io8 $<► SHADY CHARACTERS
The symbols’ meanings changed too. Whereas Aristarchus’s signs
indicated spurious, missing, or disordered text, in medieval manu¬
scripts the two marks took on a purpose closer to that of the ancient
diple and were used simply to draw attention to interesting text. Later
still, manuscripts and then early printed books began to employ the
symbols in a more structured manner, using them to link marginal
notes with the text to which they referred.44 It is in this mode that I
the asterisk and dagger became part of the typographic establish¬
ment, and the story from this point on is intertwined with that of the
humble footnote.
The footnote as we recognize it today attained its current form
over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Notes in
the margin and between the lines—so-called glosses—had featured in
written documents since time immemorial. Just as readers punctu- !
ated tightly packed scriptio continua to ease its interpretation, so they ;
populated the margins with their own observations, clarifications, i
and translations of the text.45 The Renaissance, though, marked a
change. The marginal note passed from the province of the reader
to that of the writer; notes grew longer and more frequent as authors
preemptively surrounded the narrative with their own, “authorized"
commentary.46 As might be expected, religious texts took this to
through Holland before carrying on to Zurich, where he subsequently spent four years carry¬
ing out Cromwell s orders.4 While there, Pell met a prominent young official named Johann
Rahn who acted as Schützenmeister, supervising shooting practice, and as Zeugherr responsible
for military supplies and artillery. Tutored by Pell during 1657 but posted elsewhere a year later,
Rahn wrote a mathematical textbook called Teutsche Algebra for publication in i6$<).Algebram$
a seminal work: it was arranged into three columns containing algebraic steps, line numbers,
and proofs respectively so that the reader could easily follow Rahn’s reasoning, and it contained
the first known use of* as a division symbol. Pell is widely considered to have suggested both the
layout and the use of the obelus as a division symbol, but such was the Englishman’s modesty
he forbade Rahn from crediting him by name.42
Ironically enough, despite first appearing in a German language textbook, the obelus ss
division symbol never quite took off in Germany. Today, division is signified there by a colon ft
while Rahn’s obelus, carried over to the English translation of his book (to which John Pell
contributed), went on to become the standard notation in the English-speaking world.43
THE ASTERISK AND DAGGER ?<► 109
extremes: the dangers of an unauthorized interpretation of biblical
language held a particular horror for the Church, and between the
twelfth and eighteenth centuries the margins of the standard Bible, or
“Vulgate,” became congested with the Church’s officially sanctioned
glossa ordinaria.47
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ІіЗС Figure 6.4 Crosslike asterisks (and a single dotted variant) in
a twelfth-century manuscript, apparently used as reference marks. See
Figure 9.2 for another twelfth-century asterisk used as a reference mark.