Ecclesiastics the only Scholars and Book-Makers . . . Copyists in
Constantinople . . . In Ireland . . . Charlemagne’s Educational Policy
. . . Copyists of France and their Work . . . The Scriptoriums of
Monasteries . . . Errors of Copyists . . . Illuminators of Books . . .
Bookbinders . . . Profuse Ornamentation of Books . . . Neglect of
Books and Copying by Monks . . . Copyists and Book-Makers appear among
the Laity . . . Regulations of the University of Paris about Copyists
. . . Character of Medieval Books . . . Universal Appreciation of
Pictures . . . General Use of Abbreviations . . . Paper Used only
for Inferior Books . . . Rise of the Romance Literature . . . Its
Luxurious Books . . . Book-Collecting a Princely Pastime . . . High
Prices paid for Books of Merit . . . Fondness for Expensive Books
retarded the Development of Printing.
* * * * *
With that of the boke losende were the claspis:
The margent Was illumynid all With golded railles
And byse, enpicturid with gressoppes and waspis,
With butterflyis and freshe pecocke taylis,
Enflorid With flowris and slymy snaylis;
Enuyuid picturis well towchid and quikly;
It wolde haue made a man hole that had be ryght sekely,
To beholde how it was garnyschyd and bounde,
Encouerde ouer with gold of tisseu fyne;
The claspis and bullyons were worth a thousande pounde;
With balassis and charbuncles the borders did shyne;
With aurum mosaicum every other lyne
Was wrytin.
_Skelton._
* * * * *
From the sixth to the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastics of the
Roman Catholic church held all the keys of scholastic knowledge. They
wrote the books, kept the libraries, and taught the schools. During
this period there was no literature worthy of the name that was not in
the dead language Latin, and but little of any kind that did not treat
of theology. A liberal education was of no value to any one who did not
propose to be a monk or priest. Science, as we [p147] now understand
the word, and classical literature, were sadly neglected. Scholastic
theology and metaphysical philosophy were the studies which took
precedence of all others. The knowledge derived through these narrow
channels may have been imperfect, but it was a power. The church kept
it to and for itself; hedging it in with difficulty and mystery, and
making it inaccessible to poor people. The study of Latin would have
been neglected, and its literature forgotten, if this dead language had
not been the language of the Scriptures, of the canons and liturgies
of the church, and of the writings of the fathers. Ecclesiastics were
required, by virtue of their position, to study Latin, but there were
many in high station, even as late as the fourteenth century, who were
barely able to read,[65] and many more who could not write.
The manufacture by professional copyists of the books of devotion
required for the services of the church, which had died of neglect
in Rome, and which had been driven out of Constantinople by the
hostility of the iconoclastic emperors, re-appeared in Ireland,
with unprecedented elegance of workmanship. It does not appear that
the diligence of the monks at Iona was of any permanent benefit to
Ireland, but it was of great value to the corrupted religion and waning
civilization of Western Europe. Irish missionaries founded schools
and monasteries in England, and taught their Anglo-Saxon converts to
ornament books after a fashion now known and described as the Saxon
style. Books of great beauty, [p148] admirably[66] written by unknown
Irish copyists, are still preserved in Germany, France and Switzerland,
to which countries Irish missionaries were sent from Iona between the
sixth and ninth centuries. These missionaries revived the taste for
letters.
Flaccus Alcuin, an Englishman and a graduate of Anglo-Saxon schools,
the teacher and adviser of Charlemagne, was authorized by the
great emperor to institute a policy which would multiply books and
disseminate knowledge. It was ordered that every abbot, bishop and
count should keep in permanent employment a qualified copyist who must
write correctly, using Roman letters only, and that every monastic
institution should maintain a room known as the _scriptorium_, fitted
up with desks and furnished with all the implements for writing.
The work of copying manuscripts and increasing libraries was made a
life-long business. Alcuin earnestly entreated the monks to zealousness
in the discharge of this duty. “It is,” he writes, “a most meritorious
work, more beneficial to the health than working in the fields, which
profits only a man’s body, whilst the labor of the copyist profits his
soul.” On another occasion, Alcuin exhorted the monks who could not
write neatly to learn to bind books. [p149]
[Illustration: The Scriptorium.
[From Lacroix.]]
The copyists of the middle ages may be properly divided in two classes:
the class that considered copying an irksome duty and that did its work
mechanically and badly; the class that treated book-making as a purely
artistic occupation, and gave the most time and care to ornamentation.
The book-makers who made search for authentic copies, comparing the
different texts of books and correcting their errors, did not appear
until after the invention of printing. The mechanical drudges, who were
always most numerous, not only repeated the errors of their faulty
copies, but added to them. Errors became so frequent that some of the
more careful and conscientious copyists thought it necessary to repeat
at the end of every book the solemn adjuration of Irenæus:
I adjure thee who shall transcribe this book, by our Lord Jesus
Christ, and by his glorious coming to judge the quick and dead, [p150]
that thou compare what thou transcribest, and correct it carefully
according to the copy from which thou transcribest, and that thou also
annex a copy of this adjuration to what thou hast written.
