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.
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,[1] the new order ultimately
- ↑ Wickliffe says that, in 1380, there were in England many "unable curates that kunnen not the ten commandments, ne read their sauter, ne understand a verse of it." The author of the Plowman's Tale accuses the clergy of faults worse than that of ignorance.
