The letters of this book are of the Roman form, as had been commanded by Charlemagne; but this form of writing gradually went out of use, not only in France, but even in Italy and Spain. The unskillful writers who could not properly produce the plain lines and true curves of Roman letters, tried to hide the ungainliness of their awkwardly constructed characters by repeated touches of the pen, which made them bristle with angles. In the golden age of pointed architecture and superfluous ornamentation, this fault became a fashion. The pointed letters became known as ecclesiastic letters, and then there seemed to be a special propriety in putting finials and crockets on the letters of books of piety. It is to the failing skill and bad taste of inexpert copyists more than to their desire to construct an improved form of writing, that p151 we may trace the origin of the Black or Gothic letter,68 which, under a great many names and modifications, was employed in all books until supplanted by the Roman types of Jenson.

The copyists and calligraphers were stimulated to do their best by the religious zeal of wealthy laymen who frequently gave to religious houses large sums of money for the copying and ornamentation of books. It was taught that the gift of an illuminated book, or of the means to make it, was an act of piety which would be held in perpetual remembrance. For the medieval books of luxury thus made to order, the finest vellum was selected. The size most in fashion was that now known as demy folio, of which the leaf is about ten inches wide and fifteen inches long, but smaller sizes were often made. The space to be occupied by the written text was mapped out with faint lines, so that the writer could keep his letters on a line, at even distance from each other and within the prescribed margin. Each letter was carefully drawn, and filled in or painted with repeated touches of the pen. With good taste, black ink was most frequently selected for the text; red ink was used only for the more prominent words, and the catch-letters, then known as the rubricated letters. Sometimes texts were written in blue, green, purple, gold or silver inks, but it was soon discovered that texts in bright color were not so readable as texts in black.

When the copy­ist had fin­ished his sheet, he passed it to the de­sign­er, who sketched the bor­der, pic­tures and in­i­tials. The sheet was then given to the il­lum­i­na­tor, who paint­ed it. p152 The orna­men­ta­tion of a med­ie­val book of the first class is be­yond de­scrip­tion by words or by wood-cuts. Every inch of space was used. Its broad mar­gins were filled with quaint orna­ments, some­times of high merit, admirably painted in vivid colors. Grotesque initials, which, with their flourishes, often spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of the changes of chapter or of subject. In printers’ phrase, the composition was “close-up and solid” to the extreme degree of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink, it would have been unreadable through its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the medieval copyist was seldom governed by con­si­der­a­tions of time or expense. It was of little con­se­quence wheth­er the book he trans­cribed would be fin­ished in one or in ten years. It was required only that he should keep at his work steadily and do his best. His skill is more to be com­mended than his taste. Many of his initials and borders were out­rageously inap­prop­riate for the text for which they were designed. The gravest truths were hedged in with the most child­ish conceits. Angels, but­ter­flies, p153 goblins, clowns, birds, snails and monkeys, sometimes in artistic, but much oftener in grotesque, and sometimes in highly offensive positions, are to be found in the illuminated borders of copies of the gospels and the writings of the fathers.

The book was bound by the for­war­der, who sewed the leaves and put them in a cover of leather or vel­vet; by the fin­i­sher, who orna­ment­ed the cover with gil­ding and enamel. The an­nexed il­lus­tra­tion of book­bind­ing, pub­lished by Amman in his Book of Trades, puts before us many of the imp­le­ments still in use. The for­warder, with his cus­to­mary apron of leather, is in the fore­ground, ma­king use of a plow-knife for trim­ming the edges of a book. The lying-press which rests obliquely against the block before him contains a book that has received the operation of backing-up from a queer-shaped hammer lying upon the floor. The workman at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book, for sewing was properly regarded as a man’s work, and a scientific operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress. The work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging against the wall leave us in no doubt as to their use. There is an air of antiquity about everything connected with this bookbindery which suggests the thought that its tools p154 and usages are much older than those of printing. Chevillier says that seventeen professional bookbinders found regular employment in making up books for the University of Paris, as early as 1272. [anc150b] Wherever books were produced in quantities, bookbinding was set apart as a business distinct from that of copying.

