From: Andrew West (andrewcwest@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2008 - 17:38:28 CDT
2008/6/30 David Starner <prosfilaes@gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Andrew West <andrewcwest@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2008/6/30 Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai@in-nomine.org>:
>>>
>>> Biblical Text-Writing May Have Poisoned Monks
>>> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/27/poison-monks-mercury.html
>>
>> Great misuse of the word "incunabulum" -- I seriously doubt that the
>> monks were "writing the artistic letters of incunabula".
>
> It's not impossible; many incunabula had spaces left after printing
> for old-style large letters to be added by hand.
That is true, but as far as I know Gutenberg didn't send copies of his
bible to monasteries for finishing off. And even if this was what was
happening the scientists doing this research would have to be dating
the cloister burials very precisely to the second half of the 15th
century, and even then how could they tell whether these monks were
copying complete manuscripts or just filling in the decorated initials
of printed books? I think it is clear from the context that the
scientist quoted is mistakenly using the term incunabula to refer to
manuscript books ("pre-1500 A.D. books" as it says in the article).
Andrew
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