PALIMPSEST. - A word taken from the Greek language, composed of the adverb πάλιν (= "again") and the verb φαίνω (= "to clean, wash away, shave, scrape"), to indicate a writing material, predominantly of ancient times (whether parchment or papyrus is of no importance), from which a pre-existing writing has been scraped off with pumice and a scraper or washed away with a sponge. The purpose of this procedure is to allow a new use of the writing material already employed, so much so that the word p. was transferred to the new work written [upon it].
As a synonym of p., the expression codex rescriptus is often used, which in reality includes a different concept, inasmuch as it presupposes in itself an entire volume made up integrally of leaves from which a previous writing has been scraped, whereas one can speak of a p. even when only some leaves were already written a first time; indeed the term is legitimate even when it concerns isolated portions of writing penned on a scraped leaf, as also in the case of documents and not of codices.
It is fair today to ask whether the system followed by medieval writers of erasing the writing from codices and documents that the modern scholar guards with such care was not highly questionable. Without doubt the procedure is an indictment of those who resorted to it, but it has many mitigating circumstances. First of all it must be observed that the price of parchment, especially if of good quality, was in the Middle Ages extremely high: so that, faced with writings of any content whatsoever, which at the moment had no real value, one was easily induced to destroy the pre-existing work in order to use the parchment again, when it proved particularly resistant. Secondly, one must take into account that ancient writings, mostly continuous, had become difficult to read once the practice of separating one word from another had come into use; whoever erased them therefore acted in the conviction of eliminating a useless text. At times, moreover, these were codices whose content seemed by then superseded (collections of laws no longer in force, pre-Jerome Latin versions of the Bible, liturgical texts out of use). Absolutely groundless, in any case, is the accusation that the destruction was directed only at texts of classical authors.
On the other hand, the recourse to palimpsests is very ancient: Cicero speaks of it in a letter to Trebatius; in the Digest there is express mention of writing material new and already used and scraped, and both are declared valid for documentation. It was precisely the sanctioning of this principle that favored the trade in scraped parchment, offering a means of speculation that is not the least cause of the destruction of so many ancient works.
Only in relatively recent times, between the 17th and 18th centuries, did scholars begin to give palimpsests the attention they deserved. Unfortunately the exploration of the first writing was done in those times using chemical reagents (gallnut, Gioberti's tincture, ammonium sulfide, etc.) which made it sometimes (not always) legible by acting on the residues of ink that had settled in the grooves produced on the parchment by the writing instrument.
Such a procedure, besides seriously damaging the writing material, has also made it impossible, for codices already subjected to chemical action, to resort to the more modern methods, based on photographing the p. through ultraviolet rays. This system, which has been widely and fruitfully employed especially by the Benedictine monks of the archabbey of Beuron, is entirely harmless and exploits the phenomenon of fluorescence that animal skin attains when subjected to the action of ultraviolet rays: in this way the dark tracing of the letters stands out strongly against the background, more marked for the second writing, less marked for the original one because of the scraping, obtaining a contrast of tones which, fixed on the photographic plate, allows the reading of both writings. It goes without saying that the reading nevertheless requires long and patient work, because the individual letters do not always preserve their tracing intact and the lines of the first writing, if the erasure has been very intense, appear as very faint shadows.
In the collection of E. A. Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, there are registered, in the 5 volumes published so far, 132 palimpsests, for the most part explored with chemical reagents, but fortunately, in many cases, only for a few leaves.
The methodical study of palimpsests was begun by A. Mai (v.) who, in 1815, brought to light many unpublished works of pagan and Christian authors drawn from the palimpsests of the Ambrosiana and the Vaticana. To 1816 dates the discovery, by B. G. Niebuhr, of the Institutiones of Gaius in the cod. Veronese cap. 15, formerly 13 (5th cent.), published in 1824. The same Niebuhr published in 1820 fragments of the Fabulae of Hyginus and of the Pro Fonteio of Cicero from the cod. Vat. Pal. lat. 24 (in the same manuscript there are also fragments of the Noctes Atticae of Gellius), in 1823 passages of the Spanish poet Merobaudes from the cod. Sangall. 908. In 1828 F. Blume brought to light passages of Titus Livy from the cod. Veronese cap. 40, formerly 38; in 1850 Fr. I. Mone published the Gallican Masses from the cod. Aug. CCLIII; in 1857 A. F. Pertz drew fragments of the History of the Roman Republic of Licinianus from an Egyptian "trisestus" (a codex written over three times); in 1871 E. Ranke made known passages of the Vetus latina of the Pentateuch and the Prophets from the cod. Wirceburg. Mp. th. f. 64 a; in 1879 P. Krüger published the Fragmenta Taurinensis of the Codex Theodosianus from the cod. Taurin. Naz. A II 2 (other fragments are in the cod. Vat. lat. 5766); in 1887 H. Winnefeld brought to light the so-called Sortes Sangallenses from the cod. Sangall. 908.
In the 20th century perfected technical means have broadened the investigation of palimpsests and multiplied the publications of texts derived from them. Noteworthy in this regard is the series Texte und Arbeiten (Beiträge zur Ergründung des älteren lateinischen christlichen Schrifttums und Gottesdienstes) published by the Palimpsest-Institut of the archabbey of Beuron, where there have been edited or studied a text of the Prophets in the Vulgate (1917), a Gregorian Sacramentary (1919), a pericope of the Gospels (1923), another Sacramentary (1925), fragments of the Latin text of the wisdom books (1928), passages of St. Paul and of the Psalms (1928), a liturgical text (1930), the oldest text of the Vulgate (1931), a Psalter (1933), the oldest liturgical book of the Latin Church (1936), liturgical texts of the Sacramentary, of the Comes and of the Capitulary that were incorporated into the Missal. Other studies have appeared in the Revue bénédictine (1924-26), in the Jahrb. für Liturgiewissenschaft (1923 and 1933), in the Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen (1917-18, 1926, 1941), in the Ephem. Liturgicae (1940), in Biblica (1938), in the Anzeiger der Akad. der Wissenschaft, in Wien. Philos.-hist. Klasse (1942), in the Sitzungsber. der österreich. Akad. der Wissenschaft. Philos.-hist. Klasse (1948). - See plate XLVI.
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Albano Dold