[Artemisia] Re: Scribal Errors...

[Julia Jackman-Brink]

Dree Eno wrote:

> And ask anyone in the
> scribes guilds what it takes to make a scroll and how exacting the scribes
> were in the middle ages.  

I have to politely disagree with this very broad statement. I am not 
going to touch the religious content debate, as it's not appropriate 
here. But I can touch on the scribal aspect, and I am certain others 
here can as well.

There are extant manuscripts from secular and religious orders of many 
countries, that have "exact scribal duplication" as you put 
it...complete with reused text, duplication of previous errors, 
translation and transliteration errors, additions, contractions, 
deletions and even marginalia and commentary from the actual scribe 
producing the work in question.

To say that scribes were perfect and exacting is nice in theory, but in 
real life, it didn't happen. Humans make mistakes, and even perpetuate 
mistakes when not corrected. The Vatican has recently released some 
wonderful examples of "goofs and textual errors" in their religious 
manuscript collection. The V&A in London also has some great examples. 
All one has to do is do a basic search or look up "scribal errors" in 
any manuscript art, palyography or orthography text. Here is a simple 
example, but works as an illustration:

http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/tools/errors.htm

Something to think about these aspects when making a broad statement 
like "this is the way one has always done X, Y or Z", it may be so, but 
again, it may not.  One only has to look at modern bookprinting to see 
that errors occur. I sent an Icelandic Manuscript text back to DBBC 
because the first 20 pages was repeated 5 times before the rest of the 
book came along and then I noticed the pictures were mixed up from the 
ID's.  DBBC recalled all of them and reprinted the book with the 
corrections.

Errors happen...and not all of them are caught.

HE Juliana