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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

"Legend has it..."

It is said that the illumination of manuscripts came about through the boredom felt by the monks in the scriptorium due to the repetitive nature of their copying. To entertain themselves, they first added mice or birds. "Legend has it..." strikes again! Compare Doodle? Wetman 06:33, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. Everything I've read suggests that illumination came about as a beautification measure in Bible texts, a sort of physical analogue to the spiritual beauty of God's word. What counts as 'illumination', anyway? A scribe makes the first letter of a verse nice and big, the better to distinguish this verse from the one before, and next thing you know he's filled in the extra white space with designs. Nightsky 22:54, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Proposed rewrite

Over the next several months, I intend to completely rewrite this article so as to make it comprehensive, and, I hope, able to move to feature article status. I have limited time, and will need to do a fair amount of research, so the progress will be slow. As this is a quite large task, any help or suggestion would very useful. Below is a brief sketch of my intentions.

Outline of re-write for the Illuminated manuscript article.

Topics to include

  • Intro
  • Types of decoration i.e miniatures, borders, initials, etc.
  • Techniques - description of process from sheep skin to library shelf
  • History - from illustration tradition in classical rolls through twentieth century, emphasis on Western european manucripts from invention of codex through invention of printing press. A non comprehensive list of periods/ area to be discussed include: Late classical, Insular, Anglo-Saxon, Carolingian, Ottonian, Mozarabic, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance. Within each period/area discuss:
    • Creators - not just monks!
    • Purpose - Liturgical use, prestige, study, etc.
    • Types of manuscript illuminated - Gospel Books, Psalters, Books of Hours, Bestiaries, etc.
    • Styles - Classical, Illusionistic, etc..
    • Seperate sections on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, and Ethiopian illumination. - I know very little about these, any help would be greatly apreciated.

I will also include, although I don't where, yet a discusion on the reliance of medieval artists on models. Dsmdgold 03:05, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Great idea! I'm working on a more comprehensive listing of colors and color sources, maybe even with links to period recipes and/or chemistry. Nightsky 21:36, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

question

just wondering why Illuminated manuscript from the middle age didnt look realistic did they consider in a sin or blasfamy and for some reason to make it realistic ? , plus it kinda look like there all done in the same style, sorry if this is spam.

Don't worry - few genuine questions are spam. I think the answer for the most part is that the medieval illustrators were still learning the tricks and techniques of painting. For example perspective wasn't well understood until the 14th and 15th Century. They also had a fairly limited palette of colours they could use (although most colours were possible). Other factors that come in to play are that the artist often has to include various symbols and icons in the picture in order to explain who or what the picture was of. People are typically painted with their faces looking towards the viewer (minor figures may be shown in profile), and holding their symbols of office. This often leads to rather unnatural poses. The illustrators would rarely have seen any of the places or animals they were illustrating, which sometimes lead to rather odd looking creatures.
Many of the larger illustrations also show a feature common to different types of naive art, in that the size of various figures and objects is based on their relative importance. So a saint or king would be the largest figure in the scene, surrounded by smaller supporting figures, and quite possibly coming out of an impossibly small castle, which is only their to establish the location.
Besides, I wouldn't say it is the case that they all have the same style. Gallery of illuminated manuscript images shows quite a range. -- Solipsist 23:13, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
An additional point is that many of the artists at the time were quite simply not interested in realistic portrayl, as odd as that may seem to a modern sensibility. For example look at this image. It is from the Codex Amiatinus and was produced in the North of England in the 7th century by either Italian artists or native artists trained as by Italians. Within certain parameters, the central figure has a certain amount of realism characteristic of the art of the late antique period. Now look at this image. It is from the Lindisfarne Gospels produced in the same region, but a little bit later. From the position of the scribe, it is clear that this artist used the Codex Amiatinus as a model, bu t also choose to abstract much of the realism out of his figure (note the styalized beard, the stlized drapery, and the complete abstraction of the scribes stool and footstool. This isn't to say the artist of the Lindisfarne Gospels was an inferior artist, and he probably understood quite clearly the techniques of realistic portrayal, he had quite good models available, and even used on in this picture. He simply wasn't interested. Dsmdgold 02:27, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Thank You for answering My question, it kinda been buging Me for a while thanks again.