The illustration annexed, the fac-simile of a few lines from a
Latin Bible written in the ninth century, is a fair example of the
carelessness of many mechanical copyists. The words _In illo tempore_
are not to be found in correct copies of the Vulgate;[67] the very
awkward writing, the running together of words, the unnecessary
contractions, and the misuse of capital letters, are flagrant blemishes
that call for no comment.
[Illustration: The Penmanship of a Copyist of the Ninth Century.
[From Lacroix.]]
The letters of this book are of the Roman form, as had been commanded
by Charlemagne; but this form of writing gradually went out of use, not
only in France, but even in Italy and Spain. The unskillful writers who
could not properly produce the plain lines and true curves of Roman
letters, tried to hide the ungainliness of their awkwardly constructed
characters by repeated touches of the pen, which made them bristle
with angles. In the golden age of pointed architecture and superfluous
ornamentation, this fault became a fashion. The pointed letters became
known as ecclesiastic letters, and then there seemed to be a special
propriety in putting finials and crockets on the letters of books of
piety. It is to the failing skill and bad taste of inexpert copyists
more than to their desire to construct an improved form of writing,
that [p151] we may trace the origin of the Black or Gothic letter,[68]
which, under a great many names and modifications, was employed in all
books until supplanted by the Roman types of Jenson.
The copyists and calligraphers were stimulated to do their best by
the religious zeal of wealthy laymen who frequently gave to religious
houses large sums of money for the copying and ornamentation of books.
It was taught that the gift of an illuminated book, or of the means
to make it, was an act of piety which would be held in perpetual
remembrance. For the medieval books of luxury thus made to order, the
finest vellum was selected. The size most in fashion was that now
known as demy folio, of which the leaf is about ten inches wide and
fifteen inches long, but smaller sizes were often made. The space to
be occupied by the written text was mapped out with faint lines, so
that the writer could keep his letters on a line, at even distance from
each other and within the prescribed margin. Each letter was carefully
drawn, and filled in or painted with repeated touches of the pen. With
good taste, black ink was most frequently selected for the text; red
ink was used only for the more prominent words, and the catch-letters,
then known as the rubricated letters. Sometimes texts were written in
blue, green, purple, gold or silver inks, but it was soon discovered
that texts in bright color were not so readable as texts in black.
[Illustration: A French Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century.
[From Lacroix.]]
When the copyist had finished his sheet, he passed it to the designer,
who sketched the border, pictures and initials. The sheet was then
given to the illuminator, who painted it. [p152] The ornamentation
of a medieval book of the first class is beyond description by words
or by wood-cuts. Every inch of space was used. Its broad margins were
filled with quaint ornaments, sometimes of high merit, admirably
painted in vivid colors. Grotesque initials, which, with their
flourishes, often spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands
of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only
indications of the changes of chapter or of subject. In printers’
phrase, the composition was “close-up and solid” to the extreme degree
of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller
initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been
written entirely in black ink, it would have been unreadable through
its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the
medieval copyist was seldom governed by considerations of time or
expense. It was of little consequence whether the book he transcribed
would be finished in one or in ten years. It was required only that
he should keep at his work steadily and do his best. His skill is
more to be commended than his taste. Many of his initials and borders
were outrageously inappropriate for the text for which they were
designed. The gravest truths were hedged in with the most childish
conceits. Angels, butterflies, [p153] goblins, clowns, birds, snails
and monkeys, sometimes in artistic, but much oftener in grotesque,
and sometimes in highly offensive positions, are to be found in the
illuminated borders of copies of the gospels and the writings of the
fathers.
[Illustration: Medieval Bookbinding.
[From Jost Amman.]]
The book was bound by the forwarder, who sewed the leaves and put them
in a cover of leather or velvet; by the finisher, who ornamented the
cover with gilding and enamel. The annexed illustration of bookbinding,
published by Amman in his _Book of Trades_, puts before us many of the
implements still in use. The forwarder, with his customary apron of
leather, is in the foreground, making use of a plow-knife for trimming
the edges of a book. The lying-press which rests obliquely against the
block before him contains a book that has received the operation of
backing-up from a queer-shaped hammer lying upon the floor. The workman
at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book,
for sewing was properly regarded as a man’s work, and a scientific
operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress.
The work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the
burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging
against the wall leave us in no doubt as to their use. There is an air
of antiquity about everything connected with this bookbindery which
suggests the thought that its tools [p154] and usages are much older
than those of printing. Chevillier says that seventeen professional
bookbinders found regular employment in making up books for the
University of Paris, as early as 1272. Wherever books were produced in
quantities, bookbinding was set apart as a business distinct from that
of copying.
