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Division IV · Writing and manuscript culture Abteilung IV — Schrift- und Handschriftenkunde
The division was established in 1965 and works on what the others leave out: not what a document says, nor what a coin was worth, but the hand — who wrote, how, who read afterwards, and what was left behind in the margin. Its central instrument is the register of scribes, published in parts since 1974, which lists the scribes identified in the charters held here and in partner institutions, with the features of their hands. Three people are in post, in rooms 2.06 and 2.07, with the hand-comparison table in 2.06.
1. What the division works on
- Scripts and the teaching of writing
- The gradual change of scripts in one district is followed not by centuries but by the gap between the model a scribe learned and what his hand actually did. That gap tends to say more than the script itself.
- Identification of scribes
- Unsigned charters and manuscripts are attributed to a writer, and documents are grouped by hand. The method rests on a combination of features, never on one: proportion of letters, habits of ligature, abbreviations, the angle of strokes at entry and exit, and the kinds of mistake (omission, repetition, confusion). Three of the five must agree before two hands are called "probably the same".
- Bindings, fragments and reuse
- The boards, pastedowns and strengthening strips of old bindings often contain earlier manuscript fragments. Every old binding in the Institute's and its partners' holdings is examined leaf by leaf and the fragments recorded with their contents, dimensions and position. The work is slow, but it has its rewards: in 1987 a twelfth-century liturgical fragment was found in the pastedown of a sixteenth-century printed book, the Institute's best piece of luck to date.
- Traces of reading and provenance
- Marginal notes, underlinings, finger marks, traces of bookmarks, ownership stamps and old shelfmarks are all recorded. A book read and a book kept are two different things; the two sets of traces are entered in separate columns so that neither hides the other.
2. Holdings and output
| Item | Number | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Manuscripts and early printed books described | 3,180 | Includes material described on behalf of partner institutions; each entry notes script, binding and traces of use. |
| Binding index cards | 41,206 | First supplement 1998, second 2011, third 2024, the third adding 8,940 cards. |
| Scribes identified | 628 | Of these 148 are gathered into groups of hands, of between two and eleven members. |
| Hand-feature records | 2,014 | Each records the five features and the conclusion reached; undecided cases are kept as such. |
| Fragments | 2,140 | Most taken from bindings, with a plan and photographs of the position they occupied. |
| Traces of reading recorded | 1,470 volumes | Heavily annotated volumes also have extracts of the notes made. |
| New descriptions in 2025 | 104 | And 44 in the first eight months of 2026. The examination of bindings in partner institutions is suspended, so nothing more is coming from that quarter. |
3. Projects in hand
| Reference | Subject | Direction | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| WI-2019-02 | * Minting and writing compared, second phase | A. Remke, with Division I | Running. The division supplies the chronology of scribes active between 1350 and 1420; a table of 218 scribes is drafted. |
| WI-2016-14 | Register of scribes, eleventh supplement, fourteenth century | A. Remke | Running. Seventy-four scribes added, twenty-two of them by merging earlier entries. |
| WI-2018-15 | Examination of bindings in partner institutions, third batch | S. Brandt | Running. 640 volumes examined, 128 fragments recorded; batch to finish in 2026. |
| WI-2021-16 | Old bookmarks and ownership marks in the collections | M. Vogt | Running. 390 marks recorded, 148 of them unattributed and kept in a "to be identified" list. |
| WI-2023-17 | Types of marginal annotation, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries | M. Vogt | Running. 210 volumes classified, twelve types provisionally; the line between editorial and practical notes is not yet clear. |
| WI-2024-18 | One form of record for the hand-comparison table | A. Remke and N. Krahmer | From April 2024. A draft form brings the paper record and the image files under one numbering; to be tried from January 2025. |
4. Terms used by the division
The division uses a few words in a narrower sense than ordinary usage, and it is worth setting them out to avoid misunderstanding.
| Term | German | Sense in this division |
|---|---|---|
| Scribe | Schreiber | The person who actually wrote. Not necessarily the person who signed: the signatory of a charter is often the issuer, while the hand belongs to somebody else. |
| Hand | Hand | What one act of writing left behind. The same person may write in different hands at different times and for different purposes, as in a text and its marginal notes, so the hand, not the person, is the unit recorded. |
| Group of hands | Händegruppe | Several hands closely similar but not yet shown to be one person. The category exists to hold the case that is nearly, but not quite, decided. |
| Script | Schriftart | A normative style of writing, such as an early gothic or a charter hand. A script is public property, a hand is personal, and the two are not to be confused. |
| Fragment | Fragment | A piece of manuscript recovered from a binding, a pastedown or a strengthening strip. The division does not use the word waste, and does not treat fragments as minor material. |
5. How hands are compared
- Establish a standard first. Before comparing anything, secure a few signed or firmly dated pieces as the standard for that scribe. Where no standard exists, the hand is recorded as a hand, and no name is attached to it.
- Record the five features separately. Letter proportion, ligature habits, abbreviations, the angle of entry and exit, and the kind of mistake, each in its own column, each with a concrete example cited by line and word. "Similar in style" is not an entry.
- Three out of five. Three features in agreement make two hands "probably the same"; four or more, with supporting evidence, justify merging the entries in the register.
- Work from images. Comparison is made from images at the same scale, never from memory or from old notes. Where original and image differ in scale, the image is brought to scale first.
- Counter-evidence is not suppressed. Any feature that does not agree, even a single one, goes into the column for counter-evidence. If counter-evidence emerges after two entries have been merged, the correction is announced in a supplement to the register; the original entry is not quietly altered.
6. Publications
| Year | Title | Author | Where published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Recording the five features of a hand: a form and its use | A. Remke | Mitteilungen no. 41, pp. 32–44 |
| 2015 | Register of scribes, tenth part: thirteenth-century Lower Saxony | A. Remke | Series, vol. 29 |
| 2017 | Notes on the examination of old bindings, 3rd edition | S. Brandt | Printed internally; obtainable on application |
| 2022 | Ownership marks, part 1: the Institute's own holdings | M. Vogt | Source booklets, no. 7 |
| 2022 | The twelfth-century liturgical fragment of 1987 reconsidered | A. Remke and M. Vogt | Series, vol. 34 |
| 2024 | Marginal annotation in twelve types, a first draft | M. Vogt | Mitteilungen no. 62, in the press |
Asking about the register of scribes. The register now runs to eleven parts and lists 612 scribes. Because it is compiled from charters which are themselves held elsewhere, consulting the register and consulting the documents are two separate applications, the second under the rules of use. To ask whether the scribe of a particular charter has been identified, give the institution and shelfmark, or the Institute's own reference number, and the division will answer within ten working days. Complete feature records are not supplied to others; extracts can be.
Compiled by Division IV. Questions about the comparison of hands, about bindings or about fragments should be put to the head of division, Dr Remke, extension 35.
Page WI-ABT-04 · compiled by A. Remke · edited by the academic office · last modified 18 September 2026