Dynamics in the Production of Aristotle’s Manuscripts of Ethics, Logic, and Natural Philosophy

Change and Preservation of Manuscript Patterns

Individual Research Project

© BnF

This project aims to understand ‘material choices’ in Greek manuscripts from the Middle Ages and early modern period (roughly the 9th–16th centuries), using as a case study a corpus of about 300 manuscripts containing Aristotle’s treatises on logic and scientific reasoning, ethics, and natural philosophy. Because Byzantines and humanists continuously copied and studied Aristotle’s works, this corpus offers a fruitful basis for investigating the dynamics behind material choices in the production of Greek manuscripts over more than 500 years. The project compares patterns found in these artefacts, relating to their physical characteristics (format, writing support, writing substance, writing implement, type of binding, quire structure, etc.), to the visual organisation of their contents (decoration, placement of textual units on the folios, script style, page design, multiple-text structures, etc.), and to the contents themselves (selection of core material, inclusion of exegetical paratexts, inclusion of miniatures, etc.).

This research allows us to gain an accurate view of which patterns producers of Aristotelian manuscripts preferred at different periods and in different regions. At the same time, we aim to identify cases in which scribes challenged normative practices, deviating from established preferences. We examine in depth the circumstances of production, including the agents involved in the process (scribes, rubricators, commissioners, etc.), the production settings, and the early circulation, provenance, and intended use of the manuscripts. Connecting the results of these investigations to the specific patterns under study enables us to answer why producers chose an unconventional solution over a more traditional one and, more generally, why certain patterns changed over time or, conversely, remained stable.