Education controlled by the Church…All Books in Latin…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, empicturid 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 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,[1] 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, admirably[2] 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.
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, 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;[3] 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.
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 we may trace the origin of the Black or Gothic letter,[4] 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.
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. 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. A French Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century. [From Lacroix.]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, 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.
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. Medieval Bookbinding. [From Jost Amman.]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 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.
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. The Medieval Illuminator. [From Jost Amman.]Sometimes the cover was made flexible by the omission of the stiffening sheet; sometimes the edges of the leaves were protected by flexible and over-hanging 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.
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.[5] 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 account-books. 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 brass in the centre, with smaller bosses or buttons upon the corners, was also used to protect the gilding from abrasion. A Sumptuously Bound Book.[6] [From Chambers.]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.
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 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.
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 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,[7] the new order ultimately 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.[8] 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 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,[9] 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. 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.[10]
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,[11] or correct it, and who, if it was approved, fixed its price.
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.
The best and largest books of the stationers were always of a theological nature. In a list given by Chevillier of the books sold in the fourteenth century by the booksellers to the university, are found in the foremost place, books on the Canon Law, the Homilies of St. Gregory, the Book of Sacraments, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Homilies of St. Augustine, the Compendium of Thomas Aquinas,[12] and St. Thomas on Metaphysics, on Physics, on Heaven and Earth, on the Soul. Copies of the Gospels or the Scriptures, or even of the works of classical authors, were not in high request. The most popular books were elementary works on grammar and philosophy, for the use of students, and devotional works like creeds, catechisms, and prayers, which were largely bought by the more pious part of the people that were able to read.
The copyists made books for the more ignorant priests, books containing a synopsis of Christian faith and doctrine, or descriptions of important events recorded in the Scriptures. As an additional refreshment of the memory, and to make them more enticing to the buyer, these books were profusely illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings. The Bible of the Poor, and the Mirror of Man's Redemption, afterward popular as printed books, are favorable specimens of a class of illustrated manuscripts in common use among the inferior clergy as far back as the tenth and eleventh centuries. They were sold to the unlearned of the laity and to friars who could not read, but who could understand the allegories taught through the pictures. An increasing fondness for ornamentation and for pictorial illustration may be noticed among both learned and unlearned. Manuscripts of every description were adorned with pictures.[13] Abstruse theological writings and treatises on geometry and philosophy were often decked out with floriated borders and gaudily painted illustrations which would now be considered as suitable only for children. It would seem that it was through the pictorial attractions of a book, more than through its text, that men were led to admire literature.
The copyists made books of small size which were sold to students for trifling sums. Psalters, with leaves no larger than the palm of the hand, were sold for a sol. Elementary schoolbooks, like the Logic of Boethius, were sometimes copied in a minute style of penmanship, and were still further contracted with abbreviations until the writing had the appearance of microscopic stenography. The minute penmanship may be regarded as evidence of the great scarcity of parchment, and the abbreviations as indications of the weariness of the writer.
The arbitrary order of the university, which compelled the booksellers to lend their books to scholars, shows that it was customary for a student or a poor man of letters to copy the books he needed. The little books sold for a sol were manifestly made for readers who could not even buy the vellum required for a book of the usual size. It was necessary that books sold at this price should be of the cheapest materials, and that the text should be abbreviated by contractions[14] so that it would occupy but little space. The despised fabric of paper, and the remnants of vellum rejected by professional copyists after the skin had been cut up for leaves of folio or of quarto size, were cheerfully accepted by readers who valued a book more for its contents than for its appearance.
The scarcity of vellum in one century, and its abundance in another, are indicated by the size of written papers during the same periods. Before the sixth century, legal documents were usually written upon one side only; in the tenth century the practice of writing upon both sides of the vellum became common. During the thirteenth century, valuable documents were often written upon strips two inches wide and but three and a half inches long. At the end of the fourteenth century these strips went out of fashion. The more general use of paper had diminished the demand for vellum and increased the supply. In the fifteenth century, legal documents on rolls of sewed vellum twenty feet in length were not uncommon. All the valuable books of the fourteenth century were written on vellum. In the library of the Louvre the manuscripts on paper, compared to those on vellum, were as one to twenty-eight; in the library of the Dukes of Burgundy, one-fifth of the books were of paper. The increase in the proportion of paper books is a fair indication of the increasing popularity of paper; but it is obvious that vellum was even then considered as the more suitable substance for a book of value.
