Flaccus Alcuin, an Englishman and a graduate of Anglo-Saxon schools, the teacher and adviser of Charlemagne, was authorized by the great emperor to institute a policy which would multiply books and disseminate knowledge. It was ordered that every abbot, bishop and count should keep in permanent employment a qualified copyist who must write correctly, using Roman letters only, and that every monastic institution should maintain a room known as the _scriptorium_, fitted up with desks and furnished with all the implements for writing. The work of copying manuscripts and increasing libraries was made a life-long business. Alcuin earnestly entreated the monks to zealousness in the discharge of this duty. “It is,” he writes, “a most meritorious work, more beneficial to the health than working in the fields, which profits only a man’s body, whilst the labor of the copyist profits his soul.” On another occasion, Alcuin exhorted the monks who could not write neatly to learn to bind books. [p149] [Illustration: The Scriptorium. [From Lacroix.]] The copyists of the middle ages may be properly divided in two classes: the class that considered copying an irksome duty and that did its work mechanically and badly; the class that treated book-making as a purely artistic occupation, and gave the most time and care to ornamentation. The book-makers who made search for authentic copies, comparing the different texts of books and correcting their errors, did not appear until after the invention of printing. The mechanical drudges, who were always most numerous, not only repeated the errors of their faulty copies, but added to them. Errors became so frequent that some of the more careful and conscientious copyists thought it necessary to repeat at the end of every book the solemn adjuration of Irenæus: I adjure thee who shall transcribe this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his glorious coming to judge the quick and dead, [p150] that thou compare what thou transcribest, and correct it carefully according to the copy from which thou transcribest, and that thou also annex a copy of this adjuration to what thou hast written. The illustration annexed, the fac-simile of a few lines from a Latin Bible written in the ninth century, is a fair example of the carelessness of many mechanical copyists. The words _In illo tempore_ are not to be found in correct copies of the Vulgate;[67] the very awkward writing, the running together of words, the unnecessary contractions, and the misuse of capital letters, are flagrant blemishes that call for no comment. [Illustration: The Penmanship of a Copyist of the Ninth Century. [From Lacroix.]]