PALIMPSEST. — A word taken from the Greek language, composed of the adverb πάλλυ ("again") and the verb φάω ("to clean, wash away, scrape, shave"), used to indicate a writing material, predominantly from antiquity (whether parchment or papyrus), from which a pre-existing writing has been erased with pumice and a scraper or washed away with a sponge. The purpose of this procedure was to allow the reuse of the writing material, so much so that the word "palimpsest" was transferred to the new written work.
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da — Autograph manuscript (1555–89) — Rome, basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano, Archivio musicale, cod. 39, f. 25.)
The term *codex rescriptus* is often used as a synonym for palimpsest, though it actually encompasses a different concept, since it presupposes an entire volume made up entirely of leaves from which a previous writing has been scraped away. By contrast, the term palimpsest can also refer to cases where only some leaves were written on a first occasion; indeed, the term is legitimate even when it concerns isolated parts of writing on a scraped leaf, as well as in the case of documents rather than codices.
Today, one may well ask whether the system followed by medieval scribes in erasing writing from codices and documents—materials which modern scholars guard with such care—was not highly questionable. Without doubt, the practice stands as an indictment of those who resorted to it, but it has many mitigating factors. First, it must be observed that the price of parchment, especially of good quality, was extremely high in the Middle Ages; thus, faced with writings of any content that had no real value at the time, scribes were easily induced to destroy the pre-existing work in order to reuse the parchment, provided it was particularly durable. Second, it must be taken into account that ancient writings, which were mostly continuous, had become difficult to read once the practice of separating words from one another had come into use; those who erased them acted in the belief that they were eliminating useless texts. Sometimes, moreover, the codices in question contained material that seemed outdated (collections of laws no longer in force, pre-Gerominian Latin versions of the Bible, liturgical texts no longer in use). Absolutely unfounded, however, is the accusation that the destruction was aimed solely at texts by classical authors.
On the other hand, the use of palimpsests is very ancient. Cicero mentions them in a letter to Trebatius; the *Digest* explicitly refers to new and already-used, scraped writing material, and declares both valid for documentation. It was precisely the sanctioning of this principle that fostered the trade in scraped parchment, providing 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 pay due attention to palimpsests. Unfortunately, the exploration of the underlying text at that time was conducted using chemical reagents (nutgall, Giobetti’s tincture, ammonium salts, etc.), which sometimes—but not always—made the text legible by acting on the ink residues in the grooves left by the writing tool on the parchment.
Palimpsest — The palimpsest text is of the *Vetus Latina* (Dan. 8:12–20) from the Würzburg codex MP. th. f. 64 (5th century).
This procedure, besides severely damaging the writing material, also made it impossible, for codices already subjected to chemical action, to employ more modern methods based on photographing the palimpsest using ultraviolet rays. This system, which has been widely and fruitfully used especially by the Benedictine monks of the Archabbey of Beuron, is entirely harmless and exploits the phenomenon of fluorescence produced in animal skin when exposed to ultraviolet rays: in this way, the dark strokes of the letters stand out strongly against the background, more pronounced for the second writing and less so for the original due to the scraping, achieving a contrast of tones that, when fixed on a photographic plate, allows both texts to be read. It goes without saying, however, that reading requires long and patient work, since individual letters do not always retain their strokes intact, and the lines of the first writing, if the erasure was very thorough, appear as very faint shadows.
In the collection *Codices Latini Antiquiores* by E. A. Lowe, 132 palimpsests are recorded in the five volumes published so far, most of them explored with chemical reagents, though fortunately, in many cases, only in part.
The systematic study of palimpsests was initiated by A. Mai (q.v.), who in 1815 published many unpublished works by pagan and Christian authors recovered from palimpsests in the Ambrosian and Vatican libraries. In 1816, B. G. Niebuhr discovered the *Institutiones* of Gaius in the Verona codex cap. 15, formerly 13 (5th century), published in 1824. The same Niebuhr published in 1820 fragments of the *Fabulae* of Hyginus and Cicero’s *Pro Fonteio* from the codex Vat. Pal. lat. 24 (the same manuscript also contains fragments of Aulus Gellius’s *Noctes Atticae*); in 1823, passages from the Spanish poet Merobaudes from the codex Sangall. 908. In 1828, F. Blume published passages from Livy from the Verona codex cap. 40, formerly 38; in 1850, Fr. I. Mone published the Gallican Masses from the codex Aug. CCLIII; in 1857, A. F. Pertz extracted fragments of the *History of the Roman Republic* by Licinianus from an Egyptian "trisestos" (a codex rewritten three times); in 1871, E. Ranke made known passages from the *Vetus Latina* of the Pentateuch and the Prophets from the codex Wirceburg. M. ph. f. 64; in 1879, P. Krüger published the *Fragmenta Taurinensia* of the *Codex Theodosianus* from the codex Taurin. Naz. A II 2 (other fragments are in the codex Vat. lat. 5766); in 1887, H. Winnefeld published the so-called *Sortes Sangallenses* from the codex Sangall. 908.
In the 20th century, improved technical methods have expanded the investigation of palimpsests and multiplied the publications of texts recovered from them. Notable in this regard is the series *Texte und Arbeiten* (*Beiträge zur Ergründung des älteren lateinischen christlichen Schrifttums und Gottesdienste*), published by the Palimpsest Institute of the Archabbey of Beuron, where the following have been edited or studied: a text of the Prophets in the Vulgate (1917), a Gregorian Sacramentary (1919), a pericope from the Gospels (1923), another Sacramentary (1925), fragments of the Latin text of the sapiential books (1928), passages from St. Paul and 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), and liturgical texts from the Sacramentary, the Comes, and the Capitular incorporated into the Missal. Other studies have appeared in the *Revue bénédictine* (1924–26), the *Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft* (1923 and 1933), the *Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen* (1917–18, 1926, 1941), the *Ephem. Liturgicae* (1940), *Biblica* (1938), the *Anzeiger der Akad. der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philos.-hist. Klasse* (1942), and the *Sitzungsberichte der österreichischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, Philos.-hist. Klasse* (1948). — See plate XLVI.