Category talk:Miscellany manuscripts

Delete?

I'm thinking this cat is superfluous, and should at best be merged with Category:Other. — Xiong熊talk* 02:11, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

I am working on a sub-categorization scheme for Category:Illuminated manuscripts. One of the sub-categories I have created is Category:Manuscripts by type. This category has in turn various sub-categories of different type of medieval manuscripts, such as Bestiaries, Psalters, and Books of Hours. One "type" of medieval manuscript is the Miscellany. Medieval book owners, and later collectors had a tendency to bind together in a single manuscript texts that were only loosely related, or completely unrelated. These manuscripts are known as "Miscellanies", hence the category. It is my intention to populate it with sub-categories, one for each manuscript. Each sub-category will contain all available images from that manuscript. Dsmdgold 02:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

If I understand you aright, "Miscellany" is then a distinct name given to a subtype of medieval manuscript by the authors themselves -- that is, it is not a modern invention at all. This seems to me to be an excellent defense of the category.

I might suggest that you distinguish the category in some way as belonging to the family of manuscripts.

• By way of example, I point to several new categories I am planning for Playing cards. I intend that there be a subcat into which all cards of rank Five be placed, from whatever deck and suit. Shall I call that Category:Five? It might lead to some confusion. Instead, my scheme envisions Five.

You might consider something such as Category:Miscellanies (manuscript). If you continue this distinction, all of your categories will show up clearly as being related to the main topic.

If you journey to the Pump, you'll see my attack on Other, which is what led to my query. You see why my attention was drawn to this cat. Thank You. — Xiong熊talk* 06:24, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

Well not really, Medieval people, for the most part, did not categorize manuscripts at all. Very little need for it when a large library had only couple of hundred codices. However, when the early collectors in 16th and 17th century started to amass large libraries of medieval manuscripts, they started using the term Miscellany to describe these books. I suspect that the original owners of most of these manuscripts thought of them as "my book". (It was often the only book they owned.) I suppose the category could have a better title, it comes from being too close to the subject I guess. As far as I know, the only meaning of the word "Miscellany" is a collection of various texts, usually in the form of a bound book. But to avoid this confusion in the future, I will move the category to Category:Miscellany manuscripts (which has the added benefit of differentiaying these from printed Miscellanies) and will be less likely to have people confuse Miscellanies, (a plural noun) and miscellaneous (an adjective). Dsmdgold 13:50, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's a solution. (I wikified your comment to point to the new cat.) Thanks for working with me on this. — Xiong熊talk* 22:47, 2005 August 29 (UTC)