachi Beit-Arié. Though limited in its scope to codices written in Hebrew script, it was included because it is very much so designed to facilitate quantitative codicological research. A draft of Beit-Arié’s forthcoming book on Hebrew

Codicology using quantitative methodologies is included on the landing page of the website, as if to encourage researchers through example. One of the great benefits to SfarData is that the information has been carefully collected and curated. This means that information on manuscripts has been created and made accessible to researchers even when the manuscripts themselves reside in institutions such as the Biblioteca Palatina which does not have a searchable online catalog.

As expected from Beit-Arié, the database includes incredibly detailed search parameters: not only can you search by paper but if you’re only interested in paper with the quintessential

Arabic zig-zag pattern, you can search for that specifically. The only hitch for this research is that, like the SDBM, mixed media codices appear in both parchment and paper results. SfarData, however, unlike the SDBM, organizes its results as a table and allows items to be sorted by any of the item’s characteristics, including material support. In this manner, it is much more readily apparent that this is happening, and it likewise is a much simpler process to differentiate between items using both materials and items using only one. However, the manuscripts in SfarData are limited to codices “which contain explicit production dates or at least scribal name,” meaning that many of the manuscripts found in individual databases are not present in SfarData.89 The upside to this is that organizing the manuscripts by century is much quicker. The British Library, for example, had a large number of catalog entries for which catalogers had estimated dates that spanned multiple centuries, whereas with SfarData gives more precise dates for all of its entries.90 One disadvantage, as it pertains to the research question being examined here, is that fragments and partial manuscripts (i.e. only one or a few folios) are included in the results alongside full codices.

Despite the bespoke approach taken by the creators and managers of this database, there are still results that beg for further attention. One such instance is the two fragments from the

University Libraries at Cambridge which are both described as originating in eleventh century

Spain. While it is not impossible that these two Spanish fragments date to the eleventh century,

”,ספרדתא - The Hebrew Palaeography Project and The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, “Sfardata 89 accessed June 1, 2019, http://sfardata.nli.org.il/startSearch_En.

90 By which is meant dating such as XV-XVI c because a manuscript was written ‘in a fifteenth or sixteenth century hand’, not instances where separate manuscripts dating from different centuries were now bound together, which was an altogether different issue.

the oldest surviving paper book from Spain dates to around 1050. Two eleventh-century

documents made with Spanish paper are surely notable enough to warrant at least some mention

in the literature about the history of paper in Spain.

Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 24.21% 36.15% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3.92% 13.33% 36.55% Iberia Jewish 75.00% 41.67% 35.96% 61.00% Jewish 33.33% 40.00% 13.51% 47.13% 69.33% Table 5: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century, culture and geographic region. Blue rows represent the data collected from individual catalogs and yellow that from SfarData.

While the rates of paper adoption are different compared with the data gathered from

individual catalogs, the SfarData results are much more similar to that data than the data from the

SDBM. The differences in eleventh through thirteenth centuries are unsurprising because there

were far fewer extant manuscripts for each of those centuries, which means any one instance can

drastically change the percentage. The rates found on SfarData were slightly higher in Iberia

during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the sample data. During the fourteenth century

in Italy, the rate was found to be 11% higher using individual data (24% in the independent data

vs 13% in SfarData). Interestingly, the rates for fifteenth century Italy were virtually identical

between the two sources. Only the differences in fourteenth-century Italy were found to be

statistically significant between SfarData and individual catalogs (see Table 12, appendix). The

rates found in fourteenth and fifteenth century Iberia and fifteenth century Italy were not

significantly different. It is equally interesting to note that the same geographic differences are

also replicated by this data. As was seen with the individual catalogs, the rate of adoption in

fifteenth-century Italy is more similar to Iberia in the fourteenth century than the fifteenth

century. This trend is seen in other instances as well; the fourteenth-century rate in Italy is nearly

43 identical to that of thirteenth-century Iberia, for example. In fact, the difference between the rates of paper usage between these regions is statistically significant in both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see Table 13, appendix).

