Books Before Typography Part 2

In order to prevent mistakes in the putting together of the quires a quire mark was put on each quire, sometimes on the first sheet and sometimes on the last sheet. In the 11th century catch-words were used to show the connection of the quires.

The scribes took great pains with their ma.n.u.scripts and ruled them carefully before writing. The lines were p.r.i.c.ked off carefully by the use of compa.s.ses and ruled with a stylus which made a mark or crease on the vellum. This was ordinarily applied with force enough to make a raised line on the back of the page and sometimes with force enough to show through two or three pages. Later these rulings were colored with inks of brilliant hues and formed part of the decoration of the ma.n.u.script. It has been claimed that a certain ma.n.u.script, probably dating from the 13th century, shows signs of having been ruled with a lead pencil. This is very doubtful, however. The first distinct mention of lead pencils which we have is about 1565. These pencils were made of wood and strips of natural graphite.

The older literary ma.n.u.scripts were written entirely in capital letters without any s.p.a.cing between the words. The cursive or running hand with the letters smaller and more or less connected appears in ma.n.u.scripts of later date. In the older ma.n.u.scripts marks were introduced to show the ends of sentences and occasionally dots were inserted to mark the separation of words where otherwise the meaning would be ambiguous.

These marks, however, are not related to our modern punctuation.

The tendency to separate words appears first in non-literary doc.u.ments, such as legal doc.u.ments or matters of record. As the tendency to separate words developed at first only the long words were separated and for a long time short words were connected with those before them as is still done in Italian. It was not until the 11th century that the custom of s.p.a.cing all words became general and then only in Latin ma.n.u.scripts.

The correct separation of words in Greek ma.n.u.scripts was never established until the ma.n.u.scripts themselves were superseded by printing in the 15th century.

The paragraph appears as early as the 4th century B.C. It was generally indicated, however, by a horizontal mark rather than by s.p.a.cing. The indenting of the paragraph came later and was followed by the use of the larger letter, first employed to indicate the beginning of the sentences. The development of the sentence itself as a device in composition was somewhat similar to that of the paragraph.

It is difficult to tell where the use of punctuation begins. Some very early ma.n.u.scripts show the rudiments of it. The first punctuation mark was the stop at the end of the period. This was originally two dots, or our colon. When this became one dot it was at first the lower one that was omitted so that the second form of the period is a dot level with the top of the letter. The period, colon, and comma were each represented by a single dot, the value depending upon whether it was on a level with the top, the middle, or the bottom of the letter. During the middle ages a system of punctuation was developed approximately as we now have it.

Unfortunately words had the same tendency to refuse to fit the line that bothers the modern compositor. The scribe, not being limited by the resources of a font of type, did not hesitate to crowd his letters or reduce them in size in order to get a word into a line. He also made use of various devices of abbreviating words and combining letters to produce the same result. These devices, however, were not very satisfactory and division of words was always more or less practiced.

The Greeks usually divided after a vowel with no regard to syllables.

They even divided monosyllables in this way. The Romans, however, always practiced syllabic division very much as we do to-day.

Another form of division of the text was what is called calometry, that is to say, the breaking up of the text into short clauses or sense lines to facilitate oral reading. This is done particularly in cases of orations, the Bible, and similar compositions largely used for oral reading. As in the papyrus, the t.i.tle was ordinarily inserted at the end and accompanied by some account of the work, place of copying, copyist, date, or other information. This sort of appendix was called a colophon.

The practice of writing colophons was taken over by the early printers and is the source of much of our most valuable information concerning the early products of the press. Occasionally the t.i.tle of the work was given at the beginning although the custom of beginning the work with the statement of its t.i.tle, developing into the t.i.tle page as we know it, did not become general until some time after the invention of printing. Occasionally a ma.n.u.script was even furnished with running t.i.tles on the page heads. The pages were not numbered until after the invention of printing.

