Sheet Collation
'Sheet Collation' displays the single folio leaves, now mounted in paper frames, as sheets in the original gatherings, or quires, of the Southwick Codex and the Nowell Codex. Each collation includes a diagram of the quire, with descriptions of each sheet, and thumbnail images of the folios forming the sheets of the quire.
Sheet and quire signatures drawn with a rudimentary pencil in the Southwick Codex reveal the original construction of its gatherings.
Where they survive, quire signatures appear as roman numerals centered in the lower margins of the first folio of each quire. Sheet signatures, if they survive, are in the lower left or lower right corners of the first four folios, recto, and are signed alphabetically a through d and numerically, according to the quire number.
Both signatures, a6 and VI, survive in the lower margin of fol. 41r, the first sheet of the sixth gathering.
Notes on quire signatures occur beneath their diagrams, while notes on sheet signatures occur beneath the relevant thumbnails.
Because there are no sheet or quire signatures, it is more difficult to determine the original gatherings of the Nowell Codex. There are other fairly reliable means, however, to determine them.
Two gatherings in Alexander's Letter to Aristotle, for instance, are still transposed in the codex, as their double reference numbers indicate.
One Beowulf gathering is anomalously ruled for 22 lines, helping to identify the construction of gatherings ruled for 21 lines that flank it. And the Judith fragment survives in a single four-sheet gathering.
These and the remaining gatherings can be further analyzed by an exhaustive study of the hair/flesh arrangement of the folios. The process shows whether pairs of leaves presumed to be two halves of an original sheet are in fact conjugate. The Judith fragment, like the last two gatherings of Beowulf, has hair outside all sheets:
In the diagrams, leaves with hair side facing out are shown with a dark line, while leaves with the flesh side facing out are shown with a light line. When conjugate, the leaves are joined as sheets. Nonconjugate leaves (or half-sheets) are detached in the diagrams.
In this example, the hair/flesh pattern of the second Beowulf gathering shows that a three-sheet gathering was augmented to a normal quire by inserting two single leaves.
Viewing the Collated Sheets
After selecting 'Sheet Collation', choose a text and then a quire button to open a diagram of the quire and thumbnails of the folios comprising it.
In the second gathering of the Nowell Codex, fols. 101-106, Wonders of the East ends on fol. 103v and Alexander's Letter begins on fol. 104r:
Clicking a folio number on the diagram highlights the sheet it belongs to by bracketing its description with small blocks.
Click the description to open low resolution images of front and back views of the sheet.
Click any thumbnail or any low resolution image to access a high resolution image of the folio.
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