Crossroads and quaternions: possibilities of digital platforms for the study of miscellaneous and composite codices

Abstract

ABSTRACT Codex miscellanies are enigmatic witnesses to the intellectual and cultural exchanges of the Middle Ages, both within the Iberian Peninsula and across the Pyrenees. Individual texts plucked for reproduction from manuscript miscellanies are often encountered as fragments in secondary literature, isolated and compiled into subsequent gatherings of texts and images with their own respective functions. The practice of isolating these texts and images, as well as its intellectual motivations, has served to obscure our view of manuscript miscellanies and composites as material objects. This paper explores the possibilities of digital platforms for the investigation of miscellaneous codices through two brief case studies—Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) MS lat. 2858 and lat. 5132—to explore tools for collation visualization and annotation.