Categories

An anon user placed this article in Category:Roman Catholic Church art, however, illuminated manuscripts were used well outside the Western Church, and in Islamic and other cultures. I've removed the category. Dsmdgold 02:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Citation

It would be really nice if some citation was added to this article. Many of us struggling college students turn to wikipedia for information on our essays, (when we're not supposed to be using out text books) but many teachers reject Wikipedia's information entirley, calling it completley incorrect and subjective. I defend Wikipedia to no end, but it shall probably never be recognized as legitimate information in colleges (no matter how correct and true to the text the information on this article is). However, I have found a loophole in the "no wikipedia citation" rule, and that is reference not Wikipedia but the citations supplied. Unfortunatly, this article lacks citation, and I now continue to write my research essay on the Illuminated Manuscript without any real reference material. Just a small suggestion! Why do they use illuminated Manuscript in the Bible?

Categorisation

Ok. 29 August 29 2006 someone created the category "New Testament manuscripts" but included some Codices that had Old Testament sections. I thought the category was too specific (and inaccurate in a few cases) so I proposed CfD and created Category:Biblical manuscripts. Once that went through, I went through Category:Manuscripts and moved all of the biblical ones out. While doing this, I also removed the cat "Christian texts" from a lot of these articles, because that article is not for individual manuscripts, but for specific texts. While doing this, I found a number of Gospel Books, so I created that category as well. I saw today, that you had created Category:Illuminated Bibles and I was about to thank you for doing that because Category:Illuminated manuscripts is getting pretty long (and seeing how my work back in September ignored the question of Illuminated vs. regular manuscript for the most part).

I saw the intro text you wrote for "Illuminated Bibles" and thought "why couldn't we just move the category "Gospel Books" into a subcategory of "Illuminated Bibles". But for whatever reason you opposed. Then we have the issue of "Psalters". I figured, we had 3 categories having to do with Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts, it seemed odd to have those subcats interspersed between "Mesoamerican codices" and the stubs and images categories, so I grouped the like ones together into "Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts". I hope what I have done makes sense.

On to "psalters", are there any psalters that are not illuminated? I was confused because "psalters" was a subcat in "illuminated manuscrtips", although now that I look, that moved was only done today by you. If there are any psalter articles that are not illuminated manuscripts, we'll have to change something (after I finish typing this, I'll go and research that myself).

But now that I've been thinking "Illuminated Bibles" seems a little arbitrary. If a manuscript is incomplete, is it considered a "bible"? What if it is so incomplete we don't know if it had originally contained all the books of the bible or not? Well at least now that we have the "judeo-christian illuminated manuscript" category, we have a place to put the few manuscripts that don't exactly fit into the "psalter" "gospel book" or "bible" category (and we can put manuscripts of the church fathers, and other religious manuscripts, if illuminated, in that cat as well.) I'll dig through "Illuminated manuscripts" and see if there are any articles that can be moved up a subcat. -Andrew c 02:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

As I've just written out my view to another editor, I will quote that - and also move both comments to the Illuminated Manuscripts talk page, where the discussion should continue. I said:

Hi, As the main category has become so crowded, I have spent the last couple of evenings moving all the relevant Ms into Cat Gospel Books, cat Illuminated Bibles & Cat Meso-american ill MS. All as sub-cats from the main IM category. I have just finished this when User:Andrew c comes along & sweeps them all (not the Aztecs naturally) into a main sub cat Category:Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts. I feel this is a very bad idea because:

  • 1) most of the remainder in the main category are of course J-C as well, so it is very misleading. Unless he is going to move all them which I doubt, as he set up the Gospel Books cat in September.
  • 2) it gives another stage for the user to have to click through
  • 3) he has also populated the Psalters category, which the creator of that will not like I expect, as some are printed.
  • 4) currently only about 2 I think of the whole JC sub-cat are Hebrew Bibles, the rest are all Christian MS.

I'd be very interested in your views. Johnbod 02:12, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

-On your specific points,

  • 1) yes some of the Psalters are printed (a look at the category would have made that fairly clear I think). The creator of that category is likely to object, which is why I did not populate it.
  • 2) You are certainly wrong if you think there are only a "few manuscripts" left in the main category that are Judeo-Christian. In fact the great majority of them are: prayer-books, books of hours, missals, Hagganaghs, Pericopes, Bedes etc etc. That is one of my main objections to your recategorisation.

