The altar copies, the shelf keeps

Status: Anticipated · untested

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

In Eastern Christian monastic libraries, two genres lived different physical lives: service books were handled daily, worn out, and replaced by fresh local copies, while patristic theology sat on the shelf, consulted but not consumed. The conjecture is that this splits every collection's age structure in a predictable way: surviving liturgical manuscripts should be systematically young (recent recopies of a continuously used tradition) and patristic manuscripts systematically old (venerable imports never worn out enough to replace). Monks caused this simply by using books at different rates; wear, not taste, set the copying schedule. If it holds, the date profile of a collection reveals its liturgical workload, and 'old collection' versus 'young collection' dissolves into 'shelf' versus 'altar' within each house.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Primary clause: in vHMML metadata, the median manuscript date for liturgical genres is at least two centuries later than the median for patristic/theological genres within the same collection, holding in at least 80% of collections with twenty or more manuscripts of each class. Secondary: the gap widens in collections with documented continuous liturgical use into the early modern period.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

In-house vHMML Eastern Christian manuscript metadata (genre and date fields, grouped by holding collection).

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

This conjecture is bridged, as an L1 lead, onto these Inferpedia subject pages.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

This packet was produced in a single blind Write from model-internal knowledge only, with no repository reads, web access, database queries, or any tool call other than this Write.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

That service books wore out and were replaced while patristic volumes survived as venerable imports is a commonplace of manuscript studies, but the systematic two-century median date gap across collections in vHMML-type metadata has not been measured.

Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts in their Liturgical Context (Brepols series description)

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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