Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

It seems probable that, in connection with the correspondence between the scholars of Italy and the instructors in the University of Heidelberg, news might very easily have come to the librarian of the Elector of these important classical undertakings, and that he had naturally desired to secure copies of the books for the Elector’s library. As far as I can understand from the reference made by Kapp, there is no record of the result of this order or inquiry, or of the prices at which Agricola secured or hoped to secure the books in question. It was undoubtedly the case that, as the work of the printers, both German and Italian, came to be known to the book collectors, there was a steady decrease in the prices paid for manuscripts, until the business of the manuscript-dealers came to be limited to the sale as curiosities of old codices, and the work of the scribes in the reproduction of copies ceased altogether.

Reference has already been made to the prices paid during the Middle Ages for more or less famous manuscripts. The difficulty with the prices of which we have record is that they vary so considerably for goods of apparently about the same description, a variation doubtless depending upon the special conditions of the sale, the wealth or eagerness of the purchaser, etc. In 1054, for instance, a Book of the Mass was sold by the monk named Ulrich (the sale being made with the consent of the Abbot) in exchange for a great vineyard covering the slope of a large hill, the exact dimensions of which are not given. In 1057, a nun named Diemude, of the convent of Wessobrunn, exchanged a Bible, which she had written with her own hand, for a farm on Peissenburg. Without, however, the exact description of any particular manuscript, a description which should specify the nature of the work put into it, the illuminations, the designs, the covers, etc., it is, of course, very difficult to compare one transaction with another.

Kapp speaks of a good copy of the Corpus Juris as being valued in 1350 at 1000 gold gulden.[396] He quotes a purchase made by a certain Prahel, in 1427, of a copy of Livy for 120 gold gulden, and the sale of a Plutarch in 1470 (twenty years after Gutenberg’s press began to work) for no less than 800 gold gulden. Jan Van Enkhuisen, of Zwolle, received in 1460 for an illuminated Bible 500 gold gulden, and for a Bible with a plain text (einfach geschrieben) 100 crowns. In 1345, Etienne de Conty paid for a handsomely adorned copy of the Commentaries of Henry Bohic, 62 livres and 11 sous, a sum which Kapp calculates to be the equivalent of 825 francs in the money of the present day. For the production of this work, there were paid to the scribes 31 livres and 5 sous, for the parchment 18 livres and 18 sous, for six initials in gold, 1 livre and 10 sous, for other illuminations 3 livres and 6 sous, for the hire of the manuscript (paid to the university bidellus), 4 livres, and for binding the volume, 1 livre 12 sous.

The Countess of Anjou paid, in 1460, for a copy of the Homilies of Haimon, Bishop of Halberstadt, two hundred sheep, five measures of wheat, and five measures of barley.

In 1474, Louis XI. of France, pledged as security for the safe return of a manuscript containing a treatise by the Arabic physician Rhases, which he had borrowed from the medical Faculty of the University of Paris, his silver plate, while a nobleman also stood security for the King in the transaction. In 1392, the Countess of Blois, wife of the Baron of Castellane, left in her will, as a bequest to her daughter, a manuscript on parchment of the Corpus Juris. It was made a condition of the bequest that the daughter should marry a jurist, in order that this valuable treasure could come into the right hands.

The National Library in Paris contains two manuscripts of the Bible in Latin and French text, written on parchment, which Firmin Didot appraised as having cost to produce not less than the equivalent of 82,000 francs. He excludes from this calculation of cost the price of the parchment, the hire of the scribes, and the cost of the binding. The principal item of the outlay for the more valuable of these manuscripts was incurred in the production of the 5,000 designs illuminated in gold and colour, the cost of preparing which Didot estimated at over 12,000 francs.

As before pointed out, the exceptional outlay incurred in the production of these illuminated manuscripts cannot be taken as in any way a guide for the average market price of manuscripts prepared for general circulation and sale. The text-books, chap-books, etc., which, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were prepared for the common folk, sold at prices that seem very low when one bears in mind the large amount of manual labour required for their production. The school ordinance of the town of Bautzen (in Saxony) of 1418 fixed the price of an A B C book, containing also a Paternoster, at one groschen; of a Doctrinal, a half mark; and of a Donatus, ten groschens.

At this time, however, the market price in the same region for a hen was one pfennig, for a pound of beef two pfennigs, for a loaf of bread, containing rations for three men for one day, three pfennigs, for a pound of cheese one pfennig, for a measure of the best wine one kreutzer.

From this date on, however, there came to be, with the increase in the production of manuscript books in the common text, a very steady decrease in the selling price of such books.

At the end of the fourteenth century the average price in Italy for a well written copy of the Corpus Juris was 480 marks. In 1451, such a copy was sold in Florence for 14½ ducats, the equivalent of 90 marks.