I'll move these to the talk page now, but thanks for responding. Johnbod 02:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

On another point you raise, it is usually possible to know fairly certainly if a fragment was intended to be part of a complete Bible or a Gospel Book. In the couple of uncertain cases, I have put them in both categories, and a couple of other are in a sub-cat & still in the main IM cat for similar reasons. Johnbod 02:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Update - If you intend to include and to move all J-C manuscripts to the J-C category, I object much less, but I still think there should only be 2 levels - Gospel Book etc as a straight sub of Illuminated manuscripts, and the rest in "Other J-C manuscripts". Otherwise it becomes a nightmare like parts of Commons. This is a sticking-point for me I think. I understand you may want a single category for your purposes, but you can achieve that by giving the categories another hierarchy under "Biblical manuscripts" or whatever. I am only concerned about the hierarchy under "Illuminated manuscripts" Johnbod 02:58, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I also note the stuff - prayer-books, Bede etc (not that obviously/purely a religious book) etc you are now including in J-C ill. MS goes way beyond the definition of the parent category "Bible Manuscripts". I think you probably ought to discuss these changes at that end too. Johnbod 03:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to propose that Category:Illuminated Bibles be renamed to Category:Illuminated biblical manuscripts to match Category:Biblical manuscripts. Then it will make sense to include Category:Gospel Books in Category:Illuminated Biblical manuscripts. Next, the issue of populating Category:Psalters, I understand how removing the category "Illuminated manuscripts" is controversial. But how is populating the category controversial? I placed articles on Psalters in the category for Psalters. Moving Category:Psalters into "Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts" is also controversial, and I wouldn't mind moving it back to where-ever is most accurate, but Johnbod was the editor who placed it in "Illuminated manuscripts" to begin with, causing my confusion and rash actions (sorry about that). I personally think separating out the Christian texts will be helpful (and if we can create subcats for the Book of hours, and prayer books and other types of manuscripts, that would also be good). And I don't mind doing the footwork for that either, as I already started to do. We can even rename the category to just "Christian illuminated manuscripts" if you want. But if everyone would prefer just keeping all of the Christian texts in the parent category, I won't fight that. The main thing that I would push for is having "Gospel Books" a sub category of "Illuminated biblical manuscripts" (assuming that category gets renamed). Sorry for causing the confusion. And I resent the comment regarding my "very little" work with Category:Gospel Books. It's true I haven't touched it in a significant way since September, but I did the best I could to move as many articles I could find into that cat. Sure I missed some, and I appreciate that you (and others) have kept up the work on the cat, but my initial contribution wasn't insignificant. Anyway, hopefully we can work something out, and sorry again for the confusion. Just curious, was there a prior conversation regarding your recent recategorizing and creation of "Illuminated Bibles" that I missed somewhere?-Andrew c 03:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

this below from my talk page, to keep it all together. i'll have to reply to yours tomorrow - there's certainly a way to keep everyone happy, but lets freeze cat changes while we discuss it. Johnbod 04:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC) Hi!

I've not looked in depth, at the current category situation, and to be honest, will not have time to until Monday at the earliest. However I have thought a great deal about cataloging illuminated manuscripts. I can make a few brief comments.

  • I think that a clear distinction should be made between text and manuscript. The Psalters are a clear example. The printed editions of the Psalter are a fundementally different type of thing than the manuscripts, which, for the most part, are copies of the same basic text (ignoring things like scribal errors), the Vulgate Psalter. However each of the illuminated Psalters is a unique Art Historical monument in its own right. I don't think that things like Bay Psalm Book and the Cathach of St. Columba should be in the same category.
  • I also think that a clear division between illuminated manuscripts and non-illuminated manuscripts should be kept. For example The Stonyhurst Gospel does not have any decoration. It is clearly an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, but is not an illuminated manuscript in any sense of the term. I don't think that it should be included in any category that is sub-category of illuminated manuscripts.
  • I think that the Judeo-Christian manuscript category is a bad idea. To begin with it excludes manuscripts such as the Vergilius Romanus and the Vienna Dioscurides, which are quite important in the history of illuminated manuscripts. Where does on put all of the cool manuscripts of Terence produced in the Middle Ages? What about strictly secular manuscripts, such as those containing the Romance of the Rose? This doesn't even begin to touch on the problem of Islamic manuscripts, which I see as another branch on the same tree as the Medieval manuscripts. (The Meso-American manuscripts are a different tree altogether)
  • I think that a fully devolped category system for manuscripts will feature several branches, including categorization by century, by style, by country of origin, by current location, by text type (and perhaps text), by script, by current location, by creator, and perhaps other categories. I have worked on something of this sort at Commons, and hope to soem day see something of the sort on wikipedia.