The poor students who copied books for their own use were also obliged to bind them, which they did in a simple but ef­fic­ient man­ner, by sewing to­geth­er the fold­ed sheets, at­taching them to nar­row parch­ment bands, the ends of which were made to pass through a cover of stout parch­ment, at the joint near the back. The ends of the bands were then pasted down under the stif­fening sheet of the cover, and the book was pressed. Some­times the cover was made flex­i­ble by the omis­sion of the stif­fen­ing sheet; some­times the edges of the leaves were pro­tect­ed by flex­i­ble and over­hang­ing flaps which were made to project over the covers; or by the insertion in the covers of stout leather strings with which the two covers were tied together. Ornamentation was entirely neglected, for a book of this character was made for use and not for show. These methods of binding were mostly applied to small books intended for the pocket: the workmanship was rough, but the binding was strong and serviceable. p155

Books of larger size, made for the lecturn, were bound up in boards—not an amalgamation of hard-pressed oakum, tar, and paper-pulp, but veritable boards of planed wood, which were never less than one-quarter inch, and sometimes were two inches in thickness.69 The sheets encased in these boards were gathered in sections usually of five double leaves. The sections were sewed on rounded raw-hide bands protected from cutting or cracking by a braided casing of thread. A well-bound medieval book is a model of careful sewing: the thread, repeatedly passed in and out of the sections and around the bands, sometimes diagonally from one corner of the book to the other, is caught up and locked in a worked head at the top and bottom of the back. The bands, often fan-tailed at their ends, were pasted and sometimes riveted in the boards. The joints were protected against cracking by broad linings of parchment.

For a book that might receive rough usage, and that did not require a high ornamental finish, hog-skin was selected as the strongest and most suitable covering for the boards. The covers and the back were decorated by marking them with fanciful patterns, lightly burnt in the leather by heated rolls or stamps, from patterns and by processes substantially the same as those used in manufacturing modern accountbooks. For a book intended to receive an ornamentation of gilded work, calf and goat-skin leathers were preferred. The gilding was done with care, elaborately, artistically, with an excess of minute decoration that is really bewildering, when one considers the sparsity and simplicity of the tools in use. To protect the gilding on the sides, the boards were often paneled or sunk in the centre, and the corners, and sometimes the entire outer edges of the cover, were shielded with thick projecting plates of brass or copper. A large boss of p156 brass in the centre, with smaller bosses or buttons upon the corners, was also used to protect the gilding from abrasion. On the cheaper books, bound in hog-skin, iron corners and a closely set studding of round-headed iron nails were used for the same purpose. To prevent the covers from warping outward, two clasps of brass were attached to the covers.

The book thus bound was too weighty to be held in the hand; it was so full of angles and knobs that it could not be placed upon a flat table without danger of scratching it. For the safety of the book and the convenience of the reader, it was necessary that the book should be laid on an inclined desk or a revolving lecturn, provided with a ledge for holding it up and with holdfasts for keeping down the leaves. The lecturn was really required for the protection of the reader. Petrarch, when reading an unwieldy volume of the Epistles of Cicero, which he held in his hands, and in which he was p157 profoundly interested, repeatedly let the book slip and fall, and so bruised his left leg that he feared, for some time, that he would have to submit to its amputation.

When the book was not in use, it was laid sidewise on the shelf with the flat side fully exposed, showing to best advantage the beauty of the binding. Its metal-studded sides prevented it from being stood upright on the shelf. The book made for common use was frequently covered with oak boards banded with iron. When exposed in church, it was secured to a post or pillar with a chain.