There remains, of course, the possibility that this data is still imprecise. This possibility is revealed by Beit-Arié himself in when he describes the following breakdown:

“The proportion of parchment manuscripts within the entire corpus of dated Hebrew

manuscripts up to 1500 is 43%. In the Sefardic zone it reaches 36% (84% in the

thirteenth century, 46% in the fourteenth century, 22% in the fifteenth century); … in

Italy 59% (98% in the thirteenth century, 82% in the fourteenth century, 51% in the

fifteenth century)”91

Though he does not differentiate between Iberia and North Africa, lumping both together as

“Sefarad”, by looking at his rates for Italy it becomes immediately evident that he is working with different numbers. Comparing his percentages with those found by simply searching the database, Jewish manuscripts in Italy can be seen to have alternatively a 2% vs 4%, 18% vs 13%, and 49% vs 31% rate of adoption in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries respectively. It is encouraging, however, that the percentages he gives for the thirteenth (2%) and fourteenth (18%) centuries fall neatly between those found from the individual catalogs (3.92% and 13.33%) and from SfarData (0% and 24.21%).

Conclusion

How much this data reflects a direct choice on the part of Jewish consumers, however, cannot yet be said for certain. If, for example, paper were less expensive than parchment,

91 Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach,” 213.

44 especially during the late middle ages, this data could just as feasibly show an economic choice and the lack of economic purchasing power of Jewish communities compared to their Christian contemporaries. Determining the economics of book production in the Middle Ages is notoriously difficult since “Medieval book prices are not easily quantifiable, by virtue of a manuscript's nature as a unique hand-produced.”92 However, scholars have been able to determine that labor costs in the manufacture of a manuscript book generally outweighed material costs by a large margin. Joanne Filippone Overty found that the cost of parchment in the production of a late fourteenth-century English Evangelarium accounted for only 17% of the total cost, or just under half (45%) the writing cost.93 Similarly, in 1384/5 a Jewish book owner in Imola (Northern Italy) listed the price of paper as being more than half the price of copying a text.94 The colophon of a late fourteenth-century venetian Kabbalistic text mirrors the heavier cost of scribal labor over material, though to a far more extreme degree with paper accounting for just 11 dinars out of a total cost of 5 ducats.95 While a similar trend is evident here--scribal labor costing at least twice that of material support--it would be irresponsible generalize these sporadic peaks into the economics of manuscript production as being representative of anything other than the specific time, place, and complexity surrounding the book in question. Indeed,

92 Joanne Filippone Overty, “The Cost of Doing Scribal Business: Prices of Manuscript Books in England, 1300- 1483,” Book History 11 (2008): 2.

93 Overty, 8.

94 Robert Bonfil, “A List of Hebrew Books from Imola from the Turn of the Fourteenth Century,” in Shlomo Umberto Nahon Memorial Book: Studies in the History of Italian Jewry, ed. Robert Bonfil (Jerusalem: Mossad Shlomo Meir, 1978), 61 no. 20, quoted in Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach,” 180, no. 190.

95 Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach,” 180. The cost of paper is also just under half as much as ruling the paper (11 vs 24 dinars).

Overty found that external forces such as improvements in animal husbandry and instances of plague could swing the valuation of texts drastically in either direction.96 Similarly, the cost of paper in comparison to parchment was dependent on the area and time of its production. The price of paper in Bologna in 1280, for example, was six times that of parchment according the

Beit-Arié.97 As paper became more readily available over the centuries, however, he argues that the use of paper “was bound to reduce the costs of production” and that the relative reluctance of

Italian Jews to use paper (compared to Sephardic Jews) could be evidence of a “conservative approach” or “reflect economic circumstances and the dictates of social status.”98

Of course, Jewish and Christian book production were two different beasts. Jews never organized vast scriptoria for the mass production of books as we see in Christian Europe.

Instead, Jewish scribes were independent actors who dealt directly with their patrons to create a personalized product.99 It was also very common for Jewish book owners to copy works by hand themselves, even those who had the economic means of hiring a scribe to copy a work.100 The sharing of books was an important part of Jewish community life and was considered the obligation of those fortunate enough to own books.101 Acquiring texts to copy without first purchasing the text, then, was not as difficult as one might imagine. Thus the choice of paper or

96 Overty, “The Cost of Doing Scribal Business: Prices of Manuscript Books in England, 1300-1483,” 13.

97 Beit-Arié, “Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Hebrew Medieval Codices Based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 Using Quantitative Approach,” 213, no. 9.

