I’ve posted the first progress update about my bestiary on July 25th, 2023. Since then, I’ve completed two additional quires. I showcase both in their own separate videos below. Additionally, I’d like to use this update to discuss the mistakes you’ll face as a (medieval) scribe. This, of course, just had to include examples of my own mistakes that I’d made so far. 😅
Mistakes. Mistakes, everywhere
Mistake, noun [C]: An action, [or] decision […] that produces an unwanted or unintentional result.
Cambridge Dictionary: mistake. (2023). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mistake
However, mistakes are unavoidable. And it is overcoming mistakes that allows you to learn, to grow. The worst thing you can do is procrastinating on something, because you fear making mistakes. Instead, see them as opportunities to learn in which areas you need to improve. My first manuscript project, the Book of Sirach, while a personal achievement, looks terrible [personal opinion]. But it started the learning process, leading to the much improved Book of Ecclesiastes and, eventually, my current bestiary project.
“Bear in mind that the perception of a mistake is relative. In this case, it’s in relation to what you intended.”
CaligrapherStreet92 on December 4, 2023 in the #illuminated-manuscripts channel of the Calligraphy Discord.
Depending on the nature of the project, mistakes can be both internal and external! In my case, I deal with both internal (those made by myself) and external (those made by others) mistakes. As an example: the parchmenter that provided the vellum hasn’t properly processed some of the surfaces. These pose a risk of degraded sharpness of the letters or, worse, ink bleeding into the material. Simultaneously, the translation of the Aberdeen bestiary I’m using contains (minor) textual errors itself. I don’t want to blindly copy those, if I can avoid it.
As a case in point, the gallery above intends to show my bestiary is anything but flawless. It’s common for artists to be their own harshest critics, which took me longer to discover than I’d like to admit. Unless there’s a major issue with your work, people rarely, if ever, see them. Even my teachers, when I took a course in painting, were unable to find them unless I pointed them towards those mistakes. So don’t beat yourself up about mistakes.
Vices of writing
Now that the philosophical part is out of the way, let’s dive into the more practical side of scribal mistakes when copying a manuscript. Medieval attitudes towards writing are a study in of itself. However, we can gleam from medieval texts what they deemed important. Steinberg translated a passage from the Modus Recte Scribendi, which gives an excellent insight into this topic.
“Orthography, as Quintilian suggests, is the science of writing correctly. This term has a dual meaning: one, indeed, is to write neatly, and the other is to write correctly. We will write the former when we designate the elements or letters with their proper forms, so that they maintain their proper proportion and just quantity. The entire art of the latter, however, consists in continuous practice and skill of the hands; our discussion does not concern this consideration. The other one we aim to discuss here is to write correctly.”
Steinberg, S. H. (1941). Instructions in writing by members of the Congregation of Melk. Speculum, 16(2), https://www.jstor.org/stable/2853612
But what does writing correctly entail? Fortunately, we get to discover that, too, thanks to reforms during the 15th in the abbey of Melk initiated by the Council of Constance. The reformers looked toward a revival of learning, which necessitated a revival of the art of writing itself (Steinberg, 1941). This led to the compilation of the Modus Scribendi — a hand-book on writing — by a member of the abbey of Melk to provide the necessary instructions.
These are of great value to a modern scribe, as it provides insights into what a medieval scribe would probably look to avoid most.
This handbook, a modest manuscript itself, contains a listing of what the reformers saw as the vices of writing. These are of great value to a modern scribe, as it provides insights into what a medieval scribe would probably look to avoid most. Professor Jeffrey F. Hamburger, in one of his lectures, provides translations for these vices. I’ve reproduced the list of vices from an (undated) transcript of said lecture with his written permission:
Our scribe describes, for us, many of the errors that his fellow scribes often make. And this list is very instructive, because it informs us precisely of those details to which we too need to pay attention when looking at a medieval script.
Prof. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, (no date). Transcript of lecture on Modus Scribendi.
- He tells us the first mistake is writing incorrectly.
- The second, the division of syllables within the word.
- The third, different spacing of lines.
- The fourth, ascending and descending either in lines or words.
- The fifth, the bad spacing of words.
- The sixth, spacing one word more than another.
