"This object was in common use in medieval libraries, even though very
few survive today. It’s a bookmark - and a smart one for that matter. As
with our own bookmarks, it tells you where you are in the book: the
rope was attached to the binding and placed between two pages. The
reader subsequently pulled down the marker along the rope to the line
where he had stopped reading. Since an open medieval book often
presented four text columns, the reader then turned the disk to indicate
in which column he had left off. In this case we read “4” in medieval
Arabic numerals - the column on the far right. So this tiny piece of
parchment marks it all: page, column and line."
Text and image (cropped for size) via
Erik Kwakkel.
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