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
In this manner there came into the hands of these lay-clerics, not only
the management of correspondence, personal, official, and diplomatic,
but a very large proportion of the direction of the affairs with which
such correspondence had to do. As far, therefore, as the clerical
personality represented ecclesiastical purposes and aims, the influence
of ecclesiasticism must have been very much greater during the age
in which the art of writing was confined to the Church than at any
earlier or any later period of the world’s history. Such influence was,
however, probably less in fact than in appearance, as it seems to have
been the case that a very large proportion of such clerics were priests
in name only, and that their interests, purposes, and ambitions were
outside of the Church, and were not necessarily even in sympathy with
the development of the control of the Church over the affairs of the
world.
Wattenbach is of opinion that the scribes of this period secured a
larger return for their work than came to any other class of labourers
or officials. Among many other examples, he gives a quotation from
Dümmler concerning a Lombard cleric of Rotland, named Anselm, who, in
1050, prided himself upon the number of books he had written, and said:
_Multos oportet libros scriberes, ut inde precium sumeres, quo a tuis
lenonibus te redimeres_.[33] (You ought to write many books in order to
obtain money with which to buy yourself off from those having claims
upon you.)
Notker wrote in 1020 to the Bishop of Sitten, who wanted to obtain some
books: _Si vultis ea, sumtibus enim indigent, mittite plures pergamenas
et scribentibus præmia et suscipietis eorum exempla_.[34] (If you want
these books, you must send more parchment and also moneys for the
scribes. You will then receive your copies.)
In the twelfth century, the monks of Tegernsee, under the Abbot Rupert,
were working on the production of the books for the library of some
noble lady.[35] The Brother Liaupold, in Mallerstorf, spoke of having
“earned much money through his pen.” This happened in the last quarter
of the twelfth century. The lines quoted by Wattenbach were found upon
a manuscript bearing Liaupold’s name.[36]
For the libraries of their own monasteries, the monks worked without
direct pay, and it was only later, as the ambition of the librarians
increased or as the business of distributing copies of manuscripts
became more important, that the monasteries found it worth while to
employ, either in place of or in addition to their own monks, scribes
from outside. In Salzburg, Pastor Peter Grillinger paid, in 1435, to
the scribes of the neighbouring monasteries three hundred gulden for
the production of a Bible (probably an illuminated copy), and presented
this to the library of the Cathedral.[37]
In the accounts of the monastery at Aldersbach, Rockinger finds
entries, in 1304, of payments for _scriptores librorum_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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