Gazette 61

The origin of the study of ancient writing in China can be traced back to over two thousand years ago. Born from a specific political and cultural background, traditional Chinese paleography developed in a very unique way. It was linked to a single writing system and mainly concerned the deciphering of ancient graphs predating the third century B. C. But since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the development of archaeology and the phenomenal growth of the corpus of ancient written material, important changes have occurred, bringing the methods of Chinese paleography closer to modern Western paleography. In this paper, the author attempts to give an overview of this eastern tradition of scholarship from its origins to its latest developments.

This contribution is intended to relate the study of the Christian Sogdian manuscript fragment tradition, the least investigated of all those belonging to the Christian Orient during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, to the codicological principles developed within much better documented manuscript traditions, whether fragmentary or not. In establishing this necessary link, theoretical assumptions and practical implications are discussed.

The first printed book published in Venice appeared in 1469. Ten years later, the city had the largest output of incunabula in Europe. This article aims to analyse Venetian book production between 1469 and 1500, thanks to a database that combines data from ISTC and other information. It makes it possible to better understand how printing became established in Venice. Venetian printers worked for scholars all over Europe, with a strong speciality in law and literature. However, the end of the period shows how the new industry was able to adapt and conquer new markets. This article also analyses the ways in which the printing world developed from a monopolistic structure into a far more fragmented economy.

The aim of this research is the study, from the point of view of preservation, of a collection ofmore than ten thousand books printed in the 15th and 16th centuries, now kept in the Episcopal Seminary’s Library of Padua. Particular attention was paid to the state of preservation of the paper, singling out the cases where a discolouring of the original white hue had occurred. Such discolouring can take on various gradations, from yellow to brown, which may indicate increasing gravity of degradation. The data detected was then assessed in the light of dates and locations of printing, throwing up evidence of varying behaviour for the books produced in main Italian printing centres and the principal cities of Europe.

The multiplication of online catalogues invites us to rethink our methods for describing medieval manuscripts. The efforts of the Bibliothèque nationale de France towards new encoding formats are rooted in a long tradition of cataloguing, initiated by the Maurist Benedictines of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the seventeenth century and further developed in the eighteenth century in an important publication by the Abbé Bignon, head of the royal library. A survey of the issues arising over several centuries of inventories and descriptions of manuscripts reveals a distinct continuity in aims and problems, but also underscores the breakthrough represented by digital technology in the cataloguing of manuscripts