- The seventh, changing from one alphabet into another, no matter whether this or that.
- The eighth, inconsistency, that is changing the size of letters in a line and interrupting the continuous flow.
This list of vices makes it clear that writing neatly is very important. This importance also goes for modern calligraphy, if not more so. However, I find it hard to consistently write over hundreds of pages. Fatigue, mood, physical aches, weather and time of day all appear to have some degree of influence on how well I write. Therefore, I must admit that I’ve been guilty of violating at least a few vices of writing nearly.
…it wasn’t uncommon for multiple scribes to work on the same book, each individually working on a different section!
If you were to look at a medieval manuscript, you can see that they, too, have some inconsistencies between letters and words. But overall, their consistency between the start and the end of a manuscript is quite high. Especially considering it wasn’t uncommon for multiple scribes to work on the same book, each individually working on a different section!
…what sort of errors could a scribe make?
Anyway, we now know that writing neatly was very important. But there isn’t much explanation on what “writing correctly” entails. Of course, that obviously means writing without any mistakes. But what sort of errors could a scribe make? Luckily, there’s a whole sub-field of medieval studies just dealing in scribal anomalies. This allows us to gleam some insight into what sorts of writing mistakes a scribe might make.
Scribal mistakes
Professor Stephen R. Reimer from the University of Alberta Edmonton in Canada, in the information of an online course on manuscript studies, compiled a clear overview of the types of writing mistakes. This chapter mostly based on his work, although simplified to avoid any complicated jargon. Therefore, we’re going to look at the four sorts of error that can occur. These are the errors of omission, addition, transposition and alteration.
By omission
Errors of omission happen when scribes accidentally omit words, lines or complete sections from a text. This usually happens because of a phenomenon known as “eye-skip,” in which scribes omit text because their eye skips from one spot in the text to another. This happens, for example, if two sentences close to each other both start with the same word. The scribe, reading the text, accidentally continues writing from the next word he sees.
As an example, I took part of the story on the elephants from the bestiary. Here we can see that the word “elephant” appears quite frequently. In particular, there’s two sentences relatively close to each other which both start in the same way. These are places where eye-skip is likely to happen. I’ve marked these in the original on the left, while the copy on the right show how a scribe might write down the copy when eye-skip occurs in both cases.
Original
Elephants are the largest of animals: no larger animal is seen. The Persians and Indians, carried in wooden towers on their backs, fight with javelins as from a wall. Elephants have a lively intelligence and a long memory; they move around in herds; they flee from a mouse; they mate back-to-back. The female is pregnant for two years, and gives birth no more than once, and not to several offspring but to one only. Elephants live for three hundred years. If an elephant wants to father sons, it goes to the East, near Paradise; there the tree called mandragora, the mandrake, grows. The elephant goes to it with his mate, who first takes fruit from the tree and gives it to her male. And she seduces him until he eats it; then she conceives at once in her womb. When the time comes for her to give birth, she goes out into a pool, until the water comes up to her udders. The male guards her while she is in labour, because elephants have an enemy – the dragon. If the elephant finds a snake, it kills it, trampling it until it is dead. The elephant strikes fear into bulls, yet fears the mouse. The elephant has this characteristic: if it falls down, it cannot rise. But it falls when it leans on a tree in order to sleep, for it has no joints in its knees.
Copy
Elephants are the largest of animals: no larger animal is seen. The Persians and Indians, carried in wooden towers on their backs, fight with javelins as from a wall. Elephants live for three hundred years. If an elephant wants to father sons, it goes to the East, near Paradise; there the tree called mandragora, the mandrake, grows. The elephant goes to it with his mate, who first takes fruit from the tree and gives it to her male. And she seduces him until he eats it; then she conceives at once in her womb. When the time comes for her to give birth, she goes out into a pool, until the water comes up to her udders. The male guards her while she is in labour, because elephants have an enemy – the dragon. If the elephant finds a snake, it kills it, trampling it until it is dead. The elephant has this characteristic: if it falls down, it cannot rise. But it falls when it leans on a tree in order to sleep, for it has no joints in its knees.
