THE MANUSCRIPT IN PRINT

KNOWING PALEOGRAPHY TO UNDERSTAND PROVENANCE MARKS

Abstract

The present article presents an innovative approach demonstrating that manuscripts can also serve as an object of study for the understating of provenance marks. We carried out a material bibliography of two manuscripts belonging to the São Bento Monastery in Bahia: a) A 17th-century copy of the work Fusce iudicia Duns Scotus, authored by Friar Nicolau de Orbellis, presents ex libris manuscript by Friar Benedicti de Jesu; b) The work Don Severini Boethii viri illvstris de consolatione philosophiae libri quinque, luculentissimis Iohannis Murmelii, by Rodolphi Agricolae, printed in Cologne, in the workshop of Eucharii Ceruicorni. The publication is dated 1535, and the copy has at least six potential indications of ownership written on the inside cover, the title page and the back cover. The presence of marginalia and ex-libris was found in both manuscripts analyzed, but the second manuscript had the differential of having an ownership stamp. We conclude that the interface between Paleography and Librarianship, as they are disciplines that investigate writing, text and books, has proved necessary to the understanding of the history of an analyzed copy and work. It is possible to tell part of the story of how a work circulated in different times and how a copy was read by different hands, by means of which strategies of griping, of registration of possession, of material gestures of appropriation that make the history of reading and writing complex in the observed context.