Columbia Rare Books Library Visit

Due to the enormity of the publishing world, and the highest literacy rates the world has even seen, books are generally taken for granted by society. On Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 the Language and Literacy department of City College organized a trip for students from the course, Theories and Models of Literacy, to visit the ancient collection of rare books and texts at Columbia University in order to learn about these ancient artifacts. Likewise, this foray reminded us that comprehension and dissemination of written communication was not always so singular and universal. It was fascinating to visit the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML) and learn about ancient books and manuscript production techniques that spanned many centuries. Humans have communicated with each other via inscribing words, symbols and drawings on different materials. An article from Encyclopedia Britannica explicates further: Ancient and medieval literacy, for instance, was restricted to a very select few. Moreover, it was first employed primarily for record keeping. Written communication did not immediately displace oral tradition as the chief mode of communication. Conversely, production of written texts in contemporary society is widespread and integrally depends on broad general literacy, widely distributed printed materials, and mass readership. I found the workmanship of monks and scribes very intriguing; especially how they used parched animal skins as writing material. We learned that vellum, or parchment scrolls, were actually made of calfskin. Additionally, both sides of an animal’s skin were used to write on, though sometimes one side would be too coarse to effectively utilize. If scroll format was used, the written information would only be displayed on the outside of the scroll. These factoids made me wonder how expensive it would be, back then, to create such a delicate and difficult to produce product. Also, it was fascinating to learn about oak galls, which were used on manuscripts from Northern Europe. Oak galls are where the black, lasting ink of many manuscripts came from. This permanency was possible since oak trees produce a swelling to protect themselves from gnat parasites. Furthermore, when boiled, these galls produce a viscous black substance that could then be used as a key ingredient in the ink. In the 12th and 13th centuries, colors and decorative illustrations were introduced within texts. One of the methods used to differentiate older manuscripts from newer ones is to analyze if a manuscript has longer lines, columns, and the evenly spaced-out words. These traits are indicative of newer manuscripts. Conversely, early manuscripts contained writing which was bunched together without decipherable spaces between words. Additionally, medieval books did not have titles. Professor Dutschke introduced a Psalter Bifolium which was affixed to the beginnings of Psalms from the Bible. Thus, the Bifolium could be used as a reminder of each psalm for the pious churchgoer. Plimpton MS 259, a commonplace book, was thought to be someone’s personal notebook. It exhibits a very “ad hoc,” 15th century binding. The contents were thought to Robert Gottes’ landowner notes and/or poems that he wanted to remember or copy at a later time. It was riveting to see the first three manuscripts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and feel the substantive tactile difference between the pages which were paper and those which were composed of a more expensive, thick parchment. One of the biblical manuscripts had internal errors in its text. These errors had points underneath them which were used to indicate the error, as opposed to erasing the error altogether. I found it interesting that the restorers chose to save the errors for posterity. Hoc est corpus roughly translate as ‘this is my body’. These are the words that a priest says when he executes the consecration of the body of Christ. This is where the phrase “hocus pocus” is thought to come from. John of Holy Wood, or Plimpton MS 184, thought to be from Bavaria, shows that the use of illustration became increasingly common as literacy rates rose. Another great example of illustrative tendencies was the Brunetto Latini Plimpton MS 281 which was thought to originate from France in 1484. The alphabetically arranged letters of this early encyclopedia were marked in vivid red so that the reader could effectively distinguish between them. It was fascinating to see the beautiful illustrations of various animals dancing across the pages and margins. These vivacious medieval doodles made it look like the text comprehensively interweaved with the pictures in creative and novel ways. This ancient encyclopedia, however, only portrayed illustrations between letters A and C. According to Prof. Dutschke, this is a potential indication that the person completing it was perhaps working under a time constraint. This book was written by Dante’s teacher who moved from Florence, Italy to Montpellier, France. One question which came to mind was: who was George Plimpton, and how did he come to inherit such a rich collection? Books of Hours and Prayers for the Hours of the Day both had covers made of resplendent-looking wood. I subsequently learned that blue ink cost substantially more than red ink. Thus, the colors used can sometimes reveal the price of the book. I came across some interesting quotes from Alberto Manguel’s book, A History of Reading – specifically from the chapter, The Silent Readers: Written words, from the days of the first Sumerian tablets, were meant to be pronounced out loud, since the signs carried implicit meanings. Particular sounds, thus, were indicative of different conditions of the soul. In sacred texts, where every letter, number of letters and their order were dictated by the godhead, full comprehension required not only the eyes but also the rest of the coordinated body; It was imperative for a reader to sway to the cadence of sentences and lift the holy words to one’s lips so that nothing of the divine could be lost within the act of reading. The ancient writing on scrolls-- which neither separated words, used punctuation, nor made a distinction between lower-case and upper-case letters -- served the purpose of accustoming the art of reading out loud to nascent written communicators who needed to learn how to aurally disentangle what the eye read as a continuous string of semiotics and signs. So important was this continuity that the Athenians supposedly raised a statue to a certain Phillatius. This honorable man apparently invented a glue for effectively fastening together leaves of parchment or papyrus. Columbia’s rare book collection houses over 2000 fragments of papyrus; the vast majority of which are legal documents. The Papyrus that was in the RBML exhibited parts of Homer's Odyssey, five fragments of the Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid.