Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Ana Gómez Rabal, Jacqueline Hamesse, and Marta Pavon Ramirez's collective work is part of the Textes et Études du Moyen Âge series, sponsored by the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales (FIDEM). This series is dedicated to sharing the critical reflection of the European congress on medieval studies. This publication focuses on the findings of the 2017 colloquium of FIDEM celebrated in Barcelona.

For the past decades, the interest in studying manuscripts has increased, not only from philological, codicological, or paleographical perspectives but also from other disciplines and methodologies such as the history of art and the digital humanities. This volume consists of the work of six experts in different disciplines but with one common object of study: the terms and vocabulary used to describe different elements of manuscripts.

Mercè Puig Rodríguez-Escalona, "El laberinto de los libros y sus nombres: Procedimientos denominativos en la Alta Edad Media," presents to the reader some of the different problems regarding how written works were named or referred to in medieval sources when reconstructing the circulation of these in the Middle Ages. Her conclusions are based on the study of Catalan charters dated between the ninth century and the eleventh century. Some of the problems she identifies in these charters are forged documents, copying errors that could lead to the deformation and corruption of terms, not only in graphical terms but also phonetically, morphologically, and sometimes becoming ghost words (mots fantasmes) (8). How works were named in these charters often varied. In many cases they were referred to by both author and title, in others only by one of them. Sometimes they could be mentioned by its incipit and on other occasions as a collection. Antonomasia and typologies (canon, psalterium, martyrologium, etc.) also were forms in which books were named in these charters. Lastly, the scribe's criteria could also have led to a way to name a work. She compares this [End Page 292] naming process with a labyrinth that needs to be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Pere J. Quetglas Nicolau's contribution, "Para problemas, los colores. Variación e innovación en la terminología cromática de la latinidad altomedieval hispánica," explains how the Latin lexicon of color was not consistent in the Iberian Peninsula during the high Middle Ages. His work focuses on the regions of Catalonia, Galicia, and León, after analyzing original sources gathered in wellknown collections such as COLDOCAT (Corpus Documentale Latinum Cataloniae), CODOLGA (Corpus Documentale Latinum Gallaeciae), and LELMAL (Lexicon Latinitatis Medii Aevi Regni Legionis). Quetglas Nicolau establishes that the names of colors in these regions more or less derived from adjectives of the following nine categories: equids and bovines; other animals; orchards; tools and objects made of metals or wood; textiles and leather; garments, including linens, overcoats, and vestments; landforms; and finally others. How colors were named depending on the regions, and even period, could differ. Sometimes the adjective used to name color in another region could be used to name an animal or object. For example, the adjective argentus could either mean "of silver color" or "made of silver." The names of colors were not strangers to the deformation and corruption of the graphical terms; for example, prefixes were used to establish different tonalities. How colors were named in the Latin sources of these three regions varied greatly, and establishing an exact identification for them is an important matter that at the same time will be quite difficult to solve.

In "Reflexiones sobre terminología codicológica en España," Elena E. Rodríguez Diaz treats the codicology terms used in Spanish to describe manuscripts and codices. According to her, many of these have been adopted from the book crafts and other...