Читать книгу A Catalogue of Manuscripts Known to Contain Old English Dry-Point Glosses - Dieter Studer-Joho - Страница 11

The notion of hand-writing taking place without a colouring agent in the MS context would seem foreign from a modern perspective. While it is possible to apply dry-point writing to present-day paper, it is not a form of writing that we are accustomed to. Hence, most people will not take notice of dry-point writing on a piece of paper, unless it is pointed out to them explicitly. As a consequence, it is not readily clear to the modern mind why writing should take place without any pigment left behind on the page. Non-colouring writing implements have seen a revival ever since hand-held personal digital assistants started to be furnished regularly with plastic-tipped styli in the late 1990s. However, those styli were never intended to be used on paper. It can be assumed that the presence of the styli in the office world may have led to the spontaneous creation of such writing, and especially doodles, in isolated cases, but I am not familiar with any reported systematic use of non-colouring writing in the present era. In that respect, the medieval situation was markedly different. Bischoff (BMS 1: 88) points out that the medieval stylus had similar functions as today’s pencil: it was used for taking notes by professionals and students alike, it was used for ruling the MS page and it was used by illuminators to make first draughts on the MS page. The main writing medium of the stylus, however, was not parchment, but wax.

Wax tabletswax tablets were one of the many cultural imports introduced to Britain after the Roman invasion in the 1^st c. AD, and extant Romano-British wax tablets have been found in more than twenty archaeological sites throughout Britain so far, despite the fact that their organic material could only endure in favourable, i.e. water-logged, conditions.1 Some of these finds are of remarkable size, such as those from Vindolanda, a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall,Vindolanda where fragmentary and completely intact specimens of more than 1,400 writing tablets have been unearthed since the 1970s. Editions of the remaining legible text of more than 750 of these tablets have been published since the early 1980s (cf. most recently in Bowman et al. 2010). There is no archaeological evidence that the writing tablet continued to be in use after the Romans withdrew from Great Britain in the 5^th c., although the notion seems likely. Certainly after the re-establishment of Christianity in Great Britain, both from Ireland and the Continent, in the late 6^th c., stylus and wax tablets must have been household items again, at least in the monastic context. The Rule of St Benedict, for instance, while condemning the personal possession of styli and wax-tablets (Ch. 33), places the abbots under the obligation to provide their brethren with stylus and wax-tablet (Ch. 55) – “ut omnis auferatur necessitatis excusatio” – that is in order to keep the monks from claiming that they were not able to do God’s service for lack of appropriate tools. It is reasonable to assume then that most monks, even those who did not adhere to Benedict’s Rule, either had styli on them at all times or did not have to look far to get hold of a stylus. The presence of styli in the scriptoria is also well-established by their manifest use in the process of preparing the MS page for later writing, and the details of pricking and ruling (commonly in dry-point) are usually studied with great care by codicologists.

The active use of the stylus must have been familiar to all literate members of an Anglo-Saxon monastic institution, as their first writing lessons were confined to the use of the writing tablet during their trivium studies (cf. Savage 2006 [1911]: 63–64; Brown 1994; Brown 2008: 179). The use of stylus and wax tablet is well documented in Anglo-Saxon and early Irish literature, too (cf. Wattenbach 1896: 51–89 and Fisher 1921: 194). ALDHELMAldhelmRiddle 32, for instance, composed a riddlic poem on the wax tablet around AD 700, from which we can gather the interesting information that the tablets were commonly bound in leather.2 The “Benedictional of St Æthelwold”, London, British Library Additional 49598London, British LibraryAdditional 49598 [G:301], written in the late 10^th c., features a miniature of Zechariah writing in a large wax tablet using a stylus (cf. Brown 1994: 9 [Fig. 6]).3 And from Anselm’s (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 until 1100) biographer EADMER, we know that it was Anselm’s custom to compose his treatises on wax tablets before they were committed to parchment (cf. Southern 1962: 30–31; Clanchy 1993: 119).

Archaeological finds from the Anglo-Saxon period attesting to the use of wax tablet and stylus are also numerous.4styliSpringmount Bog TabletsMaghera Bog Tablet Styli, ranging in material from bone to silver, have been found in various archaeological contexts.5 From the site of the former priory at BlythburghBlythburgh in Suffolk, a fragment of a writing-tablet made from bone is preserved in the British Museum, dated to sec. viii. While the wax has perished, both the upper surface and the surface of the recess that contained the wax show runic lettersrunes see dry-point runes, which are set in irregular rows. They are assumed to be “trial letter forms not intended to make much sense”, perhaps added by a person “attempting Latin verbal forms” (Webster & Backhouse 1991: 81 [no. 57]). The 14^th-c. York TabletsYork Tablets (cf. Brown 1994), featuring both L. and ME writing in anglicana cursive, on the other hand, provide an example of physical evidence for the continued use of the wax tablet in the later phases of the Middle Ages.6

We find a very detailed 11^th-c. French description of a wax tablet by BALDRICUS OF BOURGEUIL (edited in Mabillon 1709: 51),Baldricus of Bourgeuil in which the wax tablet is said to accommodate about eight hexameters – with the wax tablet held in landscape orientation. The French author emphasizes the fact that his wax tablet features green wax, as opposed to black wax, to help his eyes. From this description Todd (1846: 10) concludes that black must have been the common colour of the wax.7 What we can also conclude from BALDRICUS’s description, however, is that notes written on a wax tablet were not generally considered easy to read. A few simple experiments I made with a modern-day replica of a Roman wax tablet could confirm the crucial role that light plays with regards to the legibility of the wax grooves.8 The stylus does not leave easily visible traces in the dark wax, and Brown (1994: 1) describes her reading of the York Tablets as relying on “a battery of photographs taken under every conceivable angle of raking light.” There is an interesting parallel to dry-point writing in that respect and the training acquired during the many years of experience learning to write on wax tablets and, perhaps more importantly, learning to read from wax tablets may well have schooled the medieval eye to cope more easily with dry-point writing in MSS.

There is evidence that the use of stylus and wax tablet continued to be widespread until early modern times both in the British Isles and on the European mainland. In France, for instance, wax tablets remained in active use at the fish market of Rouen until ca. 1862 (cf. Büll 1977: 786 and 845 [Ill. 619 and Ill. 620]).