98Beit-Arié, 218.

99 Nurit Pasternak, “Who Were the Hebrew Scribes in Renaissance Italy? A Short Review of Their Manifold Roles,” in Manuscrits Hébreux et Arabes: Mélanges En l’honneur de Colette Sira, ed. Nicholas de Lange and Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, vol. Bibliologi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 29, https://doi.org/10.1484/m.bib.1.102083.

100 Pasternak, 33.

101 Pearce, “‘Examine Your Hebrew Books Monthly and Arabic Books Bimonthly’: Autobiography and Bibliography in the Islamic West,” 59–60.

46 parchment could reflect an economic choice on the part of the individual consumer of a text, especially compared to monastic production centers which often had ready access to livestock for parchment production. However, since the work of the scribe so often outweighed that of materials in regard to cost, opting for a standardized, unadorned mis-en-page would likely have reduced costs much more significantly than changing material support. Finally, because so many

Jewish book owners engaged in the act of copying texts themselves, the choice of material support could reflect a personal preference for writing on one material or the other. It could similarly reflect changes in documentary practices more than literary trends, since the educated

Jewish banker or physician would also have been engaged in the quotidian recordkeeping required of such a profession, and thus may simply have copied their books on whatever material was readily at hand.

Nevertheless, none of the above factors lie outside the realm of culture, rather they are all facets of it. Large, monastic production centers were part of the cultural landscape of Christian book production, just as independent scribes and individuals copying texts were part of Jewish book culture. In order to assess whether differences in the rates of paper being used as a material support are truly cultural differences in the reactions and opinions on the new material, one would need to find abundant primary sources reflecting the opinions of both Jewish and

Christian book owners, institutional or individual. The quote by the Abbot of Cluny given at the beginning of this report is exemplary, then, as his opinion is directly and unmistakably given.

Documentary evidence such as this from a number of different people and institutions and over the last four centuries of the Middles Ages (and from the areas in question) could allow more concrete hypotheses into the motivations underlying the choice of material support. The lack of such evidence, however, is also striking. That Ibn Tibbon would advise his son to “examine your

Hebrew books monthly and Arabic books bimonthly” and to “Cover your book cases with lovely tapestries and guard them against moisture, bookworms, and damage, because they are your treasure”, but make no mention about the preferred support of such a prized possession is striking, although this advice is early in the history of paper, dating to the late twelfth century.102

Based on the findings from the independent catalogs studied it can be concluded that culture did play a role in the selection of material support. The differences in rates of paper usage were found to be not just striking, but also statistically significant between Jewish and Christian books. These conclusions are stronger in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries because of the far larger number of extant manuscripts to compare, which allowed for significance testing to be performed and concrete conclusions to be drawn. Additionally, while geography does not impact the use of paper in Christian books, it does seem to be a factor in Jewish books, with texts originating in the Iberian Peninsula being significantly more likely to use paper in their construction than those created in Italy. The accuracy of these findings was found to be reliable when compared to the data gleaned from SfarData.

Admittedly, a larger sample size would be preferable. This could be accomplished by 1) more instances of institutions including their manuscripts in online, searchable formats; 2) more consistency in recording both geographic origin and material support; and 3) increased resources in the form of time, training, and/or more people to comb through the data that is out there.

Future research will need to contend with these issues if it wishes to address this research question in a more meaningful way, using a sample size larger than the 2,497 used in this survey.

If SfarData is the gold standard as regards scope, accuracy, and level of detail, it is undoubtedly

102 Judah ibn Tibbon, Musar Av, 1190, 19a-b. quoted in Pearce, “‘Examine Your Hebrew Books Monthly and Arabic Books Bimonthly’: Autobiography and Bibliography in the Islamic West,” 59.