Entry on the Elephant from the translation of the Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 10r — re-used under the CC-BY-4.0
While it is easy to omit complete sections, omissions also happen on a smaller scale. I’m talking about cases of “that that” or “is is” unintentionally being reduced to “that” or “is.” To my understanding, it is rare for these cases to happen, as two words, let alone verbs, rarely repeat in such a fashion. But I’ve found one example, of a story I am yet to write, where this theoretically might occur.
The story about the beaver contains two sentences linked together via “it, it” in the middle. Were the omission to occur in this case, it would omit “, it” from the sentence. It doesn’t greatly impact the overall result, but does cause a grammatical inconsistency. Below I’ve again given examples of how this would alter the text between the original and the copy.
Original
There is an animal called the beaver, which is extremely gentle; its testicles are highly suitable for medicine. Physiologus says of it that, when it knows that a hunter is pursuing it, it bites off its testicles and throws them in the hunter’s face and, taking flight, escapes.
Copy
There is an animal called the beaver, which is extremely gentle; its testicles are highly suitable for medicine. Physiologus says of it that, when it knows that a hunter is pursuing it bites off its testicles and throws them in the hunter’s face and, taking flight, escapes.
Entry on the Beaver from the translation of the Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 11r — re-used under the CC-BY-4.0
By addition
Errors of addition, the opposite of omission, take place when scribes unintentionally add text to the original. The most likely cause of this is usually a trick of the mind, that happens when one writes “that” or “it” as either “that that” or “it it.” Personal experience tells this risk is greatest when moving between lines. This is actually what precisely went wrong in the example shown below.
In this example, you see I should’ve wrote “as it says in the song of songs” but used ‘as’ twice and wrote down “as as it says in the song of songs.” But it can also happen with individual letters within a word, such as in the word “beautiful” in the example below. There, I accidentally wrote it with a double ‘l’ so that it reads “beautifull.” A minor mistake that doesn’t affect the legibility of the text, but wasn’t supposed to be like that either.
By transposition
Errors of transposition are cases where a scribe reversed letters, words or phrases. Unfortunately, I do not possess any examples of either historical examples or those from my own work. Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham give a single example in their Introduction To Manuscript Studies (page 37). However, I cannot publish this copyrighted image online while the manuscript itself isn’t digitally available.
By alteration
Errors of alteration occur when the original text changes during the copying process. These changes are either unintentional or deliberate.
Unintentional alterations
Unintentional errors of alteration mean that a scribe wrote one word instead of another. Taking my own work as an example, there was a case where I almost wrote “priests” instead of “prophets” in the allegory of the elephants. Luckily, I was able to catch the mistake in time to correct it. You can see in the above image that I erased part of the incorrect .
After erasing the mistake, I could continue writing as if nothing happened. As a result, the incorrect “that is, the company of priests” correctly says “that is, the company of prophets” instead. Crucial within this allegory, as it would’ve been confusing to the reader. For those interested, I’ve provided the full text of this allegory below. Additionally, I’ve marked the word that I’d almost incorrectly copied in red.
“The elephant has this characteristic: if it falls down, it cannot rise. But it falls when it leans on a tree in order to sleep, for it has no joints in its knees. A hunter cuts part of the way through the tree, so that when the elephant leans against it, elephant and tree will fall together. As the elephant falls, it trumpets loudly; at once a big elephant goes to it but cannot lift it. Then they both trumpet and twelve elephants come, but they cannot lift the one who has fallen. Then they all trumpet, and immediately a little elephant comes and puts its trunk under the big one and lifts it up. The little elephant has this characteristic, that when some of its hair and bones have been burnt, nothing evil approaches, not even a dragon. The big elephant and its mate represent Adam and Eve. For when they were in the flesh pleasing to God, before their sin, they did not know how to mate and had no understanding of sin. But when the woman ate the fruit of the tree, that is to say, she gave her man the fruit of the mandrake, the tree of knowledge, then she became pregnant, and for that reason they left Paradise. For as long as they were in Paradise, Adam did not mate with Eve. For it is written: ‘Adam knew his wife and she conceived’, and she gave birth on the waters of guilt. Of this, the prophet says: ‘Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul.’ And at once the dragon seduced them and caused them to be outcasts from their citadel, that is, because they displeased God. Then came the big elephant, meaning the law, and did not raise up mankind, any more than the priest raised the man who fell among thieves. Nor did the twelve elephants, that is, the company of prophets, raise mankind, just as the Levite did not raise the wounded man we spoke of. But the elephant capable of understanding, that is our Lord Jesus Christ, who, although greater than all, became the smallest of all, because he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death that he might raise up mankind. He is the Good Samaritan who set upon his own beast the man who had fallen among thieves. For Jesus himself was wounded yet bore our weakness and carried our sins. The Samaritan also symbolises a guardian. On this subject, David says: ‘The Lord watching over the children…’ Where the Lord is present, the devil cannot draw near.”
