Correcting the text

How does someone amend the text once it’s already neatly formed in the text block? Early medieval author portraits show that the scribe wrote with a pen in one hand and a knife in the other. The knife was for sharpening the quill, but also for scraping out errors. If the scribe caught an error immediately, he could scrape it out and write over the now-velvety and slightly weakened parchment. If he caught the error after one or more lines of text were already inscribed, he could “expunctuate” it, that is, make little dots under a wrong word, signaling the reader to ignore it. An example is a child’s ABC, written in the Southern Netherlands in the fifteenth century in silver and gold

letters on stained parchment, in which the repeated words “adveniat regnum” have been expunctuated with gold dots (New York, Columbia University, Plimpton Ms. 287; fig. 36).1 _{In the Bruges book of hours,}

made for English export explored above (Cambridge, UL, Ms. Ii.6.2), the English owner found an error in the manuscript and must have taken the book to a professional copyist to have the problem rectified (fig. 37).2

The English scribe has scraped out the offending passage but then has reinscribed the ruling in the erased section using bright red, and then used a dark brown ink to write the correct words. The scribe probably did this without taking the book apart.

Fig. 38 Folio in a breviary made by the convent of St. Agnes in Delft revealing text painted out and corrected. Delft, Prinsenhof, no number. Image © Author, CC BY 4.0.

A little-known way of correcting the text was to use the medieval version of typewriter correction fluid. A manuscript probably made at the convent of St. Agnes in Delft on very fine parchment has employed this

1 Folio of a child’s ABC, with expunctuation, made in the Southern Netherlands, ca. 1450–1500. New York, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton Ms. 287, fol. 1r. http://vm133.lib.berkeley.edu:8080/xtf22/search?rmode=d igscript;smode=basic;text=plimpton 287;docsPerPage=1;startDoc=1;fullview=yes 2 Writing over an erasure. Cambridge, University Library, Ms. Ii.6.2, fol. 93r. http://

technique (fig. 38). The parchment here is so thin that it would not have withstood scraping with a knife, which may explain why the copyist chose instead to cover over her errors with a layer of white. Using this method indicates that the scribe had access to thick, lead-based white paint of the sort used by illuminators. In the period after 1400, this method was employed seldom because scribes were writing in ateliers in which there was no paint. Paint was kept in painters’ ateliers instead. (The Augustinian convent of St. Agnes in Delft, whose sisters both wrote and illuminated manuscripts, was an exception and therefore had white paint on hand.)

Occasionally, to cover large errors, a scribe would paste over a sheet of paper or parchment with the new, corrected text, in the way that the Soviet government did to get rid of Beria and add the Bering Strait. This involved introducing small amounts of new material. This solution to correction appears in a prayerbook now at Columbia University (Columbia RBML, Ms. X096.C286; fig. 39).3 _{This book has been pieced}

together from dozens of dismembered “parent” manuscripts and some printed fragments. The owner has built the first folio out of two columns of text pasted to a parchment page (so that the verso is not visible). Not only is the text glued to the page, but the decorated initials, which were cut out of different manuscripts, have been pasted down on top, to create a page that is several layers thick.4 _{In addition to these layers, the}

book’s user has pasted a correction to the text in the second column. This approach to correcting an error is consistent with the user’s approach toward illuminating the book: this person in fact glued in decoration as well, using an extra strip of parchment for a small correction was an extension of the same thinking.

3 For a full manuscript description, search the Digital Scriptorium (http://bancroft. berkeley.edu/digitalscriptorium/basicsearch.html) with the term “X096.C286.” Consulted 25 May 2016. Folio with decoration and a correction glued on. New York, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, X 096.C286, fol. 1r. http://vm133.lib.berkeley.edu:8080/xtf22/search?rmode=digscript;smode=basic;tex t=X096.C286;docsPerPage=1;startDoc=1;fullview=yes

4 Likewise, Cambridge, Trinity College, Ms. O.4.16, an English Psalter made ca. 1250–1275, includes pasted-in decorations cut out of other manuscripts. See Paul Binski, “The Illumination and Patronage of the Douce Apocalypse,” The Antiquaries Journal 94 (2014), pp. 1–8, n. 13.

A similar solution also appears in a booklet made with prints, now disassembled and housed in the British Museum. Each folio of the booklet consists of a printed engraved image on the recto, which has then been highly decorated with multiple colors (fig. 40).5 _{Each sheet’s}

verso contains densely written prayer text, written in a West Flemish dialect of Middle Dutch (fig. 41).6 _{Fitting the long text into the small}

area of the back of the print gave the scribe tremendous difficulty. When she made an error, she was in trouble. Because this was paper not parchment she could not scrape out the error. Often a scribe would add a missing piece of text to the margin and signal its correct position by placing a carat in the text, but she had no room at the bottom to do so. The solution was to clip a small piece of paper onto the error and inscribe the correct text on top. This has been done in a different hand, similar to the first (which suggests a corporate similarity, an adherence to an impersonal style typical of female convents), but slightly less slanted. Thus, the corrector was using a solution that anticipates the fiasco around the Soviet encyclopedia by 500 years.