The esteem with which books were regarded by priests and scholars during the fourteenth century was shared by men of wealth, who coveted books, not so much for their contents as for their pictures, and as evidences of wealth and culture. A remarkable impulse had been given to literature and to the making of books by the troubadours of Southern France. Their songs of love and devotion to women, their encomiums of chivalry, and stories of battle and adventure, which were of their own age, fresh and full of life, and untainted by the influence of withered classical models, had most unbounded popularity in every grade of society. Uncultivated people, who would have yawned over the reading of Homer or the Odes of Horace, would listen with a keen delight to the songs of a Provençal minstrel, or to the reading of romances about Charlemagne and his Paladins, about Arthur and Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. To men who had regarded books only as dull treatises about theology, these romances were revelations of an unsuspected attractiveness in literature. How much these romances increased the respect for books, and led to the making of new copies, and to a more general knowledge of reading and writing, cannot be exactly stated; but their influence on the people was vastly greater than that of the books of the schools. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, books about love and chivalry constituted the greater part of the secular literature of Europe. The most popular books of Caxton, the first English printer, and of the early printers of Paris, were of this character. To the ladies of France, the books of love and song were especially attractive. It was largely through their admiration that the workmanship of a new order of book-makers came in fashion.
To please their dainty tastes, copies were made with refinements of calligraphy never before attempted; the unwieldy sizes of folio and quarto were supplanted by small and handy duodecimos, and bindings of a more delicate character were introduced.
The nature of the new literature, and the effeminate taste of the newly made class of readers, seemed to call for changes in the old methods of making books. It was necessary that the massiveness and barbaric splendor of the monastic books should be supplanted by workmanship combining elegance, lightness and delicacy. It was necessary that the illustrations made for the lady's missal, or for a book of romance, should be designed, not by some grim old monk whose imagination had been cramped by his solitary life, and whose narrowness and severity were visible in all his workmanship, but by a courtier, an artist, and man of fashion, who knew the world, who knew how to please it, and how to paint it. To this class of men, the forerunners of courtly artists like Durer, Holbein and Rubens, the manufacture of the new books was intrusted. The new artists in book-making organized a nicer division of labor, and supervised and directed the work at every stage of its progress. A copyist selected for his skill wrote the text in prescribed places on the sheets, and, by the uniformity of his penmanship, gave character and connection to the work; one designer sketched the borders, and another outlined the initials; an illuminator filled in the outlines with gold-leaf and bright colors. Then came the artist, or miniaturist, who drew the illustrations and painted the fine pictures which gave the book its great charm. The artists were called miniaturists because their illustrations were miniature pictures, as artistically designed, and always more carefully painted than larger paintings made for the adornment of churches, halls and picture galleries. Avoiding the hard outlines and glaring pigments of the illuminator, the miniaturist painted in low tints, and with the nicest attention to harmony of color. The beauty of the work, which has been but little affected by time, is recognized to this day. The sheets which had been so artistically painted were as elegantly bound. They were covered with silk, velvet, satin, or bright-colored leather, embroidered with gold and pearls, studded with buttons of gold, banded on the corners with shields, and secured with clasps of precious metals engraved and enameled in the very finest style of decorative art. Admirable as the books are, they do not give us a high opinion of the intelligence of the artists, nor of the culture of their owners, for they are full of anachronisms and absurdities in the pictures and in the text.
This taste for elegant books, which began in the thirteenth century, became a princely amusement. In 1373, Charles V of France was the owner of more than nine hundred[15] books, most of which were written on fine vellum, superbly bound, and adorned with precious stones and clasps of silver or gold. His brothers fostered the same taste. Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, gathered around him artists, authors, copyists, and bookbinders, and established a great library. His son, John the Fearless, largely increased it, but the most costly additions were made by Philip the Good, who, at the middle of the fifteenth century, enjoyed the distinction of possessing the most magnificent books in Western Europe. Books of equal beauty were also made in Italy, but there was no part of Europe where calligraphers, miniaturists and ornamental bookbinders found a higher appreciation of their skill than in Burgundy and the Netherlands. Nor did this taste for fine books soon go out of fashion. The business of making fine manuscript books was not entirely destroyed by the invention of printing. Lacroix, a French antiquary,[16] has shown us that copyists, illuminators, designers and painters found employment in the embellishment of books even as late as the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
During the middle ages, books of merit were everywhere sold at enormous prices. Illustrated and illuminated volumes in elegant bindings seem specially exorbitant, when we consider the greater purchasing capacity of money. Daunou says, that in a computation of the value of a large library of the fourteenth century, the average price of each manuscript book should be fixed at about 450 francs. Didot says that, of three hundred books contained in the library at Ratisbon, during the year 1231, the average price of each book was 600 francs. What proportion should be allowed for binding and illumination is not stated, but it can be proved that copying could not have been the labor of greatest expense. In the fourteenth century the price of copying a Bible at Bologna, exclusive of the value of binding, parchment and illumination, was 80 Bolognese livres. In the fifteenth century, the price of copying was steadily declining, while the prices of illuminating and binding were increasing.