After the earliest times quotations were indicated by ticks on the margin or by indented paragraphs. Sometimes the substance of the quotation was written in a smaller hand or otherwise distinguished from the body of the text. Scribes were by no means infallible and corrections are not uncommon. Erasures on papyrus were difficult, if not impossible, and therefore other means of correction had to be used. This is particularly the case because writing material was too expensive to be wasted and a copyist's mistake could not be permitted to spoil a roll of a papyrus or a sheet of vellum. In the case of vellum, however, if the mistake were immediately discovered the ink could be washed off with a sponge. If, however, the mistake were discovered only on revision after the ink had bitten into the vellum, it was necessary to use the knife and to restore the surface as well as possible by rubbing it with some smooth hard substance like the rubber shown in the ill.u.s.tration on page 13. Superfluous letters or words were sometimes removed by drawing a pen through them and sometimes removal was indicated by dots, or small marks, which might be over the letters, under them, or even in the open s.p.a.ces of the letters themselves. Attempts were occasionally made to make one letter over into another to correct a mistake. Omitted pa.s.sages or notes are inserted in the margin with some indication of the place where they should be read in the text. Abbreviations and contractions were very extensively used, partly to avoid labor and partly to save material. Phrases of frequent occurrence and perfectly well-known meaning were indicated simply by initials like the familiar S. P. Q. R., Senatus Populusque Roma.n.u.s, the Roman Senate and People, or the s. s. a. b. s. m. used by Spaniards to close letters, meaning "your faithful servant who kisses your hands."

Letters commonly occurring together were elided and abbreviated, as was done to a limited extent as late as the 18th century, at which period we see such abbreviations as yt=that. It may be interesting to note that y in this combination and the similar combination "ye," used as the article, is not the semi-vowel y but is the survival, or revival, of an Anglo-Saxon letter of very similar form called "thorn" and equivalent in value to th. In the "yt" then, we have the y or thorn subst.i.tuted for th and the vowel elided, but the sign should be p.r.o.nounced "that." The sign "ye" as in the familiar phrase of the posters "ye olde folkes'

concerte," should always be p.r.o.nounced "the" and never like the p.r.o.noun ye.

Another result of the expensiveness of writing material was the practice of erasing whole works in order that the vellum might be used over again. This erasing was done with a knife or pumice stone and when resurfaced by rubbing the vellum could be readily used a second time. A ma.n.u.script thus treated is called a palimpsest. The pious monks of the middle ages, naturally believing that the lives of the saints and other religious works were of more importance than the works of Pagan orators, philosophers, and historians, or even than old copies of the Bible which had been superseded by newer and better decorated ones, made extensive use of old ma.n.u.scripts in this way. Fortunately, however, it is possible by careful treatment to restore the original writing at least sufficiently to make it possible to decipher it. In this way a considerable number of extremely valuable texts which would otherwise have been entirely lost have been recovered from palimpsests.

The reference just made to decoration reminds us that the makers of ma.n.u.scripts, particularly during the middle ages, took enormous pride in their work and were as anxious to produce sumptuous books as the most ambitious publisher of to-day and were often far more successful. The scribe who was to make a fine ma.n.u.script chose his vellum with great care. He laid out his work with compa.s.s and ruler with the utmost precision. He was careful that his ink and his pigments should be of the most brilliant color and the finest quality. He looked well to the care of his pen and inscribed each letter with the patient care of the most skillful engrosser of to-day.

The development of the sentence and paragraph had brought the use of letters of larger sizes to mark these divisions. These, especially the paragraph initials, afforded an endless field for his ingenuity and the exercise of his artistic ability. A great initial letter might be made in any fanciful shape of which he could think. It might become a part of a beautifully executed miniature. It might be surrounded by a ma.s.s of gorgeous ornamentation extending to the bottom or the other margin of the page and enriched by everything beautiful or grotesque of which the writer could think. All this ornamentation was often executed in gold and colors and was one of the chief methods of artistic expression of the middle ages.