These comments have not been as brief as I intended, but I hope you can see where I stand. Sadly, my time for playing with the Wikis is seriously limited these days (and will for at least the next six months), so I can not be a leader on any of these changes, or do much maintenance, but will lend my voice and opinions when I can. Dsmdgold 03:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I will copy this, and my comments (maybe not now) on to the Illuminated manuscripts talk page, where the discussion should continue I think. 04:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I have stopped any cat changes, and will not procede with anything until we have concensus here (work together is always a good motto). Dsmdgold sounds very knowledgable, and brings up a lot of good ideas. However, it sounds like the suggestion to categorize each manuscript based on all those things seems way overboard (important information, but it seems better served in an infobox than as categories). And with your comment about trying to avoid the cat system they have at the commons, we may be agreement here. I disagree about trying to find perfect categories. There is always going to be exceptions to the rule. The vast majority of Gospel Books are illuminated. Looking through the category, we only have two articles that do not say the Books are illuminated, 6th century Italian Gospel Book (British Library, Harley 1775) and Stonyhurst Gospel. I don't feel bad placing "Category:Gospel Books" in an "illuminated" category because the majority of articles are about illuminated manuscripts. Should we remove the category "Iluminated manuscripts" from the Gospel Book article as well? (I say no) Same thing goes for the psalters. We have two articles on printed psalters, and the rest (14 or so) on illuminated manuscripts. Because they are all psalters, they should go in the same category (we don't need an "Illuminated psalter" category due to 2 articles that aren't illuminated). However, were on the tree we place "psalters" is under consideration. I think its ok to be a little imprecise and have the whole psalter sub-category in the illuminated category because the majority fit the bill. Finally, I do not understand the criticism of "Category:Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts". Of course it excludes those texts (Vergilius Romanus, Romance of the Rose, etc), because they are not religious texts. That is the whole point of the category, to seperate the Christian manuscripts (which there are a lot of) from the manuscripts dealing with science, history, art, literature, etc. And again, there is going to be some overlap, but I personally think this sort of seperation/categorization is helpful. Sorry for taking up so much space with my replies.-Andrew c 04:52, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Though I don't know much about the specific topic of manuscripts (and I keep getting distracted by the gorgeous images while I try to sort out what's going on here) I've some experience with categorizing visual art articles on wikipedia and commons. In that light, my comments...

  1. It looks like there's a developing area of "Manuscripts by topic/subject/type" - Christian, Islamic, secular, scientific, etc. - sketch it out, though the commons:Category:Illuminated manuscripts by type looks quite workable. Even if they are categories without much in them, they are mobile, an important attribute of categories, IMO. (by mobile, I mean they can be used in various schema.)
  2. What specifically doesn't work for you about the commons schema? I ask because 1) it works for me. 2) having matching, or at least similar, schemas on commons and wikipedia makes interwiki work much, much easier for both users and editors.
  3. Since there is categorization of Christian/Judeo-Christian works/books (Christian texts), such a sub-category in manuscripts makes it a useful and mobile category.

Thanks for working on this, folks! Working on categorizing is often frustrating, but it sure helps in finding stuff when it's done. [>>sparkit|TALK<<] 16:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments and Proposal I agree with DMS on most points. Some comments:

  • a) For illuminated manuscripts, the distinction between Illuminated Bibles and Gospel Books is key; they are largely from different periods, using different conventions of decoration, and in largely different styles. You must be able to find these immediately off Category:Illuminated manuscripts. Most of the super-famous illuminated manuscripts, that people do school work on, will be Gospel Books - the Book of Kells in particular - and they should not be buried away in a sub-sub-category. There are similar differences with psalters - also containing some very well-known manuscripts. One thing that struck me splitting off the different types of article was how few illuminated Bibles we actually have articles on, which I think is because the Gospel Books, Psalters and Book of Hours are better known. Andrew's proposed hierarchy would put the better-known as sub-categories of the less well-known, for no particular gain that I can see (more on this below).
  • b) Some of the religious MS have significant other aspects as well - History for Bede, Literature for Caedmon
  • c) My problem with the Commons categories at the moment is that their Category:Illuminated manuscripts has multiple sub-categories:

