From 850 to 1000 in France the Carolingian minuscule, from the first so clear and beautiful, remained with scarce a stroke of alteration. But immediately after the opening of the eleventh century a series of rapid changes set in, and by the beginning of the twelfth a new hand, perfectly clear and regular, but quite different from the Carolingian, had been formed, which lasted until it was superseded by the Gothic, while a system of contractions adopted because of the scarcity of parchment creates a fresh need for study apart from the peculiarities of personal habits. Side by side, too, with this there grows up a non-professional hand--the so-called cursive or running hand of the ordinary writer--in many cases, especially in deeds and other brief compositions, all but utterly illegible, except to the professional palæographer. Occasionally these autographs are of the highest importance and intensely interesting, as, for instance, when in an English MS. we come Across a note in the handwriting of Ordericus (Vitalis) or Matthew Paris. From 900 to 1200 the vast majority of MSS., illuminated and otherwise, were the work of monastics. Every house of any note had its room set apart for writing. The larger monasteries sometimes utilised the cloisters of the churches themselves, in recesses of which they had desks or tables placed for the copyist. Usually, however, they had a large common room called the scriptorium, where either the copyist and illuminator worked separately and each on his own account, or where a number of copyists awaited with pen and parchment the dictation by one of the fraternity of some work of which a number of copies had to be made. "No admittance except on business" was the rule of this chamber. There, under the direction of the _armarius_, the expert writers did their work. Sometimes a single monk executed the book from first to last by himself. He prepared the vellum, ruled it with the fine metal point, copied the text, painted the illuminations, put on the gilding, and even added the binding. Generally, however, the labour was divided--one monk scraped and polished the parchment; another ruled it; another wrote the text, leaving spaces for initials and miniatures; another put in the initials and did the gilding and flourishing with borders, etc.; and another painted the miniatures. This in the monasteries was done in the case of large and important MSS., and afterwards, when illuminating became a lay-craft, subdivision of labour was the common practice. Binding was done in a special apartment, and by one specially skilled therein. The _scriptorium_ was looked upon as a sort of sacred place, and the work of copying often considered as a labour of piety and love--entered upon with devout prayer, and solemnly blessed by the superior, especially in cases where the books to be written were Bibles, or connected with the services of the house, the Lives of the Saints, or Treatises on Theology.