In addition to these decorations the ancient books dating from late Roman times onward were often ill.u.s.trated, sometimes profusely so. Full page pictures were inserted ill.u.s.trating the text or giving the portraits of persons referred to in it. The oldest of these pictures are in a bad state of preservation on account of the crude methods of the artists. The background was first painted in a solid color. A figure, for instance, would then be put on in another color, clothing would be painted over that, armor over clothing and so on. The picture being thus built up in layers of different paints it was very liable to flake off, leaving only the background. Ill.u.s.trations dating from the introduction of a better technique are still very beautiful.

No language could adequately describe the beauty and the richness of these decorations, or illuminations as they are termed. They look out to us to-day from the yellowing vellum with all the brilliancy of color and vigor of conception which they originally possessed. They are not only beautiful in themselves but they are a valuable source of information concerning the life of the middle ages. In those days the painters of pictures made no attempt at archaeological accuracy. If they were illuminating a Bible they represented Abraham and Moses, Pharaoh and Solomon, Jesus and Paul and Goliath in the costume of the king, priest, citizen, or soldier of the painter's own day. Their method of treatment of their subjects, the subjects chosen, the use of materials in ornamentation, every detail of these decorations is eloquent of the life and thought of the ages in which they were produced.

CHAPTER V

_Ancient and Mediaeval Libraries_

Books involved libraries. The book is written to preserve a record and this involves the preservation of the book itself. Consequently almost all of the centers of the world's civilization were at the same time the homes of great collections of books, or libraries. The ancient Egyptians had many such although we have the record of but one. Rameses the Great, who has been generally, though probably erroneously, identified as the Pharaoh of the Exodus, but who probably lived within about a century of that time, housed a great library in his palace at Thebes. Such a library, of course, would have consisted of papyrus rolls and must have been rich in that learning of the Egyptians which the old chronicle tells us was familiar to Moses. What would we not give if we could only find those precious rolls in some of the corners which the archaeologists are so busily exploring and which are constantly yielding new stores of information about that ancient civilization?

Some centuries later two of the a.s.syrian kings, Sennacherib and a.s.surbanipal, collected a great library which has been in large part recovered. Such a library, as we have seen, consisted of clay tablets and these tablets were kept in large earthenware jars. The contents of the library were partly contemporary but more of it consisted of copies of ancient works. Many thousands of these texts have been recovered from the ruins of Babylon and are now being translated. They cover the whole field of literary activity, religion, law, history, grammar, science, magic, and romance.

One of the old Israelitish cities, near Hebron, is called Kirjath-sepher, or city of books. Both the city and the name, however, antedate the Jewish occupation of Palestine and are probably memorials of a time when this city was a center of that a.s.syrian culture which covered the entire region later known as Palestine.

The cla.s.sic civilization, with its great development of literary activity, of course involved the formation of libraries in all the more important cities, as such places were the natural centers of culture. We know something of the libraries of Athens, Antioch, Ephesus, Pergamus, Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. The most famous of these was the great collection, or rather collections, of books at Alexandria.

Collectively these rivalled in size some of the great modern libraries, a very remarkable fact when we consider the conditions under which books were made at that time. Undoubtedly practically the entire literary output of the cla.s.sic civilization was contained in these collections.

Unfortunately no traces of them remain. Accident and conquest caused their entire destruction. The earlier historians told a pitiful tale of the wanton destruction of the library by the Mohammedan conquerors who in their fanaticism destroyed as useless or harmful all works not devoted to the dissemination of their own doctrines. While it is probably true that the Mohammedans were responsible for a wholesale destruction, it is probable that the library had already suffered sadly by the destruction by fire of one or more of its separate collections and that what was destroyed in their time was only the remains of the former splendid collection. The library of Constantinople, being later than the others in its formation, probably had more direct effect on the culture of mediaeval and modern times than any of the preceding ones.

In addition to these great public or semi-public libraries, there were of course great numbers of private libraries. Wealthy and cultivated men throughout the Roman empire and beyond had their private collections, as wealthy and cultivated men do to-day. While the illiterate cla.s.ses were proportionally much more numerous than they are in modern communities, and the use of books was limited to a comparatively small portion of the population, the small educated cla.s.s was highly cultivated and keenly interested in the reading and ownership of books.

