Editing Palimpsest (section)

== Recovery ==
A number of ancient works have survived only as palimpsests.{{NoteTag|The most accessible overviews of the transmission of texts through the cultural bottleneck are Leighton D. Reynolds (editor), in ''Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics'', where the texts that survived, fortuitously, ''only'' in palimpsest may be enumerated, and in his general introduction to textual transmission, ''Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature'' (with N.G. Wilson).}} Vellum manuscripts were over-written on purpose mostly due to the dearth or cost of the material. In the case of Greek manuscripts, the consumption of old [[codex|codices]] for the sake of the material was so great that a synodal decree of the year 691 forbade the destruction of manuscripts of the [[Scriptures]] or the [[church father]]s, except for imperfect or injured volumes. Such a decree put added pressure on retrieving the vellum on which secular manuscripts were written. The decline of the vellum trade with the introduction of paper exacerbated the scarcity, increasing pressure to reuse material.

Texts most susceptible to being overwritten included obsolete legal and liturgical ones, sometimes of intense interest to the historian. Early Latin translations of Scripture were rendered obsolete by Jerome's [[Vulgate]]. Texts might be in foreign languages or written in unfamiliar scripts that had become illegible over time. The codices themselves might be already damaged or incomplete. [[Christian heresy|Heretical]] texts were dangerous to harbor—there were compelling political and religious reasons to destroy texts viewed as heresy, and to reuse the media was less wasteful than simply to burn the books.

Vast destruction of the broad [[quarto]]s of the early centuries took place in the period which followed the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]], but palimpsests were also created as new texts were required during the [[Carolingian Renaissance]]. The most valuable [[Latin]] palimpsests are found in the codices which were remade from the early large folios in the 7th to the 9th centuries. It has been noticed that no entire work is generally found in any instance in the original text of a palimpsest, but that portions of many works have been taken to make up a single volume. An exception is the ''Archimedes Palimpsest'' (see below). On the whole, early medieval scribes were thus not indiscriminate in supplying themselves with material from any old volumes that happened to be at hand.