Books were expensive, not so much through the labor of the copyist, who did the simplest and cheapest part of the work, but through the extravagant ornamentation put on them by the illuminator and the binder. The true office of the book was perverted. It was regarded, not as a medium of instruction, but as a means for the display of wealth and artistic tastes. The reader was really taught to value it more for its dress than for its substance; the book-maker was most appreciated when he made books so expensive that they were out of the reach of ordinary buyers. To the modern book-buyer, the prices asked for books of size and merit during the middle ages seem excessive, and especially so when they are contrasted with the prices then paid for food or labor.[17]
At the end of the fourteenth century, books of instruction were larger, more ornamental, and, to the unschooled reader, more pedantic and more forbidding than ever. We do not find in them any valuable contributions to knowledge, nor do we discover in the writers or teachers of the day any disposition to make knowledge easy to be acquired. The love of great books during this period, frequently noticed as one of the evidences of a true revival of literature, is, when critically examined, evidence only of the artistic tastes of book-buyers and of the exclusiveness of scholars. So far from paving the way for the introduction of printing, this trifling with literature was one of the most formidable impediments in its path. It made despicable even the thought of an attempt to produce books by the simpler method of printing, then in its first stage of practical development.
The princely patrons of literature, the learned doctors of the universities, the copyists and stationers, the illuminators and miniaturists, must have seen the playing cards and prints then sold in all large cities, and, to some extent, must have known the process by which they were made. But they looked on them with a pitying contempt for the coarse tastes which could be satisfied with such rude workmanship. The distance in degrees of merit between printed playing cards and finely illuminated manuscript books seemed infinite. If the cards conveyed a suggestion of the possibility of printed books, the suggestion was rejected. To the dainty tastes of book-makers printing was a barbarous trade; to the wealthy book-buyer, a printed book would have been the degradation of art and literature. One may look in vain among the book-makers and scholars of the fourteenth century for any sign that heralded the coming of printing. Makers and buyers of books seem to have been fully satisfied with things as they were—with the established methods of book-making, with the organization of society and the state of education. And the professed patrons of literature would have been forever satisfied with this state of affairs. Under their exclusive patronage, books would have been made more and more sumptuously, and put more and more out of the reach of the people.
↑Lewis Beaumont, an illiterate French nobleman, made bishop of Durham in 1330, was so inexpert at reading, that he could not read the bulls written for his people at his consecration. The word metropolticæ occurred: the bishop paused, tried in vain to repeat it, and at last said, "Let us suppose that read." Then Then he came to the word ænigmate, before which he stopped in a fine wrath, and said, "By St. Lewis, he was no gentleman who wrote this stuff.". . . . At an entertainment given at Rome, during the same century, by the bishop of Murray, the papal legate from Scotland, the bishop so blundered in his Latin when he was saying grace, that his holiness and the cardinals could not refrain from laughing. The disconcerted bishop testily concluded in Scotch-English, by wishing "all the false carles to the devil," to which the company, who did not understand the dialect, unwittingly responded, Amen.
↑At a period when the fine arts may be said to have been almost extinct in Italy and in other parts of the Continent, namely, from the fifth to the end of the eighth century, a style of art had been established and cultivated in Ireland absolutely distinct from that of all other parts of the civilized world. In the sixth and seventh centuries the art of ornamenting manuscripts of the sacred scriptures, and more especially of the gospels, had attained a perfection in Ireland almost marvelous. Westwood, Palæographia Sacra Pictoria, Book of Kells, page 1. Westwood further says, the that in delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing that can Book of Kells made the drawings from be compared to these early Irish manuscripts, and those that were produced by their pupils in England. Wyatt, in a curt description of the famous Book of Kells, says that he tried to make a copy of some of its ornaments, but broke down in despair. "In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a very slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground." In this book, which he studied for hours, he never detected a false line or an irregular interlacement. Giraldus Cambrensis, a learned Welsh ecclesiastic of the twelfth century, who had carefully examined some of the Irish manuscripts at Kildare, says that the writer of this designs furnished by angels through the intercession of St. Bridget. Timms and Wyatt, Art of Illumination, p. 14.
