The Manuscript Book

This work has been conceived by the author as an enlarged version of the original volume Il libro manoscritto: Introduzione alla codicologia, already published in this series (n 124). At a time when the breaking down of political and ideological barriers has become an urgent necessity, investigating the science of the book before Gutenberg, i.e., Codicology, considered by the author in its entirety - the history of the ancient and medieval book and the relative manufacturing techniques up to its modern-day place of conservation, and the history of studies undertaken - goes beyond the confines of Greek and Latin civilisations of the western academic tradition. In an attempt at comparative methodology, allowing an improved reading of many artisanal book production phenomena, where possible, those cultures which have come into contact with our own are presented; from East to West, above all Byzantium, the age-old, multi-ethnic empire which gathered and salvaged both Roman and Greek civilisations, an inheritance which it enhanced with cultural and linguistic practices, as well as book and artistic techniques from a diversity of backgrounds.
About the Author: Maria Luisa Agati Was professor of Codicology at The University of Rome II. She has specialised in Byzantine studies and her interests span book culture of the Greek Middles Ages, and the material structure of the book. Among her many contributions, ranging from questions conceming the ninth and tenth centuries, to the connections between handwritten and printed letters in the sixteenth century: the monographs dedicated to "bouletee" minuscule (Vatican City, 1992) and to Giovanni Onorio da Maglie, Greek scribe (1535-1563) (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 2001), the identification and study of amanuenses like Pietro Devaris (mainly in The Greek Script in the 15th and 16th centuries, Athina 2000) or Daniel monk of Mount Athos (Scriptorium 2013) and others, and the Catalogo dei manoscritti greci della biblioteca dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma 2007). Her research activity at the moment concems the oriental Greek manuscript in the fourth and and fifteenth centuries.