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This paper analyses the practice of signing documents with a series of three crosses, which is attested in Greek and Coptic papyri from the sixth century onwards. According to the usual scheme, the crosses are marked by the term σημεῖον ‘sign’ and the name of the signatory written respectively above and below the signs. A subscription written by a third party usually makes it clear that the signatory, although unable to write, signed the document by drawing his σημεῖον. The paper discusses a) the standard structure and variations of this type of signature, b) its spatial and temporal distribution, c) its origin and development, and d) the context in which it was used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to reconsider the handwriting of Heiric of Auxerre from a palaeographical point of view as well as in relation to his biography. A close study of ms. Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, 412 shows that two different hands wrote the notes traditionally attributed to him: it appears that only one of these two hands is Heiric’s, as can be seen through a hitherto neglected Tironian note in the calendar. Moreover, such hand is not the one that wrote ms. London, British Library, Harley 2735. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores digraphia – the ability for one person to use two different scripts at the same time – in the 16th-century French community in Rome, where both cancelleresca italica and modern French cursive coexisted. It aims to verify what influenced French writers to adopt distinct graphic solutions, based on their relationship with the text, language, and function of writing. The phenomenon is mostly represented by professional writers, who were able to master both graphic styles at the same level of expertise. Nevertheless, there are also some writers who employ both scriptures at an usual level, showing a higher degree of contamination. All these writers – particularly when acting as delegated writers – show great awareness in their choice of one graphic style over the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the late ninth-century Bobbio manuscript Torino, Biblioteca nazionale universitaria, F.IV.8, witness of Iohannes Hymmonides’ Vita Gregorii Magni, followed by the slightly later-added text of the visio Dryhthelmi, from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (V, 12). The codex bears clear traces of a mid-fifteenth-century restoration, aimed at filling lacunae of various entities along the text. The presence of two conspicuous errors, respectively between quires 12 and 13, and quire 16 and f. 124, urges further codicological and paleographical investigation on the codex. From this analysis some clues emerge to the existence of two ʻtwinʼ codices, which were merged together, in order to make one manuscript out of two formerly autonomous, damaged witnesses. Eight fragments once belonging to these two copies of the Vita Gregorii and then reused as guard-leaves in other Bobbio manuscripts now preserved in the Ambrosiana and Vaticana Libraries, as well as in the Turin Library itself, corroborate the hypothesis. It thus appears that, shortly after the publication of the biography of Gregory the Great, the Bobbio scriptorium drawn it up in two copies, the one for the abbey library, the other for the nearby small book collection kept at the Spelunca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]