↑The text as it now appears in authorized copies of the Vulgate is: Erat autem homo ex Pharisæis, Nicodemus nomine, princeps Judæorum. Hic venit ad Jesum nocte, et dixit ei. John 1, 3.
↑Petrarch's detestation of pointed letters and their admirers is amusing. After complaining of the difficulty he met in getting a fair copy of his writings he commends the workmanship of a copyist to whom he applied, a penman who wrote Roman letters with great neatness.
His writing is not labored and tortured. It is suitable for our age, and, indeed, for all ages. Young people, always giddy, admirers of frivolity, despisers of useful things, have adopted the fashion of writing in bristling and undecipherable letters, of which accomplishment they are very proud. To me, these medleys and jumbles of angled letters, riding one on another, make nothing but a mess of confusion which the writer himself must read with difficulty. Whoever buys work of this character, buys not a book, but an unreadable farrago of letters.
↑These boards were sometimes paneled from the inside of the cover, Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed psalter, the cover of which was two fingers thick, containing in an interior panel a silver crucifix. Hansard says that he had seen an old book which contained in a similar recess a human toe, obviously a sacred relic of value.
↑This is one of the finest existing specimens of antique bookbinding in the National Library at Paris. It is a work of the eleventh century, and encases a book of prayers in a mass of gold, jewels and enamels. The central object is sunk like a framed picture, and represents the Crucifixion, the Virgin and St. John on each side of the cross, and above it the veiled busts of Apollo and Diana; thus exhibiting the influence of the older Byzantine school, which is, indeed, visible throughout the entire design. This subject is executed on a thin sheet of gold, beaten up from behind into high relief, and chased upon its surface. A rich frame of jeweled ornament surrounds this object, portions of the decoration being further enriched with colored enamels; the angles are filled in with enameled emblems of the evangelists; the ground of the whole design enriched by threads and foliations of delicate gold wire. Chambers, Book of Days.
↑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.
↑Boccaccio, one of the enthusiasts of the fourteenth century in the labor of collecting the forgotten manuscripts of classical authors, has told the following characteristic story about the neglect libraries and the abuse of books by the constituted conservators of literature, When traveling in Apulia, Boccaccio was induced to visit the convent of Mount Cassino and its then celebrated library, He respectfully addressed a monk who seemed the most approachable, begging that he would open to him the library. But the monk, pointing to a high staircase, said, in a harsh voice, "Go up; library is open." Ascending the staircase with gladness, Boccaccio came to a hall, to which there was neither door nor bar to protect the treasures of the library. What was his astonishment when he saw that the windows were obstructed with plants which had germinated in the crevices, and that all the books and all the shelves were thickly covered with dust. With still greater astonishment, he took up book after book, and discovered that in a large number of classical manuscripts entire sections had been torn out. Other books had their broad, white margins cut away to the edges of the text. Full of grief, and with eyes filled with tears, at this sad spectacle of the destruction of the works of wise and famous men, he descended the staircase, Meeting a monk in a cloister, he asked why the books were so mutilated. The the monk answered, "This is the work of some of the monks: to earn a few sous, they tear out the leaves and make little psalters, which they sell to the children, which they sell to the children. With the white margins they make mass-books, which they sell to the women." Benvenuto da Immola, as quoted by Didot, Essai sur la typographie, p. 567.
↑The word stationer which has been adopted in the English language has lost its first meaning in the French. It is here used to define a trader who sold books and all kinds of writing materials in a station, shop or store, in contradistinction to a class of peddlers or clerks who had no store or place of business, but who acted as couriers or agents between the buyer and maker.
↑The prices allowed to stationers in 1303 for the use of their copies seem pitiably small. A treatise on the Gospel of Matthew, 37 pages, was priced at 1 sol; Gospel of Mark, 20 pages, at 17 deniers; St. Thomas on Metaphysics, 53 pages, at 3 sols; a treatise on Canon Law, 120 pages, at 7 sols; St. Thomas on the Soul, 19 pages, at 13 deniers.
↑If the book was objectionable, it was burned and the author was imprisoned. According to the Roman law, the condemnation of death attached not only to the author and buyer of a proscribed book, but to him who chanced to find it and did not burn it. In 1328, Pope John xxii condemned two authors who had written a book in eight chapters, full of grievous heresies—for they had undertaken to prove that the Emperor Louis of Bavaria had the right to discipline, install or depose the pope at his own pleasure, and that all the property of the church was held by it through the sufferance of the Emperor. Lacroix, Histoire de l'imprimerie, p. 26.
