> >
> I have been wondering about that too, and not out of idle curiosity:
> you
> see, I study Vivarium (the physical site in Calabria, now called
> Coscia
> di Staletti, and sheep are still there - in fact, I am happy to
> report,
> the sheep owner just won a lawsuit with the landowner, marchese
> Lucifero, who wanted to evict him. The sheep still graze where
> Vivarian
> sheep did, and, being on good terms with the shepherds, I could
> easily
> find out how many are there today. If I knew how many were needed for
> a
> Bible, I could figure out how many actually existed at Vivarium -
> could
> you and your professor help? Luciana
I quote from R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, "The Art of the Codex Amiatinus"
(Jarrow Lecture 1967):
The codex consists of 1,030 folios (that is, 2,060 pages) of calfskin.
Each opening, or bifolium, measures 27½ x 20½ in. With covers the book
is 10 in. thick. The leaves pressed flat without covers are 8½ in
thick. The codex weighs 75½ lb. With its protective wrappings and
travelling case and original covers it must have weighed a good 90 lb.,
practically the same as a fully grown female Great Dane.
Ceolfrith's great enterprise . . . was the production, not of one such
pandect, but of three. Not 515 bifolia, or separate skins, but 1545;
not 2,060 great pages, but 7,180.
If you kill a calf [and I dare say the same would hold true for a sheep
- Oriens] and seek to prepare a skin from a piece of soft, unstrained,
undistorted vellum, suitable for a codex, one one skin of Amiatinus
size, 27½ x 20½ in. when trimmed, is to be obtained from one animal
. . . The three pandects, or great copies of the Holy Scriptures, would
thus represent the utilization of the skins of some 1,550 calves,
implying the existence of great herds of cattle.
Q.E.D.
Oriens.
____________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk
or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|