In the business of transcribing books, as often extensively carried on in many monasteries, several monks would sometimes copy manuscripts at the dictation of a reader and thus a number of copies would be produced at the same time. Each copy thus produced, however, was an "individual" and not a "manifold" or duplicate of the others, as in carbon copies or as printed from a type-plate. Writing at the dictation of another was an ancient custom. It may have been practiced in the transcription of the cuneiform tablets. It is affirmed that Jeremiah, the prophet, thus dictated the writing to his faithful scribe, "And they asked Baruch, saying, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth? Then Baruch answered them, He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book." (Jeremiah 36:17, 18.) It is possible, or perhaps probable, that the fifty copies of the Scriptures which Constantine is said to have ordered to be made for the churches in and about Constantinople, may all have been produced at the dictation of a single reader. In that event, each respective copy, while collectively made by individual monks in the _scriptorium_, would bear its own distinct individuality. The copies thus made at dictation would not be facsimiles of one another or a proof copy of the original, but each copy _would_ preserve a special kinship to all the other copies made under the same general conditions. And this is an important consideration in textual criticism--especially in tracing "family" likeness of certain manuscripts. And so, no doubt, from the _scriptoria_ of the monasteries came the books, or many of them, with which the provincial mansions of the nobility and the private and public libraries were supplied. These manuscripts, made by the monks, were afterwards collected (or many of them were) in the libraries of Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, and elsewhere, as well as those treasured in abbeys and churches.