↑Erasmus, caustically, but truthfully, said of this huge book, "No man can carry it about with him, nor even get it in his head."
↑The National Library at Paris possesses two manuscript Bibles, of which one volume contains 5,122 pictures. Each picture is explained by two lines, one in Latin and one in French; each line is decorated by an initial and a finial in gold and bright colors. If the cost of each picture with its lines be estimated at sixteen francs (Didot's valuation), the value of this book would be 82,000 francs, exclusive of the cost of parchment, binding and copying. By the same estimate, the value of the second volume would be 50,000 francs. Didot pertinently asks the question: Where can we find, in the printed work of our day, an equal prodigality in illustration? Essai sur la typographie, p. 715.
↑Abbreviations which deformed written language to such an extent that it is almost undecipherable to modern readers, were once esteemed a positive merit. The habit of making them was continued after printing was invented. In 1475, a printer of Lubec said, in commendation of one Of his own books, that he had made free use of abbreviations, to get whole work in one volume instead of two—a procedure, he thought, that deserved special praise, for he said that the contractions made the book more readable. The modern reader will be of a different opinion. The Logic of Ockham, in folio, printed at Paris in 1488, by Clos-Bruneau, contains, among other abbreviations, this bewildering passage:
(The text as printed.)
Sic hic e fal sm qd ad simple a e pducibile a Deo g a et silr hic a n g a n e pducibile a Do.
(With words in full.)
Sicut hic est fallacia secundum quid ad simpliciter. A est producible a Deo. Ergo A est. Et similiter hic. A non est. Ergo A non est producible a Deo.
In 1498, John Petit, of Paris, published a dictionary which professed to be A Guide to the Reading of Abbreviations. It was not published too soon, for the practice of making contractions had increased to such an extent that books with abbreviations were legible only to experts.
↑From a catalogue still extant, it appears that this library was composed chiefly of romances, legends, histories, and treatises on astrology, geometry and chiromancy. It was then valued at 2,223 French livres, rather more than the same number of pounds sterling. At this time, the price of a cow was about eight shillings, and of a horse about twenty shillings.—It is difficult to ascertain the real value of the money of the middle ages. Coins were frequently clipped to light weight by knavish traders, and were oftener debased at the mint when the royal treasury was low. Sellers everywhere knew that the value of a coin was not in its stamp, but in its quantity of silver, and they altered prices to meet the altered value of coin. But even in its most debased form, the silver coin of the middle ages had a very high purchasing capacity.
↑He has given an extract from an ecclesiastical account book in which are found the items of expense for the making, binding, and presentation of the manuscript book Royal Chants to Princess Louise of Savoy.
To Jacques Plastel, for sketching the designs for forty-eight pictures, 45 livres; to Jehan Pichou, illuminator, for coloring the designs, 80 livres; to workmen of Jehan Pichou, 50 sols, and for vin du marché (in colloquial English, treating or drink money) with illuminator Pichou, 24 sols; to Jean de Béguines, priest, for engraving the ballads, 12 livres; to Guy-le-Flamenc, for illuminating the large initial letters, 13 livres, 3 sols; for vellum, 3 livres, 12 sols; for the binding, expenses of presentation to Louise of Savoy, and the journey to Amboise, 68 livres, 8 sols. Sum total, 366 livres. Lacroix, Histoire de l'imprimerie, p. 47.
↑Stow says that a Bible "fairly written" was sold in 1274, in England, for 50 marks, equal to about 33 pounds. At this time a laborer's wages were 1½d. per day, and a sheep could be had for a shilling.—Roger Bacon, who died in 1292, said that he had spent more than 2,000 pounds for books. At this time the annual income of an English curate was £3 6s. 8d.—In 1305, the priory of Bolton gave 30 shillings for The Book of Sentences, by Peter Lombard. Hallam says that the accounts of the priory show that the jolly monks bought but three books in forty years. He estimates the equivalent in modern money of this 30 shillings at near 40 pounds.—The Mirror of History, a work in four volumes, was sold at Paris in 1332, with great formalities, for 40 livres of Paris.—In 1357, The Scholastic History was sold to the Earl of Salisbury for 100 marks, or about 67 pounds. At this time the pay of the king's surgeon was fixed at £5 13s. 4d. per annum and a shilling a day besides.—Wickliffe's translation of the New Testament was sold in 1380 for 4 marks and 40 pence.—Pierre Plaont bequeathed, in 1415, to the regents of the University of Paris, a big quarto Bible, which he said was worth 15 pounds. Chevillier says that a printed Bible of the same size in the seventeenth century could be had for 6 francs.
