Cards›Knowledge

Codex

Ancient manuscript generally taking the form of the modern book: bound leaves of paper or parchment with information inscribed on both faces, attached at a center fold. Precursor of the modern book.

The codex (pl.: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format, of a stack of pages bound at one edge. However, the term codex is usually reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper. By convention, the term is also used for any Aztec codex (although the earlier examples do not actually use the codex format), Maya codices and other pre-Columbian American manuscripts. Library practices have led to many European manuscripts having "codex" as part of their usual name, as with the Codex Gigas, while most do not. At least in the Western world, the main predecessor to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll (also of vellum, parchment or papyrus), which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. Concertina-style codices made of fibre-based paper were also developed in Tang dynasty China no later than the 9th century. This practice later spread to Heian Japan through Buddhist exchange, where they were called orihon. The ancient Romans developed the form from wax tablets. The gradual replacement of the scroll by the codex has been called the most important advance in book making before the invention of the printing press. The codex transformed the shape of the book itself, and offered a form that has lasted ever since. The spread of the codex is often associated with the rise of Christianity, which early on adopted the format for Christian texts, such as patristic writings, liturgical texts, and the Bible. First described in the 1st century of the Common Era, when the Roman poet Martial praised its convenient use, the codex achieved numerical parity with the scroll around 300 CE, and had completely replaced it throughout what was by then a Christianized Greco-Roman world by the 6th century.