Entry on the Elephant from Aberdeen Bestiary, f.10r and f.10v — re-used under CC-BY-4.0.
Deliberate alterations
It is possible that scribes deliberately altered texts. An example of this would be a scribe either correcting a mistake, or ‘improving’ upon the original text. As with the errors of transposition, I’m unfortunately unable to provide any graphical examples at this time. However, Van Baalen (2021) in a blog article on scribal interference, provides insight in some reasons why scribes might deliberately alter texts. He writes the following:
“Medieval scribes could certainly copy their exemplars letter-by-letter, but many adapted the text they were copying to varying degrees, so that the copy they were producing was closer to their own language use (see Laing, 2004). […] Rather than regarding the changes […] as ‘corruptions’ or ‘incorrect versions of the authorial text’, these alterations can tell us a great deal about linguistic change.”
Van Baalen, A. (2021, October 14). Medieval copying gone wrong? Retrieved January 1, 2024, from Leiden Medievalist Blog.
Of course, some influential figures from medieval times had their own views on the copying of texts. Particularly, that these should be as accurate as possible. For example, Cassiodorus, in his Instutiones, writes to “let the copy correspond to the original as the wax to the signet-ring, that as the face is the index of the emotions so your handwriting may not err from the authentic original in anything.“
Erasing mistakes
Pretend you are a medieval scribe who just made a writing mistake. How would you resolve it? Considering that you’d written it in ink, it isn’t as easy as erasing something written in pencil. Well, if you’ve written on parchment the correct answer would be scraping it! It might sound weird, but scribes removed text written in ink by scraping it away with a knife. In medieval illuminations, they’re holding both a pen and a knife for this reason.
The video above shows me erasing a writing mistake that occurred while copying text for my bestiary project. I wrote “If an enemy” instead of “If an elephant” due to an error of memorization. The full text for this part is: “The male guards her while she is in labor because elephants have an enemy—the dragon. If the elephant finds a snake, it kills it, trampling it until it is dead.“
I’m using an AMI no.10 spare blade to carefully scrape away the incorrect text. The curved blade allows me to safely perform this operation without the risk of cutting into the parchment. This process took five to ten minutes, because I had allowed the ink to dry. I’ve recently corrected another error which scratched off near instantly, as it hadn’t fully dried. This is why it is important to correct errors as soon as possible.
Post-face
Like my last update, I’m concluding with a post-face summarizing my current thoughts on the project. First, I’d like to remark I’d hoped to have made more progress. At the very least, a fourth quire. Unfortunately, life gets in the way of things and I’ve not always found the energy to work on this project as often as I’d liked.
There might be some improvements, but I’m going to be content with what I’ve achieved.
Nevertheless, I’m happy with the low frequency of uncorrected, textual errors. The writing itself, too, is relatively consistent. Unless you compare the pages side-by-side, you barely notice the thickness of the letters is different (caused by having to manually cut the writing nib to size every other page). There might be some improvements, but I’m going to be content with what I’ve achieved.
Going forward, I’m going to be writing the next quires. The fourth will conclude the incompleted copy of the nature of the dog. Then, other canines such as the wolf, the fox and the hyena follow. Afterwards, I conclude the stories of the land animals with a section on the wild animals, which is about creatures like bears, apes, crocodiles and beavers.
In the coming months, I’ll also be following a course from Dutch master illuminator Jaap Boerman. He will (hopefuly) be able to help improve my skills in painting skin tones and clothes. This is an area I firmly believe I’m able to do better. After this course, I might paint a few miniatures for this project. I’m itching to start decorating these quires by filling in some of those reserved space.