Catchwords in Medieval Manuscripts Could be Humorous

"Catchwords (that is the first words of the following quire) are found at the end of quires in Western manuscripts as early as c. 1000, and they were in widespread use by the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century the practice began of numbering the individual bifolia, often with a letter of the alphabet to designate the quire and an Arabic numeral, the leaf (a1, a2, a3. . .), and the individual quires of the book were also sometimes numbered in Roman numerals, especially early in the Middle Ages, usually in the lower outer margin of the last page" (Rouse, "Authentic Witnesses: Manuscript Making and Models of Production," Rouse & Light, Manuscript Production. Primer 6, published by Les Enluminures [2014] 2-3).

Most catchwords in medieval manuscripts, as well as in later printed books, served only a practical function to guide the scribes or eventually typesetters. But in certain medieval manuscripts the scribes took the opportunity to draw cartoons relating to the particular catchwords they faced at the end of a page. In Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon ms. Palais des Arts 31 a number of catchwords are enclosed in particularly witty cartoons as indicated by the 3 images attached, all of which were photographed from that manuscript.