История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 71 стр.

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UNIT 11

SACRED TEXTS AND ACHING BACKS

How medieval monks copied manuscripts

“A man who knows not how to write may think this is no great feat”, wrote

Prior Petrus as he sat hunched over his angled desk in a chilly Spanish monastery

in about 1100. “But only try to do it yourself and you will learn how arduous the

writer’s task is. It dims your eyes, makes your back ache, and knits your chest and

belly together – it is a terrible ordeal for the whole body”.

Until about 1200, many of the books made in Europe were for religious use,

most of them Bibles and psalters (book of psalms). Most monasteries had a library,

some containing hundreds of volumes. Each of these books had been written out

by hand and most were copies, taken line by line from an existing book, often on

loan from another monastery.

Coping was sacred work. The monks’ aim was to preserve and transmit the

holy texts: hence books were produced to the highest standards possible. It took a

scribe year of training and painstaking practice to achieve the confident and

elegant touch that sets the finest medieval manuscripts apart.

Parchment, pen and ink

One of the most expensive components of a book was the material from

which the pages were made. Both parchment and thin sheets of sheepskin or

goatskin and the finer vellum, made from calfskin, needed extensive preparation.

First they were thoroughly washed in cold running water, and then soaked for up to

ten days in wooden or stone vats of lime solution. Any hair was scraped off the

skin before it was washed again. It was then stretched on a wooden frame and the

scraping repeated, and once dry, the skin was rubbed with chalk and pumice stone