The Rules Followed by the Editors of the Text Found in the Codex Vaticanus

Abstract

All scribes followed rules in general. That would be what they learnt from their masters during their apprenticeship: how to sit and hold the pen; how to attend to the manuscript they were copying whether by eye or by ear; how long to write, when to break, and for how long; the height of the letters, the length of the line, the number of lines to a page. There must have been rules about spelling, rules like ‘Correct spelling mistakes’, or ‘Copy the spelling of the manuscript and do not attempt uniformity.’