This blog post covers a brief exploration of the quire and folio marks found in the Aberdeen bestiary. This topic expands upon my post about quire signatures, catchwords and foliation, which I genuinely recommend reading if you want to understand their significance.
Earlier this year, I explored how medieval scribes organized their quires with signatures. We also find these signatures in the Aberdeen bestiary. There, each quire received a ‘signature’ made from one letter of the alphabet. However, because some are missing in the manuscript, we’ll find them in the following sequence: —,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,K,—,M,N.
…the authors of the Aberdeen bestiary, instead of using Roman numerals, opted for […] symbols.
Quire signatures were typically numbered to denote the individual sheets within a quire. However, the authors of the Aberdeen bestiary, instead of using Roman numerals, opted for a system of symbols. This use of symbols is — to my knowledge — a rather unique implementation of marking folio’s. This is why I’m looking a more in-depth look at them in this blost post.
Folio marks in the Aberdeen bestiary
Folio marks in the Aberdeen bestiary. Some are barely visible, because they faded away.
The purpose of folio marks, like numbered quire signatures, was probably to ensure bookbinders didn’t put them in the wrong order. They differ, however, in that they weren’t combined with the quire signatures. The scribes placed the symbols individually in one of the three corners of the page instead. At the top right, bottom right or bottom left corner of the page.
The purpose of folio marks, like numbered quire signatures, was probably to ensure they weren’t put in the wrong order.
The University of Aberdeen recorded the folio marks in the exemplar manuscript. They’ve presented these on the page detailing the codicology of the Aberdeen bestiary. I’ve recreated this table below to present a clear overview of the known folio marks, as well as correcting two misrepresented marks from the 2nd folio of quire [B] and the 3rd folio of quire [D].
The asterisk sign in quire [B] and [M] appears twice, but this isn’t an issue in the original manuscript. You’ll find the first one was placed in the top right corner, while the other appears at the bottom left. I’m going to be re-using these symbols, but consistently place them on the bottem left corners of the pages. As such, I replaced the symbol of quire [B] to ensure it doesn’t have the aforementioned duplication issue.
Folio marks for the bestiary project
The incomplete set of folio marks posed a minor issue for my bestiary project. Lacking any original examples, I’d had to invent some of my own. That proved harder than expected. As I shouldn’t be able to confuse any of the marks for each other, they needed to be distinct from each other. Additionally, I wanted to prevent them from subconsciously being based on any modern iconography.
To ensure period accurate inspiration, I’ve drawn inspiration from medieval mason marks.
To ensure period accurate inspiration, I’ve drawn inspiration from medieval mason marks. Because researchers studied them in detail, examples are readily available: a simple Google-search provides up a bounty of examples. Using these masonry marks, I expanded the original table of examples to provide my project with fifteen folio marks.
The above table shows original folio markers in black, and my own additions in red. With fifteen sequences available, I have probably more than I need. The reason for that being that I already decided to skip copying some of the text from the original manuscript. If I do need more, I can easily design additional marks and add them to the manuscript.
This blog post expands upon the article where I explored how medieval scribes organized their quires with signatures and relates it to my ongoing bestiary project. If you’d like to learn more about this project, check out my progress updates: monnikenwerk.art/category/bestiary-project