None of these early collections survives even in any existing fragments.

The devastating wars of the first Christian centuries destroyed all such perishable things. The a.s.syrian records not being on perishable material survived the destruction of the buildings in which they were contained and remained buried until brought to light by recent excavations. The Egyptian records have survived partly because they were so largely in the nature of inscriptions on the walls of the great temples and the carefully constructed tombs, and partly because so many of them were sheltered in the resting places of the dead. Not only were the mummies wrapped in cloth and papyrus inscribed with the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian texts, but many doc.u.ments and papers were buried with the bodies. It was the custom of the Egyptians to bury with the dead all their personal papers including unopened letters and papers belonging to other persons which happened to be in the possession of the deceased at the time of his death. Many a letter has thus been read for the first time by some modern archaeologist 3000 years or more after the death of both sender and receiver.

We undoubtedly owe to the Christian church, and especially to the inst.i.tution of Monasticism, the preservation of so much of the ancient literature as we now possess, as well as the preservation of the spirit of learning and that impulse to create literature out of which grew the literatures of mediaeval and modern times. As has already been stated, the monasteries became the centers of literary activity. The studying, copying, and creation of books was a recognized part of the duty of the monks. In society as const.i.tuted after the fall of the empire and far into the mediaeval ages the monks were the only educated people in the community. The n.o.bles were rough unlettered soldiers. Even kings were unable to read and write. The business of the state was largely in the hands of churchmen who filled the offices of civil administration, conducted the legal business of the community, served as its physicians and, in short, discharged nearly all those functions which required education and literary training. The mercantile cla.s.s knew only enough to keep track of their business by the help of mechanical contrivances and the rudest methods of accounting. The great ma.s.s of mechanics and agricultural laborers were entirely illiterate. King and peasant alike depended upon the clergy for their knowledge of past transactions, national records, and the teachings of religion.

Under these circ.u.mstances the monasteries naturally built up libraries.

Originally these libraries began with copies of the scriptures or of books containing portions of them, such as the Gospels and the Psalms.

To these were added Ma.s.s books, collections of the writings of the fathers of the church and the sermons of famous preachers, volumes of commentaries on the scriptures and the works of the fathers, and lives of the saints, and, in course of time, treatises on theological subjects. Even the life of a monastic community, however, is not all religious. Consequently we find the monks writing chronicles which were the beginnings of history. These chronicles originally were merely dry statements of the events which happened in the monastery, the community in which it was located, or even the country. At first dry notebooks without historical perspective and with very little detail, they gradually developed into something like a historical narrative of occurrences with estimates of character and statements as to the causes and effects, as well as the mere occurrence, of events. Then came works on natural history, medicine, music, grammar, in fact all the matters in which men are interested. Poetry struggled for expression and the romantic adventures of the real men and women of the time stimulated imagination to the production of tales and romances. For historical information and for literary models the writers looked to the great authors of a previous age, and attention was given to the copying of such remains of ancient literature as had survived the fall of the old civilization. Practically every ma.n.u.script that we have of the ancient authors is the salvage from some old library of a mediaeval monastery.

Every religious house came to have its library, or scriptorium, which was at once the place for the making and the keeping of books. Some brother especially suited for the task, sometimes even the abbot himself, was in charge of the library and of the brothers who worked there. Sometimes the entire work on a ma.n.u.script would be done by a single man. At other times there was a division of labor. One brother, for example, would pick out the vellum, see to the condition of the skins, arrange the quires, and rule them with compa.s.s and stylus.

Another, or a group of others, would write the plain text. In the case of a large book, a certain number of quires might be given to each one of a group of copyists. A third would put in the illuminated capitals and the pictures, or either of them, while still another would examine the completed ma.n.u.script, comparing it with the original and correcting any errors which might be discovered.

