Techniques of reading and learning

Heavily of lightly glossed

On the page, a wealth of notes can be added, but also just a few. This can even vary per page: in the same manuscript, one page is completely filled, while the other is empty. Typically, the first (few) pages are heavily annotated, but this activity then dies out quickly. An example is found in this manuscript: Paris, BnF, Lat. 2788, which contains a copy of Aristotle’s Categories (in Boethius’ translation). The manuscript was made in Fleury around the year 1000. At the opening of the text, on fol. 49r, long notes are added, but there are less, already, on fol. 50v and the margins of fol. 52r are virtually empty.

What do the notes do?

In modern information theory, good information management strives for four goals, i.e. the four s’s of information management: store, sort, select and summarize information. In medieval manuscripts, these four s’s are also happening in the margins. The notes are there, generally speaking, to help the reader, and storing, sorting, selecting and summarizing are important strategies to help him/her process the material. 

In manuscripts, we can thus distinguish multiple functions of marginal notes and various techniques to manage information. The list of functions and techniques is long. Here we illustrate six general examples:

(1) the glosses and notes call attention to certain things,

(2) summarize and highlight the structure of the text,

(3) explain and expand,

(4) refer to different authorities and compare,

(5) visualize material in lists, diagrams and schemes,

(6) give the reader some guidance in how to interpret certain things.

1. Attention please!

For calling attention to certain things in the tekst, multiple kinds of signs were used: nota signs, asterisks, pointing fingers (maniculae), pointing faces, etcetera. In our manuscript portraits we find many examples, for example in Leiden, UB, BPL 25; Leiden, UB, BPL 144; Paris, BnF, 11127; and Paris, BnF, Lat. 17806.

2. Summarize and structure

It is clear that readers were keen on summarizing the text and structuring it, so that they could store key parts in their memory and so that they could re-find things in books they were consulting. Keywords, or marginal indices, and notes relating to the structure of the text were used to achieve these things. Examples are found in Paris, BnF, Lat. 11127 and Leiden, UB, BPL 25.

3. Explain and expand

The main function of commentary and notes probably is to explain the content of the main text, so that it makes sense to the student or reader. A technique that was often used to explain was to expand: to include new information that was perhaps already known from other contexts, and make the connection. Examples abound in the manuscript portraits presented here, e.g. in Leiden, UB, BPL 88, or in the Paris manuscripts BnF, Lat. 7900A and Lat. 12949, where slips are added into the binding to add more relevant material.

4. Comparison

The technique of expanding texts by connecting them to others automatically also brought in another technique: that of comparison. In one book, it was pointed out, the technical term for something could be x, while in another it could be y or z. In one book, a certain concept could be divided up into x sub-divisions, in another it could be a different number. Examples are found in Leiden, UB, VLF 48 and Leiden, UB, BPL 88. In Leiden, UB, VLF 48, f. 92v, for example, diagrams are added that visualize how the planets travel through the cosmos on their orbits according to three different authorities: Martianus, Platonists and Pythagoreans.

5. Visualize in diagrams and schemes

The technique of visualizing material in order to make it memorable, to clarify the structure and to make a summary of all the text’s components is very common in almost all of the manuscripts we portray here. Diagrams and schemes are explored more fully here, but examples abound in: Leiden, UB, VLF 48; Leiden, UB, BPL 25; Leiden, UB, BPL 84; Leiden, UB, GRO 22; Leiden, UB, VLQ 103; Paris, BnF, Lat. 17806 and Paris, BnF, Lat. 12949.

Sources used for this contribution:

• Mariken Teeuwen and Irene van Renswoude (eds.), The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages. Practices of Reading and Writing, Brepols, 2017 (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 38)
• Mariken Teeuwen, “Voices from the Edge: Annotating Books in the Carolingian Period”, in The Annotated Book, 13-36
• James E.G. Zetzel, Marginal Scholarship and Textual deviance. The ‘Commentum Cornuti’ and the Early Scholia on Persius, London, 2005 (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement, 84)
• Louis Holtz, “Le rôle des commentaires d’auteurs classiques dans l’émergence d’une mise en page associant texte et commentaire”, in Le commentaire entre tradition et innovation, Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (ed.), Vrin, 2000, 101-117