Bibliography
General
R. Aris, Explicatio formarum litterarum: The Unfolding of Letterforms from the First Century to the Fifteenth (St Paul, Minn., 1990).
C. Bozzolo and E. Ornato, Pour une histoire du livre manuscrit au moyen âge, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1983).
Michelle Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).
Curt F. Bühler, The Fifteenth-Century Book: The Scribes, the Printers, the Decorators (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960).
Frank T. Coulson and Robert G. Babcock, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Christopher De Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992).
Karl Löffler, Einführung in die Handschriftenkunde, neu bearbeitet von Wolfgang Milde, Bibliothek des Buchwesens 11, rev. ed. (Stuttgart : A. Hiersemann, 1997; first published in 1929).
Marilena Maniaci, Archeologia del manoscritto: metodi, problemi, bibliografia recente (Roma : Viella, 2002).
Victoria Moul, A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). This volume contains two great chapters on dealing with and editing Latin manuscripts and printed material by Craig Kallendorf (ch. 22, pp. 379-93) and Keith Sidwell (ch. 23, pp. 394-407). These chapters also contain many observations on editing Latin texts in an age when so much material has been digitised and is available online.
Malcolm Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Aldershot, 1992).
Stanley Morrison, Politics and Script: Aspects of Authority and Freedom in the Development of Greco-Latin Script from the Sixth Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).
Edwin Rabie, ‘Editing Neo-Latin Texts,’ Editio 10 (1996), pp. 25-48. A concise overview of the different aspects to be considered when editing Renaissance and early modern texts in Latin. The text can be downloaded as a pdf from the author’s Academia page.
L.D. Reynolds and N.G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, 4th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Handbooks
Armando Balduino, Manuale di filologia italiana, 3rd ed. (Florence, 1983). Useful for manuscript research and codicological description of Italian manuscripts as well as textual criticism.
Giulio Battelli, Lezioni di paleografia, 3rd ed. (Vatican City, 1949). The standard European handbook, written by a former head of the Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia e Diplomatica.
C. Paoli, Diplomatica, rev. ed. by G. C. Bascape (Florence, 1987). The standard introduction to diplomatics used in Italian universities and institutes; oriented more toward the high-mediaeval period, but still extremely useful for our period.
Amando Petrucci, La descrizione del manoscritto: storia, problemi, modelli (Rome, 1984, 1987).
Jacques Lemaire, Introduction à la codicologie (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1989). Now the standard textbook.
A. Pratesi, Genesi e forme del documento medievale, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1987). More concise than Paoli.
Tools
Adriano Cappelli, Lexicon abbreviaturarum. Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane usate nelle carte e codici specialmente del Medio-Evo, riprodotte con oltre 14000 segni incisi, con l’aggiunta di uno studio sulla brachigrafia medioevale, un prontuario di sigle epigrafiche, l’antica numerazione romana ed arabica ed i segni indicanti monete, pesi, misure, etc., 7th ed. (Milan: Hoepli, 2011). The essential book. Several copies available in the Library and in the Renaissance Centre. Older editions are usually easily available on the used-book market. For a PDF version, see here.
Auguste Pelzer, Abréviations latines médiévales: supplément au Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane de Adriano Cappelli, 3rd ed. (Beauvechain [Belgium]: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1995).
Adriano Cappelli, Cronologia, cronografia e calendario perpetuo, 7th ed. (Milan: Hoepli, 2012).
Thomas Frenz, Abkürzungen: die Abbreviaturen der Lateinischen Schrift von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2010).
Textbooks, Overviews, and Studies
Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography, transl. Daibhi O Croinin and David Ganz (Cambridge, 1989).
Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction, Toronto Medieval Bibliographies 8 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, in Association with the Centre for Medieval Studies, 1984); also available as Paleografia latina medievale: introduzione bibliografica (Rome: Quasar, 1999).
Giorgio Cencetti, Paleografia latina (Rome: Jouvence, 1978, with rpts).
A[lbinia] C. De la Mare, The Handwriting of the Italian Humanists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973- [in progress]).
Albert Derolez, Codicologie des manuscrits en écriture humanistique sur parchemin, Bibliologia 5-6 (Turnhout : Brepols, 1984).
Palaeography, Manuscript Illumination and Humanism in Renaissance Italy: Studies in Memory of A.C. de la Mare, edited by Robert Black, Jill Kraye and Laura Nuvoloni (London: Warburg Institute, 2016).
Cesare Paoli, Diplomatica, nuova edizione aggiornata da G. C. Bascape (Florence, 1987).
Armando Petrucci, Breve storia della scrittura latina (Rome: Bagatto Libri, 1989), translation distributed in xerox form as ‘An Introduction to the History of Writing in Italy (14th–16th centuries).