48 due to the remarkable amount of time, energy, and expertise that has been dedicated to the project. Hopefully other digital projects such as the SDBM will continue to grow and refine their data, making it a more reliable source for this type of research. Continued interest and research projects such as the one conducted here will no doubt fuel the continued efforts of those engaged in these digital databases.

Appendix A

Glossary of Papermaking Terms

Chain & Laid Lines: Faint vertical and horizontal lines across a sheet of paper that are more readily visible when held up to a light source. The lines are areas of the paper that are slightly thinner than the rest of the page due to the displacement of pulp around the wires in the paper mold.

Couching: A step of the European papermaking process during which freshly made sheets of paper are taken directly from the mold and placed on a sheet of felt to dry, imparting a smoother finish.

(Paper) Mold: A structure consisting of a screen and wooden frame that is dipped into a pulp slurry. The mold is repeatedly shaken and maneuvered to evenly distribute the pulp to the desired thickness. At this point, excess water is drained, and the fresh sheet of paper is removed and allowed to fully dry.

Pulp: Clumps of fibers, usually cloth or wood in origin, that are added to water to make the slurry for papermaking.

Sizing: The process that traditionally consists of dipping raw paper in into dilute adhesive solution known as a size, to control the absorbability agent to control the absorbability of the paper. Unsized paper is highly absorbent and ink will feather out or bleed on the page. Overly sized paper does not allow for any absorption and ink would sit on top of the size and be easily smeared and wiped away.

Stampers: Large, heavy hammers that are mechanized using the energy captured by a water wheel to break apart cloth rags into clumps of fibers. The stampers can be fitted with different heads to more efficiently beat, shred, and grind rags.

Watermark: Faint design on a sheet of paper that is made by sewing a piece of wire onto the supporting wires of a paper mold. The wire displaces pulp resulting in the paper being slightly thinner wherever there was wire, making it more transparent when viewed against a light source.

Appendix B

Tables and Figures

c. 900 c. 1100

c. 1150 c. 1300

Figs. 1-4: The maps above roughly show the territorial division of the Iberian Peninsula during the 9th through 13th centuries. Areas above the line were ruled by Christian Kings and below the line were under Muslim rule. The blue marker shows Xàtiva, the site of the first known paper mill in Spain and a major producer of paper in the Middle Ages.

Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.41% 0.00% 7.51% 22.78% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 24.21% 36.15% Iberia Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.29% 7.76% 25.73% Jewish 75.00% 41.67% 35.96% 61.00% Italy 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1.89% 0.52% 3.06% 19.11% 35.93% Jewish 0.00% 0.00% 25.00% 23.08% 31.19% Iberia Christian 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 5.26% 12.07% 26.21% 38.69% Jewish 18.18% 16.67% 33.85% 50.00% Jewish 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th Italy 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3.92% 13.33% 36.55% Iberia 33.33% 40.00% 13.51% 47.13% 69.33% Table 5: Percentage of books using paper as a material support by century, culture and geographic region. Blue rows represent the data collected from individual catalogs, green from the SDBM, and yellow from SfarData.

and geographic region. geographic and

: Number of books using paper as a material support by century, culture century, by support a material as paper using of books :Number

s. Fig

95% Confidence Place Culture Century Parchment Paper Mix P Value Significant? Interval Iberia Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 10th century 3 0 0 Iberia Jewish 11th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 11th century 7 0 0 Iberia Jewish 12th century 1 3 0 N/A Iberia Christian 12th century 4 0 0 Iberia Jewish 13th century 7 5 0 N/A Iberia Christian 13th century 213 0 5 Iberia Jewish 14th century 57 22 10 [0.1780, 0.3858] 0 Yes Iberia Christian 14th century 297 3 22 Iberia Jewish 15th century 39 48 13 [0.2453, 0.4600] 0 Yes Iberia Christian 15th century 228 9 70 TOTAL 856 90 120 Italy Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 6th century 3 0 0 Italy Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 7th century 2 0 0 Italy Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 8th century 4 0 0 Italy Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 9th century 12 0 0 Italy Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 10th century 12 0 0 Italy Jewish 11th century 6 0 0

