Codicology

Article summary

(book) Codicology ( ; from French codicologie; from Latin , genitive , "notebook, book" and Greek , -logia) or manuscriptology (Indian English) is the study of codices or manuscript books. It is often referred to as "the archaeology of the book," a term coined by François Masai. It concerns itself with the materials, tools and techniques used to make codices, along with their features. The demarcation of codicology is not clear-cut. Some view codicology as a discipline complete in itself, while others see it as auxiliary to textual criticism analysis and transmission, which is studied by philology. Codicologists may also study the history of libraries, manuscript collecting, book cataloguing, and scribes, which otherwise belongs to the history of the book. Some codicologists say that their field encompasses palaeography, the study of handwriting, while some palaeographers say that their field encompasses codicology. The study of written features such as marginalia, glosses, ownership inscriptions, etc. falls in both camps, as does the study of the physical aspects of decoration, which otherwise belongs to art history. Unlike traditional palaeography, codicology places more emphasis on the cultural aspect of books.…

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