____, ed., Libri, scrittura e pubblico nel Rinascimento: Guida storica e critica (Rome, 1979). On the social context of scribes, books, scripts.
____, Breve storia della scrittura latina, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1992).
____, Medioevo da leggere. Guida allo studio delle testimonianze scritte del Medioevo italiano (Turin, 1992).
____, Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture (Chicago-London, 1993). A useful introduction to public inscriptions, etc.
Adelaide Ricci, Carta e penna: piccolo glossario di paleografia (Rome: Viella, 2014).
Ch. Samaran, ed., L’histoire et ses methodes, Encyclopedie de la Pléiade (Paris, 1961). See especially sections on ‘Paleographie médiévale’, ‘Diplomatique’, ‘Les bibliothèques’, ‘Les archives’.
B. L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960).
James Wardrop, The Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script, 1460-1560 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
M. L. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Teubner, 1973).
Collections of Facsimiles and Reproductions
Cornelis Dekker, Roland Baetens, Suzanne Maarschalkerweerd-Dechamps, ed., Album palaeographicum XVII Provinciarum. Paleografisch album – Album de paléographie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992). For those interested in material from the Low Countries. Also contains a reasonably discussion of the characteristics of hands and handwriting in this region (pp. xii-xli)
Hilary Jenkinson, ed., The Later Court Hands in England: From the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927).
Pamela R. Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 737-1600 in Cambridge Libraries, 2 vols (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988).
Pamela R. Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 888-1600 in London Libraries, 2 vols (London: British Library, 2003).
Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435-1600 in Oxford Libraries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
Criteria for Transcriptions/Editions
A. Pratesi, Genesi e forme del documento medievale (Rome, 1982).
*G. Tognetti, Criteri per la trascrizione di testi medievali latini e italiani (Rome, 1982).
F. Petrucci-Nardelli, ‘Riproduzione o interpretazione? Note sull’edizione di documenti’, Arte documento, 4 (1992), 266-267.
*Michael Hunter, Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Libraries and Archives
Carlo Frati, Dizionario bio-bibliografico dei bibliotecari e bibliofili italiani dal sec. XIV al XIX (Florence, 1933).
Marino Parenti, Aggiunte al dizionario bio-bibliografico di C. Frati, 3 vols (Florence, 1952–60).
Armando Balduino, Manuale di filologia italiana, 3rd ed. (Florence, 1983), p. 119 ff.
*P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 7 vols. (E.J. Brill, 1963–97).
D. M. Norris, A History of Cataloging and Cataloging Methods, 1100–1850 (London, 1939).
*Guida generale degli archivi di stato italiani, ed. P. D’Angiolini and C. Pavone, 3 vols (Rome and Florence, 1981–89). Indispensable guide for archival research in Italian state archives: lists collections, gives statistics and history of each collection, etc.
Associazione Archivistica Ecclesiastica, Guida degli Archivi diocesani d’Italia, ed. V. Monachino, E. Boaga, L. Osbat, S. Palese (Rome, 1990), in the series ‘Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Quaderni della Rassegna degli archivi di stato, 61’. Insdispensable guide to Italian ecclesiastical archives. Does not include monastic archives.
Sussidi per la consultazione dell’Archivio Vaticano, nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata a cura di G. Gualdo, Collectanea Archivi Vaticani 17 (Vatican City, 1989).
[Ministero della pubblica istruzione], Annuario delle biblioteche italiane, 5 vols (Rome, 1969–1982). Lists all the libraries in Italy, giving size and character of their manuscript collections, names of librarians, opening times of libraries, basic bibliography, etc.
A. Ornella, S. Bigatton and P. Figini, eds., Annuario delle biblioteche ecclesiastiche italiane (Milan, 1990), published for the Associazione Bibliotecari Ecclesiastici Italiani. Provides information similar to that of the item immediately above. To be published yearly.
Journals and Series
-Codices manuscripti. Zeitschrift für Handschriftenkunde [http://www.hollinek.at/cm/]
-Codicologica. The main journal for codicology, published in Belgium. Appears irregularly. Each volume deals with a specific theme, e.g. vol. 5: Les materiaux du livre manuscrit.
-Manuscripta
-Revue d’Histoire des Textes
-Scriptorium [http://scriptorium.kbr.be/]. The most important journal dealing with palaeography, codicology and manuscript studies generally. Has reviews and descriptions of books received.
-Scrittura e civiltà. The major Italian journal on script; emphasizes the social content of ‘scribal culture’. Includes reviews.
Greek
William H. Ingram, ‘The Ligatures of Early Printed Greek,’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7.4 (1966), pp. 371-89.
William Wallace, ‘An Index of Greek Ligatures and Contractions,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 43 (1923), pp. 183-93.