The ornamented cover of the sumptuous book was even more resplendent than its illuminated text. Gilders, jewelers, silversmiths, engravers, and painters took up the work which the binder had left, and lavished upon it all the resources of their arts. A copy of the Evangelists presented by Charlemagne to a church in France, was covered with plates of gold and silver, and studded with gems. To another church the pious sister of Charlemagne gave a book glittering with precious stones, and with appropriate engraving upon a great agate in the centre of the cover. We read of another book of devotion covered with plates of selected ivory, upon which was sculptured, in high relief, with questionable propriety, an illustration of the Feast of Bacchus. The Cluny Museum at Paris contains two book-covers of enameled brass, one of which has on the cover a very elaborate engraving of the Adoration of the Wise Men. Books like these called for the display of a higher degree of p158 skill than could be found in monasteries. The mechanics who were called in to perfect the work of the copyists soon became familiar with all the details of book-making. Little by little they encroached on the province of the copyist, and in time became competent to do all his work.

During the twelfth century the eccles­ias­ti­cal mon­o­po­ly of book-mak­ing be­gan to give way. Lit­er­ary work had grown irk­some. The church had se­cured a po­si­tion of sup­rem­acy in tem­por­al as well as spir­i­tual mat­ters; it had grown rich, and showed dis­re­gard for the spir­i­tual and ed­u­ca­tion­al means by which its suc­ces­ses had been made. It began to enjoy its pros­per­ity. The ne­glect of books by many of the priests of the thir­teenth cen­tury was auth­or­ized by the ex­ample and pre­cepts of Fran­cis d’As­sisi, who suf­fered none of his followers to have Bible, breviary or psalter. This new form of asceticism culminated in the es­tab­lish­ment of the order of the Mend­icant Friars, which, in its earlier days, was wonder­ful­ly popular. Found­ed for the pur­pose of supplying the spiritual admin­is­tra­tions which had been sadly ne­glected by the beneficed clergy, who were not only ignorant but corrupt,71 the new order ultimately p159 became even more neglectful of duty, more ignorant and more immoral. The leaders of the friars were men of piety, and some of them, dis­re­garding the precept of the zealous founder of the order, were students and col­lectors of books; but the inferior clergy, with few ex­cep­tions, were ex­tremely ignorant. They not only exerted a mis­chiev­ous influence upon the people, but they showed to priests of other orders that the know­ledge to be had from books was not really necessary. The class of monks who had devoted their lives to the copying, binding and orna­ment­ing of books, imitated as far as they could the example set by the pleasure-loving, ignorant friars, and sought oppor­tun­ities for re­lax­a­tion.72 The care of libraries was neglected for pleasures of a grosser nature. The duties of copyists and librarians passed, gradually and almost imper­cep­tibly, into the hands of the laity.

The business of selling books, which had been given up during the decline of the Roman empire, re-appeared in the latter part of the twelfth century in the neighborhood of the new Italian universities of Padua and Bologna. To have the privilege of selling books to the students, the booksellers were p160 obliged to submit to a stringent discipline. The restrictive legislation of the University of Paris, for four centuries the greatest school of theology and the most renowned of the European universities, may be offered as a suitable illustration of the spirit shown to booksellers by all the schools of the middle ages. Through its clerical teachers, the church claimed the right to control the making, buying and selling of books. It extended its authority over parchment-makers, bookbinders, and every other class of mechanics that contributed in any way to their manufacture. The rules made by this university reveal many curious facts concerning book-making, and teach us, as a recent imperialist author has truly said, that the censorship of books is older than printing.

We command that the stationers,73 vulgarly called booksellers, shall each year, or every other year, as may be required by the university, take oath to behave themselves honestly and faithfully in all matters concerning the buying, keeping or selling of books. In the year 1342, they were required, touching the price of books, to tell the truth, pure and simple, and without deceit or lying.

No bookseller could buy a book for the purpose of sale, until it had been exposed for five days in the Hall of the University, and its purchase had been declined by all the teachers and scholars.

The prices of books sold by the booksellers were fixed by four master booksellers appointed by the university. Any attempt to get a higher price entailed a penalty. No one could buy or sell books, or lend money on them, without a special permit from the university.

The profit of the bookseller upon the sale of a book was fixed at four deniers when sold to a teacher or scholar, and six deniers when sold to the public.

No pots-de-vin, or drink-money, nor gratuities of any kind, were to be exacted by the bookseller in addition to the fixed price.

