[DCRM-L] Continuous bifolia numeration (foliatation interrompue)

[Joseph Ross]

Colleagues,

In recent discussions of books that use signatures that number or letter
the bifolia continuously from one quire to the next but have no quire
signatures: i.e., 1,2,3,4 (4 leaves unsigned), 5,6,7,8 (4 leaves unsigned)
or a,b,c,d,e (4 leaves unsigned) f,g,h,i (4 leaves unsigned .... to the end
of the book.  I remarked that this was a rarely used signature pattern from
manuscript books.  I have found my source for this statement:  Albert
Derolez, Codicologie des manuscrits en ecriture humanistique sur parchemin.
Brepols, 1984, P. 48.  Derolez identifies 6 types of leaf signatures
(signatures de feuillets) that are being used in 15th century Italian
manuscripts.  The sixth type he calls "Signatures a foliatation
interrompue: They have the form a1 a2 a3 a4 a5  ... b6 b7 b8 b9 or without
the letters identifying the quire: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 6 7 8 9 10 etc.  This
exceptional type is found in 7 cases (0.6 % of the corpus) of which the
oldest is no earlier than 1453. "

I am not sure where I found the terminology continuous bifolia numeration,
but this text at least shows that manuscript scribes did occasionally use
this kind of signature pattern.

Just to show I did not make this up!

Joe Ross
Rare Book Cataloger\
University of Notre Dame
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