Manuscripts

Handwritten religious texts and codices preserved from before the age of print: scripture copies, commentaries, liturgical books and devotional works, each described by its physical support, script, approximate date and the tradition that produced or preserved it. Where a manuscript survives only in fragments or later copies, the entry records what is actually extant rather than presenting a lost original as though it survived whole. This category excludes a printed edition or translation of a work, which belongs under its own text or edition entity instead.