"Illuminated manuscipts by Century / Creator / current location / patron / place of creation / previous owner / style / type

- This would be fine if all were equally populated, and the scheme maintained, but in fact some are virtually empty, whereas others seem fairly complete, but of course you never know, so you always check several if you are looking for a particular manuscript. And they all have at least one layer of sub-categories, often more. Plus of course you may not be sure of many of the exact date/location etc, so have to try a few. It doesn't help that you can rarely be certain which name will be used for a particular manuscript (except the really well-known ones) so can't rely on a search. it's fine for browsing I suppose, but very time-consuming if you're looking for something in particular.

  • d) Proposal - I'll treat the Visual arts and religious aspects seperately.

1) Visual arts side

- are currently the head categories for:

for which I propose these sub-categories (all direct):

- and maybe if needed in the future: Books of Hours, Illuminated Chronicles/Histories, Apocalypses, Virgils, etc. If we did all the ones listed now, the number of pages remaining on the main category would come down to a manageable figure.

As DMS says, the texts in most of these manuscripts are standard and of no interest to Biblical scholarship in the usual sense (Church history maybe). Their main interest is as works of art, as reflected in the 5 visual arts categories among the parents of Cat:Illuminated manuscripts, and their categorisation must reflect this priority.

2) Religious side

- are currently the head categories for:

- which has just been given the sub-cat:

It seems fairly clear to me that, for example, a C14 prayer-book does not fit the parent category of "Biblical manuscripts" and only fits 2 of the 5 grandparent categories - Manuscripts and Christian texts. I don't think this is really enough. There is a case for Category:Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts as a direct sub-category to "manuscripts" or to "Christian texts" but that's about it. Equally the Hebrew Bibles could be, as Leningrad Codex for one already is, pages in Category:Jewish texts, and the individual categories "Illuminated Bibles/gospel Books/Psalters/J-C Other" could be sub-cats of Category:Biblical manuscripts.

If Andrew c really wants to maintain his original hierarchy:

Biblical MS
J-C illuminated MS
Ill Bibles
Gospel Books

that can be done by some parallel categories, but to me it doesn't look a good scheme from the Biblical side POV. Certainly it should not damage the most sensible scheme from the Visual arts aspect.

I therefore suggest we resolve this by:

  • b) The rest of the Christian manuscripts are put there, and the other categories filled.
  • c) Andrew can then, if desired, re-set up Category:Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts to contain the categories he wants (rather than pages, so it will need little maintenance), but it does not touch the illuminated manuscripts category, going just to the Biblical/Christian side. Personally I would be inclined to keep the Hebrew and Christian manuscripts seperate, but thats up to you.

How does this sound? Johnbod 20:17, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Small points: 6th century Italian Gospel Book (British Library, Harley 1775) is in fact illuminated (para 4). The Stonyhurst Gospel isn't, but its leather binding has in effect 2 carpet pages in leatherwork, and is the only remaining original leather binding anything like that old (apart from the mangled remains of the Irish bog psalter) which is why I (I think) added it to the category, and certainly the list, of Illuminated manuscripts. On previous discussions, there was a bit on the IM category talk page, which I was generally putting into action I think. Johnbod 20:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Comment from my talk page - the scheme referred to is one by Sparkit there, which I won't copy over as I think it was meant as an illustration of how to set out a category tree rather than as a suggested scheme per se:
I'm in general agreement with the scheme listed above, but with a few quibbles. It is probally incorrect to think of most of the Psalters as biblical manuscripts, they were devotional and service books. Monks chanted the entire Book of Psalms in regular order. (If I remember correctly it took a week to get through it). The Psalter was also used a private devotional book. Most Psalters from later periods had things other than the Psalms in them, including canticles taken from other parts of the Bible, and extra-biblical prayers, as well as devotional aids such as calendars. The Book of Hours is really an evolution of the Psalter, many of the texts included are Psalms. (There are also transitional books that contain both a "Psalter" and a "Book of Hours". As service books, Psalters also were made with musical notation for the chants, these evolved into some of the later service books, such as the Antiphoners.
The Gospel Books also have some of the same tendancies even early books such as Durrow contain a good amount of extra-biblical material. (Canon Tables, letters of Jerome, the Breves Causae, and the Argumentae). Later the text itsef was reorganized into a "Gospel Lectionary". That is the text were broken up into readings and then arranged in order that they were read through the Church year. (which was not in the order they appeared in the Bible.) Many of the Carolingian Gospel Books are actually "Gospel Lectionaries". In short they are less biblical manuscripts and more litugical manuscripts.
All of that said, until we such time as we have articles sufficiently developed to explain these fine differentiations, and enough manuscript articles to populate a more expansive scheme, then this will work well.
-from dmsgold

