Early medieval manuscripts were almost always parchment/vellum codices, normally consisting of gatherings that are often also called quires. From an early date the quires to be assembled were marked with a numeral or a letter, which helped assure that the gatherings would be bound in the proper order. Insofar as I know, such quire marks are a feature peculiar to the codex form, since rolls would never be in danger of incorrect assembly. This chapter addresses the form, and especially the decoration, of the quire marks in some early medieval Latin manuscripts, and possible analogues for these marks used as verse dividers in early manuscripts of the Qur’an.

Hitherto, decorated quire marks have received almost no attention from scholars, and are seldom reproduced or even described. Maria Luisa Agati in her 2009 book on comparative codicology mentioned that some were decorated, ‘ornate con motive decorative o figurali’ (ornamented with decorative or figural motifs), but says nothing further. Mildred Budny notes that some quire marks had decorative frames, which ‘contribute to the enduring mise-en-page of the book’, but gives no examples or further discussion. Indeed, I know of no study of quire marks at all, not a single article or book chapter devoted to them, whether decorated or not.

An Eugippius manuscript in Paris, BnF, lat. 2110, penned in half uncial script, provides good examples of the simplest type of quire mark, just a number. The marks consist of a letter q or Q – an abbreviation for quaternion – followed by a Roman numeral. Although in earlier Latin manuscripts these quire marks were often in the bottom right of the last leaf of the quire, by the seventh century they were most commonly located in the centre of the lower margin. Earlier manuscripts had placed the quire number elsewhere (in the earliest manuscripts from the fifth century it was often in the inner margin), where it was less obtrusive. Sometimes a letter would be used rather than a numeral. In the Eugippius manuscript the quire mark was in some instances associated with significant decoration, for example a finispiece for a section of text, but the association of decoration and quire mark is in that instance merely a coincidence. However, already by the sixth, or at latest seventh, century the quire marks sometimes receive wholly unnecessary decorative motifs.