Bibliomania in the Middle Ages | Page 2

centuries of industry in the face of such difficulties that to workers of a
later period might have seemed insurmountable.
A further fact worthy of mention is that book production was from the
art point of view fully abreast of the other arts during the period, as
must be apparent to any one who examines the collections in some of
the libraries of Europe. Much of this beauty was wrought for the love
of the art itself. In the earlier centuries religious institutions absorbed
nearly all the social intellectual movements as well as the possession of
material riches and land. Kings and princes were occupied with distant
wars which impoverished them and deprived literature and art of that
patronage accorded to it in later times. There is occasional mention,
however, of wealthy laymen, whose religious zeal induced them to give
large sums of money for the copying and ornamentation of books; and
there were in the abbeys and convents lay brothers whose fervent spirits,
burning with poetical imagination, sought in these monastic retreats
and the labor of writing, redemption from their past sins. These men of
faith were happy to consecrate their whole existence to the
ornamentation of a single sacred book, dedicated to the community,
which gave them in exchange the necessaries of life.

The labor of transcribing was held, in the monasteries, to be a full
equivalent of manual labor in the field. The rule of St. Ferreol, written
in the sixth century, says that, "He who does not turn up the earth with
the plough ought to write the parchment with his fingers."
Mention has been made of the difficulties under which books were
produced; and this is a matter which we who enjoy the conveniences of
modern writing and printing can little understand. The hardships of the
scriptorium were greatest, of course, in winter. There were no fires in
the often damp and ill-lighted cells, and the cold in some of the parts of
Europe where books were produced must have been very severe.
Parchment, the material generally used for writing upon after the
seventh century, was at some periods so scarce that copyists were
compelled to resort to the expedient of effacing the writing on old and
less esteemed manuscripts.[5] The form of writing was stiff and regular
and therefore exceedingly slow and irksome.
In some of the monasteries the scriptorium was at least at a later period,
conducted more as a matter of commerce, and making of books became
in time very profitable. The Church continued to hold the keys of
knowledge and to control the means of productions; but the cloistered
cell, where the monk or the layman, who had a penance to work off for
a grave sin, had worked in solitude, gave way to the apartment
specially set aside, where many persons could work together, usually
under the direction of a librarius or chief scribe. In the more carefully
constructed monasteries this apartment was so placed as to adjoin the
calefactory, which allowed the introduction of hot air, when needed.
The seriousness with which the business of copying was considered is
well illustrated by the consecration of the scriptorium which was often
done in words which may be thus translated: "Vouchsafe, O Lord, to
bless this work-room of thy servants, that all which they write therein
may be comprehended by their intelligence and realized in their work."
While the work of the scribes was largely that of copying the scriptures,
gospels, and books of devotion required for the service of the church,
there was a considerable trade in books of a more secular kind.
Particularly was this so in England. The large measure of attention

given to the production of books of legends and romances was a
distinguishing feature of the literature of England at least three
centuries previous to the invention of printing. At about the twelfth
century and after, there was a very large production and sale of books
under such headings as chronicles, satires, sermons, works of science
and medicine, treatises on style, prose romances and epics in verse. Of
course a large proportion of these were written in or translated from the
Latin, the former indicating a pretty general knowledge of that
language among those who could buy or read books at all. That this
familiarity with the Latin tongue was not confined to any particular
country is abundantly shown by various authorities.
Mr. Merryweather, whose book, as has been intimated, is only a
defense of bibliomania itself as it actually existed in the middle ages,
gives the reader but scant information as to processes of book-making
at that time. But thanks to the painstaking research of others, these
details are now a part of the general knowledge of the development of
the book. The following, taken from Mr.