Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The two major vehicles for writing in classical antiquity were the papyrus scroll (rotulus or volumen), used for formal literary texts, and sets of wooden or wax tablets (tabulae or codex) for informal and pragmatic uses. Tablets were not confined to antiquity; they continued alongside other media throughout succeeding centuries – an important “missing link” in the written record (Brown 1994). One of the earliest examples of writing from Ireland consists of extracts from the Psalms inscribed at the beginning of the seventh century upon thin, oblong, wax tablets (the Springmount Bog Tablets), probably by an aspirant priest who was memorizing them to become “psalteratus” (being able to recite the Psalms from memory). Other early medieval examples include decorated diptychs of bone or ivory covered with wax, upon which liturgical feasts were inscribed. Medieval accounting tablets survive, and tiny sets of tablets could be worn as girdle-books, as notebooks, devotional talismans, or love tokens.The codex assumed respectability along with Christianity during the fourth century, when it became the state religion of the Roman empire. Books were no longer a cheap alternative favored by a persecuted underclass, but honored receptacles of sacred text within a powerful established religion. Leaves of wood were too cumbersome for lengthy texts and folded sheets of papyrus cracked, so techniques ... log in or subscribe to read full text