[Illustration: The Medieval Illuminator.
[From Jost Amman.]]
The poor students who copied books for their own use were also obliged
to bind them, which they did in a simple but efficient manner, by
sewing together the folded sheets, attaching them to narrow parchment
bands, the ends of which were made to pass through a cover of stout
parchment, at the joint near the back. The ends of the bands were then
pasted down under the stiffening sheet of the cover, and the book was
pressed. Sometimes the cover was made flexible by the omission of the
stiffening sheet; sometimes the edges of the leaves were protected by
flexible and overhanging flaps which were made to project over the
covers; or by the insertion in the covers of stout leather strings with
which the two covers were tied together. Ornamentation was entirely
neglected, for a book of this character was made for use and not for
show. These methods of binding were mostly applied to small books
intended for the pocket: the workmanship was rough, but the binding was
strong and serviceable. [p155]
Books of larger size, made for the lecturn, were bound up in boards—not
an amalgamation of hard-pressed oakum, tar, and paper-pulp, but
veritable boards of planed wood, which were never less than one-quarter
inch, and sometimes were two inches in thickness.[69] The sheets
encased in these boards were gathered in sections usually of five
double leaves. The sections were sewed on rounded raw-hide bands
protected from cutting or cracking by a braided casing of thread. A
well-bound medieval book is a model of careful sewing: the thread,
repeatedly passed in and out of the sections and around the bands,
sometimes diagonally from one corner of the book to the other, is
caught up and locked in a worked head at the top and bottom of the
back. The bands, often fan-tailed at their ends, were pasted and
sometimes riveted in the boards. The joints were protected against
cracking by broad linings of parchment.
For a book that might receive rough usage, and that did not require
a high ornamental finish, hog-skin was selected as the strongest
and most suitable covering for the boards. The covers and the back
were decorated by marking them with fanciful patterns, lightly burnt
in the leather by heated rolls or stamps, from patterns and by
processes substantially the same as those used in manufacturing modern
accountbooks. For a book intended to receive an ornamentation of
gilded work, calf and goat-skin leathers were preferred. The gilding
was done with care, elaborately, artistically, with an excess of
minute decoration that is really bewildering, when one considers the
sparsity and simplicity of the tools in use. To protect the gilding on
the sides, the boards were often paneled or sunk in the centre, and
the corners, and sometimes the entire outer edges of the cover, were
shielded with thick projecting plates of brass or copper. A large boss
of [p156] brass in the centre, with smaller bosses or buttons upon
the corners, was also used to protect the gilding from abrasion. On
the cheaper books, bound in hog-skin, iron corners and a closely set
studding of round-headed iron nails were used for the same purpose.
To prevent the covers from warping outward, two clasps of brass were
attached to the covers.
[Illustration: A Sumptuously Bound Book.[70]
[From Chambers.]]
The book thus bound was too weighty to be held in the hand; it was so
full of angles and knobs that it could not be placed upon a flat table
without danger of scratching it. For the safety of the book and the
convenience of the reader, it was necessary that the book should be
laid on an inclined desk or a revolving lecturn, provided with a ledge
for holding it up and with holdfasts for keeping down the leaves. The
lecturn was really required for the protection of the reader. Petrarch,
when reading an unwieldy volume of the _Epistles of Cicero_, which he
held in his hands, and in which he was [p157] profoundly interested,
repeatedly let the book slip and fall, and so bruised his left leg
that he feared, for some time, that he would have to submit to its
amputation.
When the book was not in use, it was laid sidewise on the shelf with
the flat side fully exposed, showing to best advantage the beauty of
the binding. Its metal-studded sides prevented it from being stood
upright on the shelf. The book made for common use was frequently
covered with oak boards banded with iron. When exposed in church, it
was secured to a post or pillar with a chain.
[Illustration:
A Medieval Book with Covers of Oak.
[From Chambers.]
The mortise in the cover to the left was for the insertion
of the hand when the book was held up for reading.]
The ornamented cover of the sumptuous book was even more resplendent
than its illuminated text. Gilders, jewelers, silversmiths, engravers,
and painters took up the work which the binder had left, and lavished
upon it all the resources of their arts. A copy of the Evangelists
presented by Charlemagne to a church in France, was covered with plates
of gold and silver, and studded with gems. To another church the pious
sister of Charlemagne gave a book glittering with precious stones,
and with appropriate engraving upon a great agate in the centre of
the cover. We read of another book of devotion covered with plates
of selected ivory, upon which was sculptured, in high relief, with
questionable propriety, an illustration of the Feast of Bacchus. The
Cluny Museum at Paris contains two book-covers of enameled brass, one
of which has on the cover a very elaborate engraving of the Adoration
of the Wise Men. Books like these called for the display of a higher
degree of [p158] skill than could be found in monasteries. The
mechanics who were called in to perfect the work of the copyists soon
became familiar with all the details of book-making. Little by little
they encroached on the province of the copyist, and in time became
competent to do all his work.
