Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

With the fall of the Empire of the West and with the destruction of so much of the civilised organisation and machinery which had been dependent upon Roman rule, the book trade, or, at least, the trade outside of Italy, practically disappeared. There remained, however, with certain classes a knowledge of the classics and an interest in their preservation, and there remained also in the monasteries the knowledge and practice of writing and the collections of the works of the early Church Fathers, the multiplication of which, for the use of the increasing number of priests, called for continued labour on the part of the clerical scribes.

When the work of writing came to be instituted, particularly in the Benedictine Order, as a part of the regular routine of the life of a properly ordered monastery, and when such work came to be accepted as a part of the daily or weekly services rendered by the monks, the preservation of the art of writing and the preservation of the manuscripts, the existence of which depended upon this continued knowledge, were assured.

For centuries after 476, such literary vitality as there was depended practically upon these Benedictine monasteries. After the tenth century, we find a wider literary interest throughout the community, and in certain Courts and circles of nobility, literature began to be accepted as fashionable, and an interest in literature to be accepted as part of the proper outfit of a gentleman.

The second stage, therefore, in the development of the interest in books which secured the multiplication of enough copies of many of the older books to prevent them from passing out of existence, was in the formation of the collections by princes and nobles, collections which were, as we have noted, usually under the charge of clerical scribes.

The third and more important stage of development came with the recognition, on the part of the newly founded universities of Bologna, Paris, Prague, Heidelberg, and Oxford, of the fact that the work of higher education required the use of collections of books for the reference of instructors and for the direct use of the students. With the instituting in the universities of a class of scribes (stationarii, librarii) recognised as university officials, a recognition which carried with it certain privileges and protection, and which went far to offset the hampering restrictions of university and ecclesiastical supervision, the book production of Europe took a more assured form.

The fourth step in the extension of literary interests was taken by the towns-people, partly at the instance of priests who were themselves sprung from the people, and partly under the influence of students returning from university work to their native towns; and collections of books were made for the use of the towns-people, while libraries, originally planned only for the work of the monasteries and for the use of clerics, were thrown open to students generally. There appear to have been in the manuscript period and in the earlier ages of printing a larger number of such town libraries and a larger extent of literary interest among the citizen class in Germany than in either France or England.

In Italy, the development of literary interests and of literary production worked from an early date much more outside of church organisations than was the case either in Germany or in France.

In such centres of literary activity as Florence, Milan, Padua, Rome, and later, Venice, the production of the classics and the multiplying of the books of the Italian writers themselves was carried on at the instance and to a large extent with the money of the wealthier citizens, citizens who in many cases held no official positions whatever. The intellectual life of Italy was, however, from an early date, very largely influenced by the thought and the learning that came to it from the Greeks of Constantinople, an influence which was increasing in importance for a quarter of a century before the fall of the Greek Empire, and which, after 1453, was naturally still more extended and emphasised by the large immigration of Greek scholars flying from Turkish rule and bringing with them the literary treasures of the East. It was this invasion of Greek thought and the restoration of the knowledge of the poetry and philosophy of classic Greece, which gave the immediate impetus to the great intellectual movement known as the Renaissance.

As the Renaissance movement took hold of the imagination of Italian scholars, it found ready for its use the new invention of printing, and through the presses of Aldus and his associates, the thought of the Old World, reshaped with the knowledge of the fifteenth century, gave a fresh inspiration to the intellectual life of Europe.

In Germany, where the Renaissance movement also influenced the intellectual life of the time, a more important impetus to the intellectual activity came with the work of the Reformation. The printing-press made the teachings of Luther and his associates available for the widest popular distribution, and the towns-people and villagers who bought from the book peddlers the tracts containing the vigorous statements of the Reformers, and who bought also the answering arguments of the defenders of the Roman Church, were not merely wrestling with a religious or theological issue, but were furthering the general education of the community and were helping to lay the foundation of the book trade of the future. From the earliest date of the printing-press, it was the case that there was in Germany a larger distribution of books, printed in the vernacular, among what one may call (for purposes of classification) the lower orders of the community, than was the case in either Italy, France, or Germany. The development of the relation between literature and the community, which came after the establishment of the new art of printing, belongs, however, to a later chapter.