[Illustration: FIG. 39. INITIAL LETTER FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT This shows the beautiful work done by some of the nuns and monks in "illuminating" the books they copied. This was done in colors by a nun, who pictured her own work in this initial letter L.] Such was the painfully slow method of producing and multiplying books before the advent of printing, and in days when skill in copying manuscripts was not particularly common, even among the monks. It required from a few months to a year or more to produce a few copies, depending on the size and nature of the work, whereas to-day, with printing-presses, five thousand copies of such a book as this can be printed and bound in a few days. [Illustration: FIG. 40. A MONK IN A SCRIPTORIUM (From an illuminated picture in a manuscript in the Royal Library at Brussels) This picture shows the beautiful work done in "illuminating" manuscript books by mediaeval writers. Each copy was a work of art. This represents a better type of _scriptorium_ than is usually shown.] THE SCRIPTORIUM. An important part of the material equipment of many monasteries, in consequence, came to be a _scriptorium_, or writing-room, where the copying of manuscripts could take place undisturbed. In some monasteries one general room was provided, though it was customary to have a number of small rooms at the side of the library. In the monastery shown in Figure 38, seven small rooms for this purpose are shown built out on one side of the library. Sometimes individual cells along a corridor were provided. The advantage of the single room in which a number of monks worked came when an edition of eight or ten copies of a book was to be prepared. One monk could then dictate, while eight or ten others carefully printed on the skins before them what was dictated by the reader. [13] Figure 40 shows a monk at work, though here he is copying from a book before him. After an edition of eight or ten copies of a book had been prepared and bound the extra copies were sent to neighboring and sometimes distant monasteries, sometimes in exchange for other books, and sometimes as gifts to brothers who had longed to read the work (R. 55). New monasteries were provided with the beginnings of a library in this way, and churches were supplied with Missals, Psalters, and other books needed for their services. The writing-room, or rooms, came to be a very important place in those monasteries noted for their literary activity. West gives an interesting description of the _scriptorium_ at Tours, where the learned English monk, Alcuin, was Abbot from 796 to 804, and which at the time was the principal book-writing monastery in Frankland. Describing Alcuin's labors to secure books to send to other monasteries in Charlemagne's kingdom, he says: