The purpose of the International Committee for Latin Palaeography (CIPL) is to « foster international collaboration in the field of palaeography » (including codicology). The field of these disciplines includes:

• The study of the different types of writing, their genesis, evolution, diffusion and specific uses.
• The deciphering and expertise (dating, localization) of old written documents, whatever their nature (books, administrative documents…).
• The analysis of materials and manufacturing techniques used to produce these documents.
• The study of the process of transmission of texts by successive copies, and the procedures used to facilitate the legibility of texts.
• The study of copying centers, their organization, their relations, their role in the diffusion of texts and in intellectual life.
• The study of the manuscript collections now preserved in libraries, and how they have been built up over the ages and have come down to us.
• This program concerns the entire area of diffusion of the Latin alphabet (whatever the language to which it applies), and for the period from Roman antiquity to the spread of printing (end of the sixteenth century).