Evolution of the Medieval Book

Chapter and Verse

This notebook has tabs made of parchment strips to indicate where separate texts begin. The leaves in the second half of the book have also been numbered, and an impromptu table of contents or index in the front indicates the folios where subjects and titles can be found. The page on the right shows the Arabic numeral 7 in the top margin, indicating the folio; the numeral looks rather like the Greek character lambda (l), but is an early form of the number 7. (The number 69, penciled into the corner, is a recent addition that indicates the number of the folio from the beginning of the book.) Such features, appearing in a manuscript that was produced a hundred years before printing, suggest that the impulse to organize text for easier reference was already keenly felt. Printing was wonderfully suited to satisfy that impulse.