Preparation for binding.When the scribe, the rubricator, the illuminator and the miniaturist (either as one or as several different people) had completed the manuscript it was ready for the binder. As an indication of the order in which the leaves of the manuscript were to be bound, the scribe usually placed on the lower margin of the last page of each "gathering" of leaves a letter or number.
In the earliest printed books these guiding letters, or signatures as they are called, were added by hand in the same way[[291]]; but in a few years the regular and more developed system of printed signatures was introduced[[292]].
| Scribes' signatures. |
Scribes' signatures.Scribes' signatures at the end of manuscripts are comparatively rare, but they do occasionally occur in various interesting forms. My friend Mr W. J. Loftie kindly sends me the following:
In a Sarum Missal of the fifteenth century at Alnwick Castle,
"Librum scribendo Jon Whas[[293]] monachus laborabat,
Et mane surgendo multum corpus macerabat."
More commonly manuscripts terminate with a vague phrase invoking a blessing on the scribe, such as this, from a Bible in the Bodleian (No. 50),
"Qui scripsit hunc librum
Fiat collectum in paradisum."