Georgios Budalis: Iconographical Evidence as a Source of Information for Clarifying the Structure, Appearance and Use of the Early Codex Book around the Mediterranean Basin
Up until about the 10th – 12th century the books of Christians of the eastern Mediterranean basin - either Copts, Syrians, Byzantines, Georgians, Armenians - and to an extent also Muslims, are all connected in structure and appearance as they all developed from the same prototype codex book format invented in the Middle East during the first centuries of Christianity.
In the past, most of the early codices prior to the 10th – 12th century have been routinely repaired in order to either continue to be used or to be preserved. This was very much the case even for most of the 20th century resulting to the irreversible loss of important evidence about the technical and structural features of the making of these books. Only a proportionally very small number of similar evidence has been preserved and an even smaller number properly studied and published. For example our knowledge of the multi-quire codices up to the 7th century, is based on a mere 11 codices most of them extensively repaired. For later codices up to the 11th century, the same situation is true although the number of surviving examples is higher. Furthermore most of these evidence come from codices unearthed in Egypt and are mostly written in Coptic
This lack of physical evidence means that it is a very challenging task to reconstruct the structure and appearance of the early codex based on the surviving physical evidence only. Although one would expect that literary sources could fill a part of the gap, they usually do not go beyond the description of the colour and material used for the cover of the books.
Nevertheless, it seems that iconographical evidence could provide additional information although so far they have never been systematically exploited for this specific purpose in the wider context of Medieval Christian art, either Eastern or Western. By iconographical evidence it is here meant the evidence coming from the representation of books in all forms and media of art, mostly painting and mosaics but occasionally also carving, and metalwork.
Although early Christian and mostly medieval art is highly symbolic and the naturalistic representation of the physical world is not a priority, a lot of information can be extracted from it. This is the case with various manifestations of material culture, for example the textiles and costumes worn by Emperors and Empresses, buildings painted around religious or secular scenes, furniture, lighting and writing implements surrounding the effigies of the Evangelists and so on. As a matter of fact the iconographical representations of most of these different aspects of material culture have been the subject of specific research in the past.
A consistent research in the way books are represented in Christian Art until the 10th-12th century could :
- Provide evidence about features that are not preserved at all, or are preserved only in a fragmentary state in the actual books surviving from the period approximately up to the 12th century
- Help clarify the physical evidence preserved on the books themselves.
- Help establish how common in time and space were certain features found on the few surviving examples of early codices, and if such features are shared or not by different cultures.
This will be the first presentation of a much wider, ongoing, research on the subject.