8 - Orbits

Summary

Chapter 8 shifts the focus of the argument away from the content of the prosopographical texts and toward the physical manuscript copies of them. While creating a relational database of extant manuscripts of the prosopographies, I learned that most of the surviving copies date to well after the end of the tradition itself. As a result, I take the argument well beyond the Middle Period. Based on manuscript evidence, I argue that the circulation of these manuscripts from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries accounts for the survival of the prosopographical corpus well beyond the end of the tradition itself. But manuscripts did not move alone. The combined effort of people and books, moving in tandem along often-elliptical circuits, allowed the prosopographical tradition to continue. I call these circuits of movement the "orbits" of the written network. Individuals or texts would often return to their point of origin, whether in their original form or as a relative, a student, or a textual vestige. The movement described within the texts (the written network) found its complement in the movement of the manuscripts and people along these orbital circuits.