Books should be made correct to copy, and be sold as correct in good faith. The bookseller should be required to make an oath as to their entire accuracy. Whoever sold incorrect books would be obliged to make the corrections, and would be otherwise punished. p161

No bookseller should refuse to lend a book to the student who wished to make a new copy from it, and who offered security and complied with the terms fixed by the university.74

? Seal of the Masters and Scholars of the University of Paris.

[From Lacroix.]

Before any newly written book could be offered for sale, it must be submitted to the rector of the university, who had the power to suppress it,75 or correct it, and who, if it was approved, fixed its price. p162

It does not surprise us to learn that the stationers did not thrive. Under the hard pressure of taxation and censorship, the imposition of arbitrary prices and compulsory loans, they found it very difficult to earn a living. They were obliged to add another business to that of book-publishing. A few became notaries; some sold furs, while their wives in the same shop sold “fripperies and like haberdashery”; others became the dressers of parchments and binders of books. Against these innovations the regents of the university made unavailing protest, severely censuring the base booksellers who “did not uphold the dignity of their profession, but who mixed it up with vile trades.” But the necessities of the half-starved booksellers compelled the university to overlook the offense.

The best and largest books of the stationers were always of a theological nature. In a list given by Chevillier of the books sold in the fourteenth century by the booksellers to the university, are found in the foremost place, books on the Canon Law, the Homilies of St. Gregory, the Book of Sacraments, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the Homilies of St. Augustine, the Compendium of Thomas Aquinas,76 and St. Thomas on Metaphysics, on Physics, on Heaven and Earth, on the Soul. Copies of the Gospels or the Scriptures, or even of the works of classical authors, were not in high request. The most popular books were elementary works on grammar and philosophy, for the use of students, and devotional works like creeds, catechisms, and prayers, which were largely bought by the more pious part of the people that were able to read.

The copyists made books for the more ignorant priests, books containing a synopsis of Christian faith and doctrine, or descriptions of important events recorded in the Scriptures. As an additional refreshment of the memory, and to make them more enticing to the buyer, these books were profusely illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings. The Bible of the Poor, and the Mirror of Man’s Redemption, afterward popular as p163 printed books, are favorable specimens of a class of illustrated manuscripts in common use among the inferior clergy as far back as the tenth and eleventh centuries. They were sold to the unlearned of the laity and to friars who could not read, but who could understand the allegories taught through the pictures. An increasing fondness for ornamentation and for pictorial illustration may be noticed among both learned and unlearned. Manuscripts of every description were adorned with pictures.77 Abstruse theological writings and treatises on geometry and philosophy were often decked out with floriated borders and gaudily painted illustrations which would now be considered as suitable only for children. It would seem that it was through the pictorial attractions of a book, more than through its text, that men were led to admire literature.

The copyists made books of small size which were sold to students for trifling sums. Psalters, with leaves no larger than the palm of the hand, were sold for a sol. Elementary school-books, like the Logic of Boethius, were sometimes copied in a minute style of penmanship, and were still further contracted with abbreviations until the writing had the appearance of microscopic stenography. The minute penmanship may be regarded as evidence of the great scarcity of parchment, and the abbreviations as indications of the weariness of the writer.

The arbitrary order of the university, which compelled the booksellers to lend their books to scholars, shows that it was customary for a student or a poor man of letters to copy the books he needed. The little books sold for a sol were manifestly made for readers who could not even buy the vellum p164 required for a book of the usual size. It was necessary that books sold at this price should be of the cheapest materials, and that the text should be abbreviated by contractions78 so that it would occupy but little space. The despised fabric of paper, and the remnants of vellum rejected by professional copyists after the skin had been cut up for leaves of folio or of quarto size, were cheerfully accepted by readers who valued a book more for its contents than for its appearance.