Italy Christian 11th century 46 0 0 Italy Jewish 12th century 3 0 0 N/A Italy Christian 12th century 70 0 1 Italy Jewish 13th century 19 0 0

Italy Christian 13th century 44 0 0 Italy Jewish 14th century 72 14 9 [0.0739, 0.2601] 0 Yes Italy Christian 14th century 197 9 7 Italy Jewish 15th century 166 74 20 [0.0670, 0.2006] 0 Yes Italy Christian 15th century 495 122 24 TOTAL 1151 219 61 Table 7: Data compiled from individual catalogs shown in actual numbers. Cultures for each century and region are analyzed using a 95% confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of the difference between cultures. N/A means the data does not meet condition requirements for being normal (n*p̂ ≥10; n(1-p̂ )≥10).

No No

Yes

Significant? Significant?

0.082

0.3168

0.9145

P Value P

N/A

Interval

[0.1364,0.3605]

[-0.0291,0.0883]

[-0.0434,0.0484]

[-0.0143,0.2492]

95%Confidence

Mix

219

122

. Geographic Geographic .

Paper

495

166

197

1151

)

Parchment

≥

)

oes not meet condition requirements requirements condition meet oesnot

; n( ;

Century

15thcentury

14thcentury

13thcentury

12thcentury

11thcentury

10thcentury

9th century 9th

8th century 8th

7th century 7th

6th century 6th

≥

Culture

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

mal (n* mal

Place

TOTAL

Italy

120

Mix

rom individual catalogs shown in actual numbers in actual shown individual catalogs rom

for being nor forbeing

Paper

856

228

297

213

: Data compiled f compiled :Data

Parchment

Table

regions are analyzed using a 95% confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of significance inferred and value, P interval, confidence 95% a using analyzed are regions

the difference between peninsulas. N/A means the data d thedata means N/A peninsulas. between thedifference

Century

15thcentury

14thcentury

13thcentury

12thcentury

11thcentury

10thcentury

9th century 9th

8th century 8th

7th century 7th

6th century 6th

Culture

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Christian

Jewish

Place

TOTAL

Iberia

Iberia Iberia

95% Confidence Place Culture Century Parchment Paper Mix P Value Significant? Interval Iberia Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 7th century 4 0 0 Iberia Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 10th century 4 0 0 Iberia Jewish 11th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 11th century 7 0 0 Iberia Jewish 12th century 9 2 0 N/A Iberia Christian 12th century 36 2 0 Iberia Jewish 13th century 15 3 0 N/A Iberia Christian 13th century 51 7 0 Iberia Jewish 14th century 43 21 1 [-0.0642, 0.2069] 0.2913 No Iberia Christian 14th century 107 39 0 Iberia Jewish 15th century 36 36 0 [-0.0147, 0.2409] 0.079 No Iberia Christian 15th century 187 118 0 TOTAL 499 228 1 Italy Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 8th century 5 0 0 Italy Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 9th century 10 0 0 Italy Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 10th century 25 0 0 Italy Jewish 11th century 2 0 0 N/A Italy Christian 11th century 52 1 0 Italy Jewish 12th century 3 0 0 N/A Italy Christian 12th century 193 1 0 Italy Jewish 13th century 12 4 0 N/A Italy Christian 13th century 348 11 0 Italy Jewish 14th century 30 9 0 N/A Italy Christian 14th century 1232 291 0 Italy Jewish 15th century 75 34 0 [-0.1352, 0.0405] 0.092 No Italy Christian 15th century 3723 2088 0 TOTAL 5710 2439 0

Table 9: Data compiled from the SDBM shown in actual numbers. Cultures for each century and region are analyzed using a 95% confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of the difference between cultures. N/A means the data does not meet condition requirements for being normal (n*p̂ ≥10; n(1- p̂ )≥10).