Johnbod 19:22, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the category tree I put on Johnbod's talk page was an illustration of how I layout proposed categories for discussion. [>>sparkit|TALK<<] 20:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Your proposal sounds pretty good, but I have a few issues.
As stated above, it seems like adding unnecessary layer to the tree by adding the category "Illumianted Psalters" just because of 2 articles. If this occurs, I imagine category "Psalters" will have 1 subcategory in it and 2 articles in it. But if noting which Psalters are illuminated in the form of a category is important to you, it is some unnecessary layering that I could easily live with.
I would prefer Sparkit's tree over Johnbod's tree. There are so many subcategories dealing with Christian texts, it only makes sense to group them all together in a subcategory. If we are going to have "Islamic illuminated manuscripts" and "Muslim illuminated manuscripts" and "Mesoamerican codices", it seems only logical to instead of having half a dozen Christian specific subcategories mixed in with those more gernearl groups, have simply "Christian illuminated manuscripts" with the Psalters, and gospel books, and biblical illuminated manuscripts and the misc (apoc, book of hours, prayer books, etc) as subcats and articles within.
If we are going to add the extra step to get from psalters to the illuminated ones (because of 2 articles) it makes much more sense to add the extra step from "illuminated manuscripts" to the Christians ones (because of at least 6 subcategories and literally hundreds of articles).
After reading your reply and giving it some though, I guess part of this conflict comes from different perspectives. The classification system that is used by most textual critics (found in Nestle-Aland) divides texts based on Papyri, Uncials, Minuscules, Lectionaries, Language, and Church Father quotation. Some of the most important manuscripts to textual critics are buried within the hierarchy just because they are "illuminated". We'll have texts that are grouped right next to each other in Aland, but in seperate categories because one is a "Gospel Book". Alternatively, we'll have things grouped together in the same cat that Aland splits up because they are in different languages. Perhaps we really do need two categorizing systems. One from the art historian's POV, and one from the biblical scholar's POV. (This is why I was pushing so hard to have "Gospel Book" a sub cat of "Illuminated biblical manuscripts").
We'll forget about the 'manuscript' aspect for now, and try to clear up the issues on the 'illuminated' side. Would you be opposed to having "Gospel Books" "Illuminated Bibles" "Psalters (or Illuminated Psalters)" and all within Category:Christian illumianted manuscripts? Yes, it adds one extra step, but it makes a lot more sense to me. (and we can just rename the Judeo-Christian cat to make things easier, and yes, I'll personally go through and move the necessary texts up one level). The other parts of your proposal (the new categories, etc) all sound good. So really, the only remaining issues I have is should we group the Christian subcategories together or not.-Andrew c 18:52, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok, for Psalters, I would be inclined to agree with you & did attempt this scheme myself (Psalter as sub-cat of Ill ms), which was reverted by the editor who set up Category:Psalter. From what he says, i think dmsgold would agree with him. But there is no extra step, when coming from illuminated ms - "Cat:illuminated psalters" is a sub-cat of Cat:Psalter and of "Cat:Illuminated MS". Though there is coming from Cat:Xtian texts or whatever. Equally you can have a cat:Illuminated Xtian texts, with the types as sub-cats, but this should not be a sub-cat of Cat:Illuminated MS - they should come straight off that. It should come off the "religious" side. Is this a problem?
Sparkit's scheme (as he confirms above) is not a proposal as such, but an illustration of how to set out a proposal.
If, as I can well imagine, some important MS from the textual view are buried within the illuminated ones, then the things to do is too add them to an appropriate Biblical text category - I suppose Category:Biblical manuscripts, which I notice contains several illuminated members, a mixture of the textually important like Codex Amiatinus and those not textually important (I think) like the Fécamp Bible, Parc Abbey Bible, Codex Gigas and the Velislai biblia picta. If this category was added to and cleared out to just contain textually important MS that should do the job. Really we already have the two categorisation schemes, they just need maintaining.