The scarcity of vellum in one century, and its abundance in another, are indicated by the size of written papers during the same periods. Before the sixth century, legal documents were usually written upon one side only; in the tenth century the practice of writing upon both sides of the vellum became common. During the thirteenth century, valuable documents were often written upon strips two inches wide and but three and a half inches long. At the end of the fourteenth century these strips went out of fashion. The more general use of paper had diminished the demand for vellum and increased the supply. In the fifteenth century, legal documents on rolls of sewed vellum twenty feet in length were not uncommon. All the valuable books of the fourteenth century were written on vellum. In the library of the Louvre the manuscripts on p165 paper, compared to those on vellum, were as one to twenty-eight; in the library of the Dukes of Burgundy, one-fifth of the books were of paper. The increase in the proportion of paper books is a fair indication of the increasing popularity of paper; but it is obvious that vellum was even then considered as the more suitable substance for a book of value.

The esteem with which books were regarded by priests and scholars during the fourteenth century was shared by men of wealth, who coveted books, not so much for their contents as for their pictures, and as evidences of wealth and culture. A remarkable impulse had been given to literature and to the making of books by the troubadours of Southern France. Their songs of love and devotion to women, their encomiums of chivalry, and stories of battle and adventure, which were of their own age, fresh and full of life, and untainted by the influence of withered classical models, had most unbounded popularity in every grade of society. Uncultivated people, who would have yawned over the reading of Homer or the Odes of Horace, would listen with a keen delight to the songs of a ProvenÇal minstrel, or to the reading of romances about Charlemagne and his Paladins, about Arthur and Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. To men who had regarded books only as dull treatises about theology, these romances were revelations of an unsuspected attractiveness in literature. How much these romances increased the respect for books, and led to the making of new copies, and to a more general knowledge of reading and writing, cannot be exactly stated; but their influence on the people was vastly greater than that of the books of the schools. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, books about love and chivalry constituted the greater part of the secular literature of Europe. The most popular books of Caxton, the first English printer, and of the early printers of Paris, were of this character. To the ladies of France, the books of love and song were especially attractive. It was largely through their admiration that the workmanship of a new order of book-makers came in fashion. p166 To please their dainty tastes, copies were made with refinements of calligraphy never before attempted; the unwieldy sizes of folio and quarto were supplanted by small and handy duodecimos, and bindings of a more delicate character were introduced.

The nature of the new literature, and the effeminate taste of the newly made class of readers, seemed to call for changes in the old methods of making books. It was necessary that the massiveness and barbaric splendor of the monastic books should be supplanted by workmanship combining elegance, lightness and delicacy. It was necessary that the illustrations made for the lady’s missal, or for a book of romance, should be designed, not by some grim old monk whose imagination had been cramped by his solitary life, and whose narrowness and severity were visible in all his workmanship, but by a courtier, an artist, and man of fashion, who knew the world, who knew how to please it, and how to paint it. To this class of men, the forerunners of courtly artists like Durer, Holbein and Rubens, the manufacture of the new books was intrusted. The new artists in book-making organized a nicer division of labor, and supervised and directed the work at every stage of its progress. A copyist selected for his skill wrote the text in prescribed places on the sheets, and, by the uniformity of his penmanship, gave character and connection to the work; one designer sketched the borders, and another outlined the initials; an illuminator filled in the outlines with gold-leaf and bright colors. Then came the artist, or miniaturist, who drew the illustrations and painted the fine pictures which gave the book its great charm. The artists were called miniaturists because their illustrations were miniature pictures, as artistically designed, and always more carefully painted than larger paintings made for the adornment of churches, halls and picture galleries. Avoiding the hard outlines and glaring pigments of the illuminator, the miniaturist painted in low tints, and with the nicest attention to harmony of color. The beauty of the work, which has been but little affected p167 by time, is recognized to this day. The sheets which had been so artistically painted were as elegantly bound. They were covered with silk, velvet, satin, or bright-colored leather, embroidered with gold and pearls, studded with buttons of gold, banded on the corners with shields, and secured with clasps of precious metals engraved and enameled in the very finest style of decorative art. Admirable as the books are, they do not give us a high opinion of the intelligence of the artists, nor of the culture of their owners, for they are full of anachronisms and absurdities in the pictures and in the text.

