Invariably,
>students were profoundly troubled and dismayed at the realization that
>instead
>of turning assuredly to Capelli every time, they now had to rely on the
>context
>of the document and their own Latin wits, but that's the essence of working
>with original manuscripts. In my codex, anyway.
>
>John Parsons
>
>
more or less I have to admit, that this refers quite well to my own first
experiences with manuscripts.
My teacher four years ago was in the lucky situation, that the course took
place in an *archive departemental* in France, with a big amount of
excellent manuscripts and that it was a course for the whole length of the
academic year.
We just plunged into the practice of the reading of manuscripts written in
carolingian minuscule, after the private lecture of a simple text on
paleography. As the course went on we moved into the centuries with their
different types and habits. Only in the beginning we had just the list of
abbreviations given in the *Bischoff* and had to make our way through the
manuscripts only with the rising amount of abbreviations in the mss she
mentione the capelli, what we found of course a big help without depending
on it to much. And we desespaired if capelli couldn t help us.
Today with my still small amount of experience with manuscripts (at the
moment most of it 15 and 16c) I find this method helped me a lot - at least
how much I needed to work on my latin and medieval french and now on my
*mittelniederdeutsch*.
Bischoff is as Larry Swain mentioned a big help to comprehend what we have
done during that course and some of the difficulties I accounter now, now
that I have seen what he is writing about.
Bjoern Kley
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