Bringing Order amongst Veronese Hands
Abstract. This paper will focus on the manuscripts produced in Verona between the end of the eighth century and the end of the ninth. The research aims to illustrate the criteria useful for recognizing and distinguishing the hands of scribes active in Verona during this period and to provide an estimate of their number and the duration of their activity
From the end of the eighth century through the entire ninth century, many manuscripts were copied in Verona, of which nearly a hundred survive. These codices share many codicological and paleographical features that make the manuscript production of Verona clearly recognizable among the not-yet-studied and elusive Northern Italian book production of the ninth century. In particular, the Veronese script displays several characteristics that not only are common to the many copyists at work but are also followed by the scribes so closely to the pattern that it is often difficult even to distinguish between one hand and the other.
Thus far, the Veronese manuscript production has been aggregated around two poles, referring to two important figures from the late eighth century and the first half of the ninth century, respectively: Bishop Egino and Archdeacon Pacificus. Nevertheless, only a few and often dated attempts (cfr. Teresa Venturini, 1929) have been made to determine how many hands were at work in the Veronese codices of the Carolingian period, as well as to identify even minute features that might allow them to be distinguished from another and to propose a chronology by also establishing when the Veronese minuscule took on less specific characteristics, common to the fully canonized Caroline minuscule.
My paper aims to present a first attempt to bring order amongst the Veronese hands, illustrating the method adopted to identify them, which at the moment is believed to be the ‘traditional’ one, and the first outcomes of the research in terms of estimating the number of scribes, duration of their activity, and individual characteristics of their writing.