[Illustration: Book-Cover in Ivory, Byzantine Style.
[From Berjeau.]]
During the twelfth century the ecclesiastical monopoly of book-making
began to give way. Literary work had grown irksome. The church had
secured a position of supremacy in temporal as well as spiritual
matters; it had grown rich, and showed disregard for the spiritual and
educational means by which its successes had been made. It began to
enjoy its prosperity. The neglect of books by many of the priests of
the thirteenth century was authorized by the example and precepts of
Francis d’Assisi, who suffered none of his followers to have Bible,
breviary or psalter. This new form of asceticism culminated in the
establishment of the order of the Mendicant Friars, which, in its
earlier days, was wonderfully popular. Founded for the purpose of
supplying the spiritual administrations which had been sadly neglected
by the beneficed clergy, who were not only ignorant but corrupt,[71]
the new order ultimately [p159] became even more neglectful of duty,
more ignorant and more immoral. The leaders of the friars were men
of piety, and some of them, disregarding the precept of the zealous
founder of the order, were students and collectors of books; but the
inferior clergy, with few exceptions, were extremely ignorant. They not
only exerted a mischievous influence upon the people, but they showed
to priests of other orders that the knowledge to be had from books was
not really necessary. The class of monks who had devoted their lives
to the copying, binding and ornamenting of books, imitated as far as
they could the example set by the pleasure-loving, ignorant friars,
and sought opportunities for relaxation.[72] The care of libraries was
neglected for pleasures of a grosser nature. The duties of copyists and
librarians passed, gradually and almost imperceptibly, into the hands
of the laity.
The business of selling books, which had been given up during the
decline of the Roman empire, re-appeared in the latter part of the
twelfth century in the neighborhood of the new Italian universities
of Padua and Bologna. To have the privilege of selling books to the
students, the booksellers were [p160] obliged to submit to a stringent
discipline. The restrictive legislation of the University of Paris, for
four centuries the greatest school of theology and the most renowned of
the European universities, may be offered as a suitable illustration of
the spirit shown to booksellers by all the schools of the middle ages.
Through its clerical teachers, the church claimed the right to control
the making, buying and selling of books. It extended its authority over
parchment-makers, bookbinders, and every other class of mechanics that
contributed in any way to their manufacture. The rules made by this
university reveal many curious facts concerning book-making, and teach
us, as a recent imperialist author has truly said, that the censorship
of books is older than printing.
We command that the stationers,[73] vulgarly called booksellers, shall
each year, or every other year, as may be required by the university,
take oath to behave themselves honestly and faithfully in all matters
concerning the buying, keeping or selling of books. In the year 1342,
they were required, touching the price of books, to tell the truth,
pure and simple, and without deceit or lying.
No bookseller could buy a book for the purpose of sale, until it had
been exposed for five days in the Hall of the University, and its
purchase had been declined by all the teachers and scholars.
The prices of books sold by the booksellers were fixed by four master
booksellers appointed by the university. Any attempt to get a higher
price entailed a penalty. No one could buy or sell books, or lend
money on them, without a special permit from the university.
The profit of the bookseller upon the sale of a book was fixed at four
deniers when sold to a teacher or scholar, and six deniers when sold
to the public.
No _pots-de-vin_, or drink-money, nor gratuities of any kind, were to
be exacted by the bookseller in addition to the fixed price.
Books should be made correct to copy, and be sold as correct in good
faith. The bookseller should be required to make an oath as to their
entire accuracy. Whoever sold incorrect books would be obliged to make
the corrections, and would be otherwise punished. [p161]
No bookseller should refuse to lend a book to the student who wished
to make a new copy from it, and who offered security and complied with
the terms fixed by the university.[74]
[Illustration: Seal of the Masters and Scholars of the University of
Paris.
[From Lacroix.]]
Before any newly written book could be offered for sale, it must
be submitted to the rector of the university, who had the power to
suppress it,[75] or correct it, and who, if it was approved, fixed its
price. [p162]
It does not surprise us to learn that the stationers did not thrive.
Under the hard pressure of taxation and censorship, the imposition of
arbitrary prices and compulsory loans, they found it very difficult to
earn a living. They were obliged to add another business to that of
book-publishing. A few became notaries; some sold furs, while their
wives in the same shop sold “fripperies and like haberdashery”; others
became the dressers of parchments and binders of books. Against these
innovations the regents of the university made unavailing protest,
severely censuring the base booksellers who “did not uphold the dignity
of their profession, but who mixed it up with vile trades.” But the
necessities of the half-starved booksellers compelled the university to
overlook the offense.