Incipit

An incipit (from the Latin incipit — 'it begins') is the opening words of a work's text, which in the early manuscript and old-print tradition served as its conventional title and a means of identification. Since early texts often had no separate headings in the modern sense, they were recognized and catalogued precisely by their first words (for example, prayers, psalms, and hymns have long been designated by their incipits: 'Our Father,' 'I Believe'). The incipit plays an important role in medieval studies and codicology: by it, works are identified in manuscript miscellanies, and incipitaria — special indexes of texts by their opening words — are compiled, helping to locate and identify a monument among numerous copies. 'The Tale of Ihor's Campaign' also opens with an incipit. The opposite concept is the explicit (from the Latin 'it ends') — the concluding words of a text. Incipitaria of early Ukrainian and Church Slavonic monuments are an important tool of archaeography.