To the artist and illuminator this work was undoubtedly delightful but to the man who had to do the drudgery of mere copying of long works, it was undoubtedly a wearisome task. Every effort was made to incite these men to care and patience by magnifying the importance of their work and especially by representing it as a work of religion. It was held that the making of books, especially books of religion, was in a very special way agreeable to G.o.d and that salvation might be obtained in this manner when other means failed. It was even taught that there was a special relation between the amount of writing done and the number and magnitude of the sins to be atoned for. A story was widely circulated which is interesting for the light which it throws upon the childlike and literal way in which the things of the spirit were regarded by the mediaeval mind. It was said that a certain man entered a monastery with his soul burdened by many and grievous sins. He was set to the copying of a Bible and in due time completed the task alone. The task brought him salvation because the number of letters in the Bible exceeded by one the number of his sins.

In time some of these libraries came to be of very considerable size even by modern standards. A few of them remain almost intact to our own day. The mediaeval librarians, as was proper considering the value of their charges, were very solicitous about the care of their books.

Readers were warned to handle the books with care, to be careful about turning the leaves and especially to keep their fingers off the ink.

Evidently the ancient readers had the tendency common to unskillful readers everywhere to trace the lines with their fingers as they read.

The books were cla.s.sified by subject matter, numbered, and catalogued.

Some of these ancient catalogues showing the exact contents of the monastic libraries and the contemporary ideas of cla.s.sification, not always the same as our own, are still preserved. An interesting list remains of nine books brought over to England by St. Augustine the missionary which formed the first library of Christ Church in Canterbury. It consisted of a Bible in two volumes, a psalter, a book of gospels, lives of the apostles, lives of the martyrs and an exposition or commentary on the gospels and epistles.

Books were loaned quite extensively. This was especially true among the monasteries of the same order. These orders naturally looked to certain of their houses as the leading or mother establishments in various localities. These leading establishments were often the actual mother houses from which others had been created by colonization, besides being the seats of the high officials of the order. Naturally the age and wealth of these central houses enabled them to possess large and valuable libraries. It was their duty to see that the smaller houses were provided with correct copies of the rules and regulations of the order, service books which it used, and other valuable material, as well as to a.s.sist them to secure more strictly literary material. Therefore some of these places became veritable circulating libraries for the subordinate houses. In addition to this there was a certain amount of loaning between the orders and persons outside the orders both clerical and, at a later period, lay.

These loans were carefully registered and regulated and excepting when occurring in the regular discharge of duty were guarded by the most vigilant precautions. The books were, of course, carefully provided with identification marks. Loan was made a matter of record and pledges were exacted for the safe return of the volume. This pledge was sometimes the deposit of a ma.n.u.script supposed to be of equal value, sometimes a mortgage on property, and sometimes a deposit of money or jewels. In spite of all these precautions, however, loans were not infrequently abused. Borrowed volumes were sometimes never returned.

Sometimes the identification marks were removed, as existing ma.n.u.scripts show. Sometimes pa.s.sages were erased from a borrowed book because the borrower considered them heretical. Ancient borrowers were also addicted to one of the most exasperating of modern literary crimes, the scribbling of their own opinions on the margins of borrowed books.

Valuable books were kept chained to the desks which were provided for those who had occasion to consult them. The old library of Durham Cathedral contains many of the old volumes, still chained to their original places. In the early days of Bible translation in England the huge folio Bibles of the period were chained in the churches where all could consult them.

All this precaution, of course, is testimony to the great value of books at this period. It is true that the labor of the monks was not paid but they had to be supported while at their work and owing to the time taken to write, or rather paint, a ma.n.u.script, for it was really rather painting than writing, this was no small item. The materials used were also expensive. Parchment was costly and tended to become more so as the increase of literary activity and the multiplication of books increased the demand for it. Considerable expense was also involved in the colored inks and especially in the gold which was used so lavishly in the decorations. Monasteries and rich men regarded ma.n.u.scripts as among their chiefest treasures. Special provision was made for the purchase of materials and the maintenance of the monastery libraries. The name of the generous benefactor who gave a book or, more commonly, the material for one, was inscribed in the book, often with a request for the prayers of the reader, and was borne upon the honorable roll of the benefactors of the house. Large sums of money and even estates were given for choice ma.n.u.scripts and ma.n.u.scripts were considered worthy gifts for kings. We have a record of the 12th century in England of fifty marks being paid for a Bible. This sum of money, taking into account the very great difference in purchasing power, would represent at least $3000 of the money of to-day.