95% Confidence Place Culture Century Parchment Paper Mix Place Culture Century Parchment Paper Mix P-Value Significant? Interval Iberia Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 7th century 4 0 0 Iberia Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 10th century 3 0 0 Iberia Christian 10th century 4 0 0 Iberia Jewish 11th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 11th century 0 0 0 Iberia Christian 11th century 7 0 0 Iberia Christian 11th century 7 0 0 Iberia Jewish 12th century 1 3 0 Iberia Jewish 12th century 9 2 0 N/A Iberia Christian 12th century 4 0 0 Iberia Christian 12th century 36 2 0 N/A Iberia Jewish 13th century 7 5 0 Iberia Jewish 13th century 15 3 0 N/A Iberia Christian 13th century 213 0 5 Iberia Christian 13th century 51 7 0 N/A Iberia Jewish 14th century 57 22 10 Iberia Jewish 14th century 43 21 1 [-0.1311, 0.1733] 0.7865 No Iberia Christian 14th century 297 3 22 Iberia Christian 14th century 107 39 0 [-0.2670, -0.1120] 0 Yes Iberia Jewish 15th century 39 48 13 Iberia Jewish 15th century 36 36 0 [-0.0399, 0.2599] 0.1512 No Iberia Christian 15th century 228 9 70 Iberia Christian 15th century 187 118 0 [-0.2029, -0.0562] 0.0006 Yes TOTAL 856 90 120 TOTAL 499 228 1 Italy Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 6th century 3 0 0 Italy Christian 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 7th century 2 0 0 Italy Christian 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 8th century 4 0 0 Italy Christian 8th century 5 0 0 Italy Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 9th century 12 0 0 Italy Christian 9th century 10 0 0 Italy Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Italy Christian 10th century 12 0 0 Italy Christian 10th century 25 0 0 Italy Jewish 11th century 6 0 0 Italy Jewish 11th century 2 0 0 N/A Italy Christian 11th century 46 0 0 Italy Christian 11th century 52 1 0 N/A Italy Jewish 12th century 3 0 0 Italy Jewish 12th century 3 0 0 N/A Italy Christian 12th century 70 0 1 Italy Christian 12th century 193 1 0 N/A Italy Jewish 13th century 19 0 0 Italy Jewish 13th century 12 4 0 N/A Italy Christian 13th century 44 0 0 Italy Christian 13th century 348 11 0 N/A Italy Jewish 14th century 72 14 9 Italy Jewish 14th century 30 9 0 N/A Italy Christian 14th century 197 9 7 Italy Christian 14th century 1232 291 0 [-0.1565, -0.0754] 0 Yes Italy Jewish 15th century 166 74 20 Italy Jewish 15th century 75 34 0 [0.1088, 0.2321] 0 Yes Italy Christian 15th century 495 122 24 Italy Christian 15th century 3723 2088 0 [-0.1663, -0.0968] 0 Yes TOTAL 1151 219 61 TOTAL 5710 2439 0

Table 10: Data compiled from the SDBM (green) compared to individual catalogs (blue) shown in actual numbers with a 95% confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of the difference between cultures. N/A means the data does not meet condition requirements for being normal (n*p̂ ≥10; n(1- p̂ )≥10).

Place Culture Century Parchment Paper Mix Iberia Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Jewish 11th century 4 2 0 Iberia Jewish 12th century 3 2 0 Iberia Jewish 13th century 32 2 3 Iberia Jewish 14th century 46 32 9 Iberia Jewish 15th century 50 107 6 TOTAL 135 145 18

Italy Jewish 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Jewish 10th century 1 0 0 Italy Jewish 11th century 14 0 0 Italy Jewish 12th century 3 0 0 Italy Jewish 13th century 49 2 0 Italy Jewish 14th century 143 16 6 Italy Jewish 15th century 243 116 24 TOTAL 453 134 30 Table 11: Data compiled from SfarData shown in actual numbers.

