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History
102
Western Civilization (II) |
The Scribal Tradition
Prior to the introduction of moveable type printing, the basic form of the book and process by which books were produced had changed very little since classical antiquity. In the Middle Ages, books were copied by hand, in so-called "scriptoria"--copy houses--and only by daylight, because artificial lighting by candles carried the risk of fire.
The work of copying was very difficult: in commercial scriptoria, a book might be "mass produced" through dictation; in monastic scriptoria, individual monks copied in silence from books. Once the copyist had finished his work, the new version might be delivered to an illuminator for illustration. Only then would the book be bound.
At right, a medieval scribe takes dictation. The images is from a woodblock advertisement for the Badius firm and is found in an edition of the Dialogus by William of Ockham (Lyons, circa 1494).