As time went on enlightened kings like Alfred of England and the Emperor Charlemagne patronized and forwarded learning. Laymen, particularly kings and great n.o.bles, began to collect libraries of their own. The National Library of France was begun by King John, who reigned from 1350 to 1364, who started it with twenty volumes. His son Charles V brought the number up to 900. It contained books on devotion, astrology, law, medicine, history, and a few cla.s.sics.

The revival of learning in the 14th century, as might be expected, gave a great stimulus to the production of ma.n.u.scripts and at the time of the invention of printing from movable types in the middle of the 15th century the manufacture of ma.n.u.scripts was going on rapidly and there were many great libraries in existence. Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary in the 15th century, had a library of nearly 50,000 volumes.

Duke Frederick of Urbino in Italy had one nearly as large. Duke Frederick had thirty-four copyists regularly employed in his library. It is interesting to note that this library contained perfect copies of practically every book known to be in existence at that time. This fact throws an interesting light on the extent of the world's literature so recently as 500 years ago. Among the earliest of the libraries formed outside of monasteries were those collected by the Arabs of North Africa and Spain. Although some of the early Mohammedan conquerors were ignorant and bigoted fanatics like the destroyer of Alexandria, the Arabs, or Saracens as they are sometimes called, as a whole were a highly civilized people of great culture in art, science, and literature. They were far in advance of their Christian neighbors and continued to be so until their final overthrow in Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella about the time of the discovery of America.

The growth of the universities from the 12th century onward played a great part in the multiplication of books and the growth of libraries.

Then, as now, the library was the heart of the university. Even more than now the students depended on its contents. Obviously only the richest students could buy any great number of books, and, equally obviously, every student needed to use them, bought what he could, borrowed the rest, and became a book collector for the rest of his life.

The university libraries grew by purchase, by copies made on the spot, and by bequests. Then, as now, there were in every university a good number of men "working their way." The copying of ma.n.u.scripts was their great resource.

Naturally all this demand caused the production of many very badly executed ma.n.u.scripts. This and other abuses were, however, controlled to a great extent by the university authorities who a.s.sumed control over the publication and sale of books. Old books, of course, could be freely sold, subject only to careful checking up of the correctness of the copy. New books had to be read three days in succession before the heads of the university or other public judges, always churchmen, and had to receive their sanction before being copied and put on sale.

This was done by the stationer who derived his name from the Latin word _statio_ meaning a shop. The stationers made, sold, and rented books and sold writing materials and the like very much as at present. They were stringently regulated by the universities. They must be men of learning and character; must bind themselves to obey the laws of the university; must offer no copy for sale unless it was approved; must sell at rates fixed by the university; must purchase only books sanctioned by the university; and must loan books to those too poor to buy them at rates fixed by the university.

This careful regulation of the book trade of the university towns was originally intended for the best of purposes and was productive of much good. Unfortunately it also opened the door to much evil. It established the principle of control of the press, a principle always destructive of liberty and progress. By long use this control came to appear quite the right and normal thing. Used at first to secure the interests of learning and the protection of scholars, it became at length the powerful weapon of party in Church and State. It was used alternately to silence Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, and to muzzle all discussion of social and political questions. Control of the printing press became at last the greatest enemy of civilization, freedom, and enlightenment alike in the old world and in the new and it remained until largely swept away by the movement which culminated in the French Revolution of 1793.

Some of the university libraries early grew to generous size. That of the Sorbonne, for example, numbered 1720 volumes in 1338. This particular library consisted very largely of religious literature, as the main interest of the Sorbonne of that day was theological. Other university libraries were of wider range. Many of the old university libraries are yet in existence.