This taste for elegant books, which began in the thirteenth century, became a princely amusement. In 1373, Charles V of France was the owner of more than nine hundred79 books, most of which were written on fine vellum, superbly bound, and adorned with precious stones and clasps of silver or gold. His brothers fostered the same taste. Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, gathered around him artists, authors, copyists, and bookbinders, and established a great library. His son, John the Fearless, largely increased it, but the most costly additions were made by Philip the Good, who, at the middle of the fifteenth century, enjoyed the distinction of possessing the most magnificent books in Western Europe. Books of equal beauty were also made in Italy, but there was no part of Europe where calligraphers, miniaturists and ornamental bookbinders found a higher appreciation of their skill than in Burgundy and the Netherlands. Nor did this taste for fine p168 books soon go out of fashion. The business of making fine manuscript books was not entirely destroyed by the invention of printing. Lacroix, a French antiquary,80 has shown us that copyists, illuminators, designers and painters found employment in the embellishment of books even as late as the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

During the middle ages, books of merit were everywhere sold at enormous prices. Illustrated and illuminated volumes in elegant bindings seem specially exorbitant, when we consider the greater purchasing capacity of money. Daunou says, that in a computation of the value of a large library of the fourteenth century, the average price of each manuscript book should be fixed at about 450 francs. Didot says that, of three hundred books contained in the library at Ratisbon, during the year 1231, the average price of each book was 600 francs. What proportion should be allowed for binding and illumination is not stated, but it can be proved that copying could not have been the labor of greatest expense. In the fourteenth century the price of copying a Bible at Bologna, exclusive of the value of binding, parchment and illumination, was 80 Bolognese livres. In the fifteenth century, the price of copying was steadily declining, while the prices of illuminating and binding were increasing.

Books were expensive, not so much through the labor of the copyist, who did the simplest and cheapest part of the work, but through the extravagant ornamentation put on p169 them by the illuminator and the binder. The true office of the book was perverted. It was regarded, not as a medium of instruction, but as a means for the display of wealth and artistic tastes. The reader was really taught to value it more for its dress than for its substance; the book-maker was most appreciated when he made books so expensive that they were out of the reach of ordinary buyers. To the modern book-buyer, the prices asked for books of size and merit during the middle ages seem excessive, and especially so when they are contrasted with the prices then paid for food or labor.81

At the end of the fourteenth century, books of instruction were larger, more ornamental, and, to the unschooled reader, more pedantic and more forbidding than ever. We do not find in them any valuable contributions to knowledge, nor do we discover in the writers or teachers of the day any disposition to make knowledge easy to be acquired. The love of great books during this period, frequently noticed as one of the evidences of a true revival of literature, is, when critically examined, evidence only of the artistic tastes of book-buyers and of the exclusiveness of scholars. So far from paving the way for the introduction of printing, this trifling with p170 literature was one of the most formidable impediments in its path. It made despicable even the thought of an attempt to produce books by the simpler method of printing, then in its first stage of practical development.

The princely patrons of literature, the learned doctors of the universities, the copyists and stationers, the illuminators and miniaturists, must have seen the playing cards and prints then sold in all large cities, and, to some extent, must have known the process by which they were made. But they looked on them with a pitying contempt for the coarse tastes which could be satisfied with such rude workmanship. The distance in degrees of merit between printed playing cards and finely illuminated manuscript books seemed infinite. If the cards conveyed a suggestion of the possibility of printed books, the suggestion was rejected. To the dainty tastes of book-makers printing was a barbarous trade; to the wealthy book-buyer, a printed book would have been the degradation of art and literature. One may look in vain among the book-makers and scholars of the fourteenth century for any sign that heralded the coming of printing. Makers and buyers of books seem to have been fully satisfied with things as they were—with the established methods of book-making, with the organization of society and the state of education. And the professed patrons of literature would have been forever satisfied with this state of affairs. Under their exclusive patronage, books would have been made more and more sumptuously, and put more and more out of the reach of the people.