Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. IPutnam, George Haven
History
Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. I
Putnam, George Haven
Books -- History -- 400-1450; Copyright; Freedom of the press -- History -- To 1500; Manuscripts; Printers
It seems evident, however, that while a scattered trade in manuscripts
was carried on both by the scribes in the towns and between the
monastery _scriptoria_, the facilities for the production and
manifolding of manuscript copies were hardly adequate to meet the
demand or requirements of readers and students. As early as 250,
Origen, writing in Cappadocia, was complaining that he found difficulty
in getting his teachings distributed. A zealous disciple, named
Ambrosius, secured for the purpose a group of scribes whose transcripts
were afterwards submitted to Origen for revision before being sent
out through the churches. It is further related that Origen became so
absorbed in the work of correcting these manuscripts that he could
not be called from his desk either for exercise or for meals.[318] S.
Jerome, a century later, when he was sojourning in Bethlehem, found
similar difficulty. He had among his monks some zealous scribes, but he
complained that their work was untrustworthy.[319]
Abbot Lupus of Ferrières was obliged (in the ninth century) to apply to
monks in York in order to secure the transcribing work that he required.
In connection with this difficulty in securing books, it became
customary, when copies were loaned from libraries, to secure from
the borrower a pledge or security of equal or greater value. The
correspondence of the time gives frequent instances of the difficulty
in getting back books that had been loaned, notwithstanding the risk
of the forfeiture of the pledges. In 1020, Notker writes from St. Gall
to the Bishop of Sitten that certain books belonging to the Bishop,
for which the Bishop was making demand, had been borrowed by the
Abbot Aregia, and that, notwithstanding many applications, he had not
succeeded in getting even a promise of their return.[320] In Vercelli,
a beautiful mass book which had been loaned by the Abbot Erkenbald of
Fulda (997-1011) to the Bishop Henry of Wurzburg, was to have been
retained for the term of the Bishop’s life. After the death of the
Bishop, reclamation was made from Fulda for the return of the volume,
but without success. During the years 1461-1463, the Legate Marinus de
Fregeno travelled through Sweden and Norway and collected there certain
manuscripts which he claimed were those that had been taken away from
Rome at the time of its plunder by the Goths. He evidently took the
ground that where books were concerned, a term of one thousand years
was not sufficient to constitute a “statute of limitations.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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