PECIA. - As a term of the medieval book industry, it originally meant the whole skin of a calf or other animal tanned for writing use (parchment) or the sheet itself obtained from it by trimming the margins; later it came to denote the quire formed by the whole sheet folded in four, similar to the modern printed sheet of a quarto volume, and, by extension, the loose quires of a book, whatever the format and the number of sheets, even if of paper. In ancient inventories of manuscripts, if the book was not bound, the number of the p. composing it is usually indicated.

The p. acquired a particular function in university book production (13th and 14th centuries). To guarantee the fidelity and integrity of the texts needed for study, the stationarii had to have for each text an exemplar approved and corrected by the professors; and this standard text was in loose and numbered p., which were lent to the copyists one at a time so that, once the work was begun, the simultaneous copying of the same work by many people could be carried out. Thus the p. became a basic element in the copying of manuscripts, and also a unit of measure for the payment of copyists, in the tariffs fixed by the universities themselves. Moreover, as a further guarantee for the commissioner, the copyist often marked in the margin the beginning or the end of the individual p., indicating their progressive number: in the absence of such marks, the experienced eye recognizes the beginning of the p. from slight variations of handwriting and ink or from other incidental clues. In this way, from the number of the p. and their respective beginnings, the manuscripts that derive from the same exemplar are easily recognized.

The recent studies of J. Destrez (d. 1950) allow the observation of the p. to be considered fundamental in the textual criticism of works of university diffusion. Among other things he determined that in the great centers (Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Naples) the p. were marked in different ways; only one exemplar at a time was in circulation in the same place and it had each time a different number of p. It is thus possible to follow the diffusion of a text and to ascertain the date and provenance of individual manuscripts as an aid to strictly paleographic criteria.

Bibliography

BIBL.: J. Destrez, La p. dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle, Paris 1935 (with 36 plates). Reservations and observations were nevertheless expressed in numerous reviews indicated in G. Battelli, Lesioni di paleografia, 3rd ed., Vatican City 1940, p. 221.

Giulio Battelli

PECIA. - The p. relating to the text, which is read on the left margin at the level of lines 13-15 from the bottom of the 1st column of the text, says: «cor(rectum). (fima) XXXVI (pècie) se(cunde) (parris)». That relating to the gloss, on the outer right margin, at the level of lines 22-24 of the gloss, says: «(fima). XXIII. (pècie) se(cunde) (parris)». Lucretum of Gratian with the gloss of Bartolomeo da Brescia and scholia of various authors. Manuscript of the 14th century, 2nd half - Vatican Library, cod. Urb. lat. 61, f. 248.(fol. Enc. Celli.)

@incollection{ec9_pecia, author = {Battelli, Giulio}, title = {Pecia}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {1045--1046}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pecia} }

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