95% Confidence Place Source Century Parchment Paper Mix P Value Significant? Interval Iberia Individual 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia SfarData 6th century 0 0 0 Iberia Individual 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia SfarData 7th century 0 0 0 Iberia Individual 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia SfarData 8th century 0 0 0 Iberia Individual 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia SfarData 9th century 0 0 0 Iberia Individual 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia SfarData 10th century 0 0 0 Iberia Individual 11th century 0 0 0 N/A Iberia SfarData 11th century 4 2 0 Iberia Individual 12th century 1 3 0 N/A Iberia SfarData 12th century 3 2 0 Iberia Individual 13th century 7 5 0 N/A Iberia SfarData 13th century 32 2 3 Iberia Individual 14th century 57 22 10 [-0.2564, 0.0330] 0.1326 No Iberia SfarData 14th century 46 32 9 Iberia Individual 15th century 39 48 13 [-0.2022, 0.0357] 0.166 No Iberia SfarData 15th century 50 107 6 TOTAL 856 90 120 Italy Individual 6th century 0 0 0 Italy SfarData 6th century 0 0 0 Italy Individual 7th century 0 0 0 Italy SfarData 7th century 0 0 0 Italy Individual 8th century 0 0 0 Italy SfarData 8th century 0 0 0 Italy Individual 9th century 0 0 0 Italy SfarData 9th century 0 0 0 Italy Individual 10th century 0 0 0 Italy SfarData 10th century 1 0 0 Italy Individual 11th century 6 0 0

Italy SfarData 11th century 14 0 0 Italy Individual 12th century 3 0 0 N/A Italy SfarData 12th century 3 0 0 Italy Individual 13th century 19 0 0 N/A Italy SfarData 13th century 49 2 0 Italy Individual 14th century 72 14 9 [0.0082, 0.2093] 0.0256 Yes Italy SfarData 14th century 143 16 6 Italy Individual 15th century 166 74 20 [-0.0797, 0.0717] 0.9177 No Italy SfarData 15th century 243 116 24 TOTAL 1151 219 61 Table 12: Data on Jewish texts compiled from individual catalogs and SfarData shown in actual numbers by century and geographic region. Includes 95% confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of the difference between the two catalogs. Blue rows represent the data collected from individual catalogs and yellow from SfarData. N/A means the data does not meet condition requirements for being normal (n*p̂ ≥10; n(1-p̂ )≥10).

Yes

Significant? Significant?

P Value P

95% 95%

N/A

Interval

[0.2421,0.4134]

[0.2209,0.4549]

95% Confidence

Mix

134

116

Paper

≥10)

)

453

243

143

shown in actual numbers with numbers actual in shown

n(1

≥10; ≥10;

not meet condition requirements for being normal normal being for requirements condition notmeet

Parchment

SfarData

oes

(n*

Place

TOTAL

Italy

Mix

145

107

: Data compiled from from compiled :Data

Paper

135

Table

confidence interval, P value, and inferred significance of the difference between between difference ofthe significance inferred and value, P interval, confidence

peninsulas. N/A means the data d data the means N/A peninsulas.

Parchment

Place

Iberia

Century

TOTAL

15th century 15th

14th century 14th

13th century 13th

12th century 12th

11th century 11th

10th century 10th

9th century 9th

8th century 8th

7th century 7th 6th century 6th

Bibliography

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Additional Works Referenced

Buringh, Eltjo, Jan Luiten, and Van Zanden. “Charting the ‘Rise of the West’: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 409–45.

Gutwirth, E., and M. A. M. Dolader. “Twenty-Six Jewish Libraries from Fifteenth-Century Spain.” The Library s6-XVIII, no. 1 (January 1, 1996): 27–53. https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s6-XVIII.1.27.

Harris, Neil. “Dillying and Dallying with Watermarks | Institut d’histoire Du Livre.” l’Ecole de l’Institut d’histoire du livre, 2017. http://ihl.enssib.fr/en/paper-and-watermarks-as- bibliographical-evidence/dillying-and-dallying-with-watermarks.

Hubbe, Martin A., and Cindy Bowden. “Handmade Paper: A Review of Its History, Craft, and Science.” BioResources 4, no. 4 (November 1, 2009): 1736–92. https://doi.org/10.15376/biores.4.4.1736-1792.

Meyerson, Mark D., and Edward D. English. Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain Interaction and Cultural Change. Paw Prints, 2016.

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Valls i Subirà, Oriol. Paper and Watermarks in Catalonia. Edited by J. S. G. Simmons. Amsterdam: Paper Publications Society (Labarre Foundation), 1970.

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