Mastodawn

Project Gutenberg Aug 17, 2025

Pola of Rome: The Remarkable Story of a Medieval Jewish Scribe

Pola of Rome defied expectations in more ways than one: not only was she a professional scribe in the late thirteenth century, she was a Jewish woman working in a field dominated by male Christian clerics. Her surviving colophons offer a rare glimpse into the intellectual life, family networks, & self-perception of a medieval woman who made her living through the written word.

By Cait Stevenson

https://www.medievalists.net/2025/08/medieval-jewish-scribe/

#colophons

Pola of Rome: The Remarkable Story of a Medieval Jewish Scribe - Medievalists.net

Pola of Rome defied expectations in more ways than one: not only was she a professional scribe in the late thirteenth century, she was a Jewish woman working in a field dominated by male Christian clerics. Her surviving colophons offer a rare glimpse into the intellectual life, family networks, and self-perception of a medieval woman who made her living through the written word.

Medievalists.net

Jamey Walters Aug 23, 2023

More fun with deciphering Indian place names in #Syriac #colophons, this time with a side of Syriac #grammar

This #manuscript, APSTCH PIRA 00035, was copied by ܡܫܡܫܢܐ ܙܟܪܝܐ (Deacon Zechariah) who was a monk in ܕܝܪܝܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܬܐܘܡܐ ܫܠܝܚܐ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܕܒܐܛܝܟܠ: the monastery of St. Thomas the Apostle ... dbeʾṭíkal.

I transliterated the place name because that's the interesting part. Almost always, when you see the two letters ܕ and ܒ in the context of naming where something is, first instinct is to read them both as proclitics: ܕ as the relative pronoun "which" and ܒ as the preposition "in." So: the monastery "which [is] in"... and here you would expect the name of a village/area.

So, I start googling variations of the spelling "etikal", and end up with very little results. So, instead I do a google maps search for "St. Thomas monastery" or "Dayara Mar Thomas" just to see if anything pops up. One result catches my attention.

Jamey Walters Aug 16, 2023

To the surprise of no one who works with #manuscripts, #colophons can be such a rich source of all kinds of information. Take this manuscript--APSTCH AYMA 00014 (which I posted a picture from yesterday)--for example. This image is the final page, with the colophon on the right surrounded by a decorative border. There are a few interesting things about this colophon that I will thread here below.