{"id":1617,"date":"2013-03-18T09:33:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T09:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labs.stefanschleifer.com\/codex\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2013-03-28T18:03:15","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T18:03:15","slug":"rolls-vs-codices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/?p=1617","title":{"rendered":"Rolls vs. Codices"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the era when papyrus was the most important writing support (?<\/a>), the best way to keep a long text safe was to roll the interconnected sheets of papyrus into a roll (or scroll). Papyrus could not be folded without risk of breaking it. This did not mean that reading a roll meant unrolling all of it at once. It was read horizontally, so that while rolling out one side, one could roll in the other.<\/p>\n

At the dawn of Christianity the roll was supplanted by the codex, a bound book. The first codices were made of wooden writing tablets, hence the name ‘codex’, which is derived from the Latin word caudex<\/em> (‘a block of wood’). The invention of parchment <\/a>changed the codex drastically. Exploiting the flexibility of parchment, which did not break when folded, books\u00a0were from then on\u00a0made of many thin layers of animal skins.<\/p>\n

But the codex did not replace the roll entirely. Parchment rolls\u00a0continued to be used throughout the entire medieval period. For texts that had to be proclaimed, a roll was often more suitable than a book: we can all picture a herald in a town square reading a message from the king.<\/p>\n

Long genealogies too were drawn on large parchment rolls, stitching skins together when the family trees grew over the original borders of the sheets. A fifteenth century\u00a0example <\/a>can be found in Chicago’s Newberry Library.<\/p>\n

Although the monks in this video <\/a>look a little too modern to have witnessed the initial change from roll to codex, their reaction to the new invention may be spot on!<\/p>\n

Return to: The Making of<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the era when papyrus was the most important writing support (?), the best way to keep a long text safe was to roll the interconnected sheets of papyrus into a roll (or scroll). Papyrus could not be folded without … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2899,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everycodextellsastory.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}