PECIA. - As a term in medieval book production, originally it denoted the entire hide of a calf or other animal, tanned for writing purposes (parchment), or the sheet cut from it with the margins shaved; later it came to mean the fascicle formed by folding the whole sheet into four, similar to the modern printed sheet of a quarto volume, and by extension, the loose fascicles of a book, whatever its format and number of leaves, even if made of paper. In ancient inventories of manuscripts, when a book was not bound, the number of p. of which it was composed was usually indicated.
A particular function was assumed by the p. in university book production (13th and 14th centuries). To guarantee the fidelity and integrity of the texts required for teaching, the stationers had to possess for each text an exemplar approved and corrected by the professors; and this standard text was in loose, numbered p., which were lent out one at a time to copyists so that, once work began, simultaneous copying of the same work could be carried out by many people. Thus the p. became the basic unit in manuscript copying, and also a unit of measurement for the payment of copyists, according to the tariffs fixed by the universities themselves. Moreover, to give the client greater security, the copyist often marked in the margin the beginning or end of individual p., indicating their progressive number: in the absence of such marks, the expert eye can detect the start of p. from slight variations in handwriting and ink or from other accidental clues. In this way, from the number of p. and their respective beginnings, manuscripts deriving from the same exemplar can easily be identified.
Recent studies by J. Destrez (d. 1950) allow the observation of p. to be considered fundamental in textual criticism of works of university circulation. Among other things, he determined that in major centres (Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Naples) p. were marked differently; only one exemplar at a time circulated in the same place, and it had a different number of p. each time. It is thus possible to trace the diffusion of a text and ascertain the date and provenance of individual manuscripts, supplementing strictly palaeographical criteria.
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). (finis) xxxvi [pecie] se (cunde) (paratus)». That relating to the gloss, on the outer right margin at the level of lines 22-24 of the gloss, says: «(finis). xxxiii [pecie] se (cunde) (partis)». Decretum of Gratian with the gloss of Bartholomew of Brescia and scholia of various authors. Manuscript of the 14th century, 2nd half - Vatican Library, cod. Urb. lat. 61, f. 248.