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
The Brotherhood house in Deventer, Holland, founded by Gerhard
Groote in 1383, became an important workshop for the production and
distribution of manuscripts. Delprat states that the receipts from
these sales were for a time the main support of the Brotherhood house.
In 1389, a copy of the Bible which had been written out by Brother
Jan von Enkhuizen was sold for five hundred gulden in gold.[130] In
Liége, the Brothers were known as _Broeders van de Penne_, because they
carried quill pens in their caps. Groote seems himself to have taken
a general supervision of this business of the production of books,
selecting the books to be manifolded, verifying the transcripts, and
arranging for the sale of the copies which were passed as approved.
Florentius Radewijus had the general charge of the manuscripts (filling
the rôle which to-day would be known as that of stock clerk) and of
preparing the parchment for the scribes and writing in the inscriptions
of the finished manuscripts. Later, with the development of the Order
and the extension of its book business, each Brotherhood house had its
_librarius_, or manager of the manufacturing and publishing department;
its _rubricator_, who added the initial letters or illuminated letters
in the more expensive manuscripts; its _ligator_, who had charge of the
binding, etc.
It was a distinctive feature of the works prepared by the Brothers that
they were very largely written in the language of the land instead
of in Latin, which elsewhere was, as we have seen, the exclusive
language for literature. It was, in fact, one of the charges made by
the ecclesiastics against the Order that they put into common language
doctrinal instruction which ordinary readers, without direct guidance
of the Church, were not competent to understand, and which tended,
therefore, to work mischief. In 1398, the Brothers took counsel on
the point whether it were permissible to distribute among the people
religious writings in Low German, and they appear to have secured the
authorisation required. They laid great stress upon the precision of
their script, and they were, as a rule, opposed to needless expenditure
for ornamentation of text or of covers. Under the influence of Groote,
the work of preparing manuscripts of good books was taken up by the
monks and the nuns of Windesheim, but, according to Busch, the books
produced in Windesheim were but rarely sold. In some cases these seem
to have been distributed gratis, while in others they were given in
exchange for other books required for the library of the monastery or
convent.[131]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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