Talk:Speculum Humanae Salvationis

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A fact from Speculum Humanae Salvationis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 4 July 2007.

[edit] Bestselling?

The word "bestselling" found in the lead seems out of place. Do we really have sales records for manuscripts? Does such a thing even make sense? Srnec 03:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

We have surviving numbers of MS, and numbers of editions for blockbooks and incunabula, which are all extremely high for this and some works like Biblia pauperum, so I think it is. The blockbooks were designed for a popular market (in relative terms) and were quite cheap. It is a very common mistake to underestimate the volume of printed matter around in the C15, and the penetration, especially of woodcuts, throughout the population, which at least in parts of Europe was very high. If you look at the articles like List of best-selling books, you will see there are in fact no overall (international) sales figures that stand up to a moments scrutiny even for very recent books, but the term is still used. Johnbod 03:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Alright. My biggest objection was to the concept of manuscripts being sold as printed books. Srnec 04:51, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok; the authorities are also clear that by this period many illuminated MS, but not all, were produced for stock and then sold through dealers, rather than being individually commissioned. Johnbod 14:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] macrauchenia?

I'm all for bizzare interpretations of medieval pictures, but surely this needs a citation. Fennessy 19:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I came here to comment on the same thing - why mention it at all? Let's stick in a totally random non-related thing as a comparison just because it looks a little bit like it? How non-encylopedic os that! As Darwin described the type fossil the medieval authors can have had no knowledge of the macrauwhatnot, so it's totally irrelevant. I'm removing it from the caption. 81.129.128.73 19:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

just a bit of main page madness.... Johnbod 21:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)