Scribal autonomy in multi-scribe manuscripts: digital visualisations through the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey

手稿和其中包含的文本是过去活动的重要来源，特别是在印刷术发明之前的中世纪时期，也是早期现代和现代时代。作为历史学家，我们感谢抄写员（他们通常保持匿名）的工作，他们撰写和复制了今天幸存的文本。直到最近，手稿中的“抄写员自主权”只以有限的方式进行了探索（例如，与页面布局或笔迹有关），主要是在文学文本的背景下，而不是历史学家通常用于研究过去的那些文本。现在已经很清楚，在许多历史手稿中，抄写员不仅是选择有限的抄写员，而且事实上有自由决定添加什么文本和在哪里添加。这个项目主要通过问：当书写一种特定的历史文本，即所谓的逐年编年史时，抄写员有多大的能动性来发展抄写员自主权的问题？这个问题将主要结合《梅尔罗斯编年史》和其他多抄写编年史来探讨。这些文本对历史学家来说是极其宝贵的资料。它们在中世纪的修道院中特别常见，但也被城镇等其他地方保存。当被视为一个单一的文本时，编年史通常被解读为对事件的“官方”描述，代表了对过去的单一的、制度化的“观点”。然而，当以原始手稿的形式来看时，这个概念往往是不稳定的：许多不同的抄写员可能会以零碎的方式添加新的文本和注释。抄写员会用最近发生的事件来更新编年史，但也会回到早期的部分，插入与更深层次的过去有关的材料。这让我们意识到，抄写员可能会在将什么文本添加到他们的编年史中，在哪里以及如何添加文本方面行使意想不到的个人选择和响应程度。编年史是研究抄写自由的一个很好的例子，但也有其他类型的“多抄写手稿”，如中世纪的手稿、手稿或账簿。历史学家获取文本的方式对我们阅读文本的方式有着重大影响--无论是在档案中，在印刷版中，还是（越来越多地）通过数字图像。大多数情况下，历史学家通过印刷版本访问文本。然而，早期版本在呈现文本的方式上往往已经过时。此外，它们通常不包含手稿的图像。这可能会隐藏对抄写员及其工作的新见解的潜力，特别是在多抄写员手稿的情况下。因此，该项目旨在设计一种创新形式的数字版本，通过直接在其抄写和手稿环境中呈现文本，使抄写员的自主权得以可视化和调查。《梅尔罗斯修道院纪事》的版本将在网上免费提供，并将包括文本（拉丁文和英文原文）和注释图像（在页面上识别每个抄写员及其贡献）。这将利用新技术出版数字图像（称为“国际图像互操作性框架”），因此将为未来各种手稿的图像版本开辟新的道路。

Manuscripts and the texts they contain are vital sources for the activities of the past, especially for the medieval period before the invention of print but also for the early modern and modern eras. As historians, we are indebted to the work of scribes (who often remain anonymous) who wrote and copied the texts that survive today. Until recently, 'scribal autonomy' in manuscripts has only been explored in a limited way (e.g., in relation to page layout or handwriting) and primarily in the context of literary texts rather than those texts which historians routinely use for researching the past. It has now become clear that in many historical manuscripts, scribes were not just copyists with limited choices but in fact had the freedom to decide what text to add and where. This project develops the question of scribal autonomy by essentially asking: how much agency did scribes have when writing a particular kind of historical text known as a year-by-year ('annalistic') chronicle?This question will be primarily explored in relation to the Chronicle of Melrose and other multi-scribe annalistic chronicles. Such texts are extremely valuable sources for historians. They were particularly common in medieval monasteries, but were also kept by others such as towns. When viewed as a single text, an annalistic chronicle is usually read as an 'official' account of events, representing a single, institutional 'view' of the past. However, when viewed in their original manuscript form, this notion is often destabilised: many different scribes might add fresh text and folios in a piecemeal way. The scribes would update the chronicle with accounts of recent events, but also return to earlier sections and insert material relating to the deeper past. This leads to the realisation that scribes might exercise an unexpected degree of individual choice and responsiveness in what text to add to their chronicle, where, and how. Chronicles are a good example of a context in which scribal freedom might be investigated, but there are other kinds of 'multi-scribe manuscript' as well such as medieval cartularies, miscellanies, or account books.The way historians access texts has a significant impact on how we read them - whether in the archive, in printed editions or (increasingly) via digital images. Mostly, historians access texts via printed editions. Earlier editions can, however, often be outdated in how they present the text. Moreover, they typically do not contain images of the manuscript. This can hide the potential for new insights about scribes and their work, especially in the case of multi-scribe manuscripts. This project therefore seeks to design an innovative form of digital edition which allows scribal autonomy to be visualised and investigated by presenting the text directly in its scribal and manuscript context. The edition of the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey will be freely available online, and will incorporate text (in the original Latin and English translation) and annotated images (identifying each individual scribe and their contributions on the page). This will utilise new technology for publishing digital images (known as the 'International Image Interoperability Framework'), and will therefore forge a new path for image-based editions of manuscripts of all kinds in future.