Is this acceptable? Johnbod 19:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry for starting all this mess, and I'm sorry I don't quite get it yet. I do not understand your argument against grouping the like subcategories (Psalters, Gospel Books, Illuminated Bibles, etc) together in their own subcategory? I thought that was the whole purpose of categories. Am I correct in my reading you: since a work like the Book of Kells is one of the most important Illuminated Manuscripts, having one more category of separation from the parent category is unbearable? My personal preference is grouping the like together, and since we have so many subcategories and uncategorized pages dealing with something that can easily be categoried (Christian illuminated manuscripts), I think moving them into their own category (which I had already started to do) clears up the clutter from the parent article, and actually increases user friendliness. -Andrew c 04:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Well we agree that the main category needs clearing out. Essentially, yes I think that all the sub-categories should only be a step away from illuminated manuscripts. Personally I find it very annoying when you have to work through too many layers. There is also the problem here that the names of the articles are not at all consistent - Codex, "Book of" etc are all used for several types. Also many alternate names may be used for the same book - I've turned up one I'd wanted for some time hiding under an unfamiliar name as part of this excercise. So it is already difficult for people to find their way around, and I'm anxious to do what we can to make it as easy as possible, which I think means keeping the layers as few as possible. As I've said, the intermediate layer can certainly be used as another route coming from the Biblical side. Does this cause any problems?
Slightly contrary to what I have said above, there are so many Gospel books that we might want to group them by period - Early, Hiberno-Saxon, Later or something, at some point. If we did that you would have to go through 4 categories to find the Book of Kells, if there was an intermediate Christian/J-C one. Does this seem reasonable? Johnbod 04:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Currently, there are 52 articles in "category:Gospel Books", which I believe is manageable and would see no reason to break the category up yet (but of course there are many gospel books that do not have articles yet, so it may be something we need to do at some point). I'm afraid we don't see eye to eye on this one last point, so having more editors chime in would be helpful to help settle this. I personally think seeing a parent category ("Illuminated manuscripts") with a number of subcategories, some general (Jewish, Muslim, Mesoamerican) and some topical (Psalters, Gospel Books, Illuminated Bibles) mixed together is confusing, and I wouldn't mind having the general category (Christian illuminated manuscripts) one step between the parent and the articles. I no longer want to see "Gospel Books" as a subcat of "Illuminated Bibles", I no longer care if "Illuminated Psalters" is created to accommodate 2 articles on printed Psalters. It's just this one last category I would like to see categorize the Christian subcats. So anyone else want to throw their hat into the mix?
As for progress, would it be OK if I kept moving Christian articles out of "Illuminated manuscripts" and into "Judeo-Christian illuminated manuscripts" with the knowledge that it will one day soon be renamed either "Christian illuminated manuscripts" and the subcats kept in, or renamed "Christian illuminated manuscripts (other)" and the subcats pulled out into the parent. I don't mean to be rash, but we both agree that the large amount of miscellaneous Christian manuscripts are crowding the parent article and, with either proposal, need to be moved.
As for the religious side of things, I think a new categorization structure needs to be implemented off of Category:Biblical manuscripts, such as creating category:uncials, category:minuscules, category:papyri, etc, to help categorize the most important textual manuscripts (so you don't have to dig through the 'illuminated' side of things just to find Vaticanus). However, this proposal is probably premature because there are only 41 articles in "Biblical manuscripts". I'll have to sit down some day when I have time with my Nestle-Aland in hand and see exactly what we have articles on to determine if new categories are appropriate or not. What do others have to say about the non-'illuminated' side of these biblical manuscripts?-Andrew c 22:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
1st para - ok let's see what others say, if there is anyone still with us. 2nd para - yes absolutely. I will do a bit & on other parts of the scheme. 3rd para - This seems sensible, though a classification by language might be another way to go - it's not my area; I would think best raised on other pages. I've ended up with Talk:Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52 on my watchlist, and that seems a responsive page. Johnbod 23:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
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