Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In Spain, the earliest university was that of Palencia, which was founded in 1212. Salamanca, founded a few years later, soon exceeded Palencia in importance, and, particularly in connection with the work of its medical Faculty, secured for itself, before the close of the thirteenth century, a repute throughout Europe. Compayré is of opinion that the instruction given in Salamanca, not only in medicine but in science generally and in philosophy, was very largely influenced by the presence in the peninsula of Moorish scholars. “The philosophy of Averrhoes and the medicine of Avicenna exerted a manifest influence on the development of studies at Salamanca.”[269] It seems probable, if this belief is well founded, that the Arabian literature, produced and manifolded in Cordova, found its way to Salamanca, and through Salamanca to Salerno, Bologna, and Paris.

The formal constitution of the University of Paris dates from 1202. Certain of its historians, however, claim for its first work as an educational institution a much earlier date. Crévier, for instance, says: “The University of Paris as a school goes back to Alcuin ... Charlemagne was its founder.”[270] Charlemagne’s practical interest in education has caused his name to be associated with the schools of Tours, Aachen, Milan, Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The most recent writer on the subject, Compayré, is of opinion that this is an exaggerated statement. He finds evidence of an unbroken succession of Benedictine schools, such as those of Rheims, Tours, Angers, Laon, Bec, and others, which had preserved a continuity of educational work from the time of Charlemagne to that of Louis VIII., and which, under such leaders as Lanfranc (1005-1089), and S. Anselm (1033-1109), had developed and maintained a high degree of intellectual activity. He considers these to have constituted the direct succession to the schools of the palace of Charlemagne, but he fails to find in them the prototype of the university system. For Compayré, the actual founder of the University of Paris was Abelard, who died sixty years before the university secured its organisation. It is his contention that it was Abelard who, by his learning, his independence of thought, his eloquence, and his mastery over the minds of men, is to be credited with the initiation of the great movement from which was to proceed not only the University of Paris, but the long series of universities for which Paris served as an incentive and the type. It was Abelard, says Compayré, who, if not first, at least with the most direct and far-reaching influence, introduced dialectics into theology and reason into authority, breaking away from the mere passive transmission of the beliefs and timid dialectics accepted by the schools of theology, and thus making possible the development of a true university spirit. “The method of Abelard is the soul of scholastic philosophy,”[271] the philosophy which, until the Renaissance, reigned supreme in the University of Paris. Abelard’s method, says Père Denifle, is presented in the book which during several centuries served as the text for theological instruction, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and its influence is also to be noted in that other noteworthy work which became the authority for the schools of common law, the Decretals of Gratian.

Abelard may be called the first professor of superior instruction. His work was certainly begun with éclat, for his classes are said to have numbered at times no less than five thousand pupils. “First of the French philosophers ... he may justly be considered as the precursor of Ramus and Descartes, in other words, of the Renaissance and of the modern spirit.”[272] Apart from this more far-reaching influence, he was able to do for the school of Paris what the jurist Irnerius was, during nearly the same years, accomplishing for the school of Bologna, making possible, namely, its development into the university. It was through the work done by Abelard that “the theological school of Paris became the seminary of Christian Europe.”[273] This influence continued through the succeeding centuries in which Paris still remained the centre of theological instruction, a result which necessarily had later an important effect in shaping the character of the earlier issues of the Paris Press.

The term University is not a synonym of the university of science, but simply of the university of teachers and students who composed a group and who instituted association of studies. “In the language of the Civil Law,” says Malden, “all corporations were called Universitates, as forming one whole out of many individuals.”[274]

The organisation of the University of Paris, while differing in certain important details from that of Bologna, was substantially identical with the Italian institutions in respect to the privileges conceded to instructors and students. In successive enactments or crown edicts, the members of the universities of Paris, Montpellier, and Poitiers were exempted, not only from the regular national taxes and from the town dues (octroi), but also from special war taxes. In 1295, Philip the Fair decreed that under no pretext could the goods of the members of the universities be taken or their revenues attached.[275] The following statute of the University of Padua represented fairly enough the status of students in all the universities of France and of Italy: “Students must be considered as citizens in what concerns the advantages, but not in that which constitutes the burdens of citizens.” Under this same principle, members of the universities were also exempt from military service.

The authorities of the University of Paris exercised a very direct control from the outset over all the details of the business of making, renting, and selling books. This authority became in Paris a matter of much more immediate importance and abiding influence than in Bologna. In the latter, as we have seen, the business of the book-dealers was very closely limited to the production of the texts immediately required for the work of the class-room. In Paris, however, in the manuscript period, two and a half centuries before the introduction of the printing-press, the book-trade of the university had become in great measure the book-trade of the city. During a large part of this time, moreover, Paris shared with Florence the position of the centre of the intellectual activities of Europe. The scribes and their masters who were manifolding manuscripts in the Latin quarter, were not only supplying text-books to the students of the university, but were preparing literature for the scholarly readers of Paris, of France, and of Europe. The book-dealers of Paris constituted, however, for several centuries, with a few exceptions, a guild organised within the university. The members of this guild, the libraires jurés, were members of the university, and the operations of the guild were under the direct control of the university authorities. This arrangement gave to the book-dealers material advantages in the possession of university privileges and in the control of a practical monopoly of the business of producing books. It involved, however, certain corresponding disadvantages. University control meant supervision, censorship, restriction, regulation of prices, interference with trade facilities, and various hampering conditions which delayed very seriously, both before and after the introduction of printing, the development of the business of making and of circulating books, and, as a result of this, placed not a few obstacles in the way of the literary and the intellectual development of the community. Chevillier says: “The book-trade of Paris owes its origin to the university, by which, under the approval of the king, it was organised into an association of masters. This association was, from the outset, controlled directly by the university, from the authorities of which it received its statutes and regulations, and by which the master libraires were licensed, jurés.”[276]

“The reproduction of a work of scholarship (to which class belonged of necessity the text-books prescribed for the work of the university,)” remarks Delalain, “called for on the part of the scribe a considerable measure of scholarly knowledge and also for a detailed and careful supervision. It was held, therefore, by the university authorities that the responsibility properly belonged to them to supervise the series of operations by means of which these university texts were prepared and were circulated. It was essential that the completeness and the correctness of each copy should be verified, and that these copies should be confided to trustworthy persons for their sale or their hire, in order that there should be no risk of inaccuracies in the texts themselves or of any unnecessary enhancement of the cost to instructors or to students of their purchase or their hire. On this ground, the university of Paris asserted from the beginning of its history the right to control the book-trade of the city, a contention which was confirmed and maintained by all the kings of France after Philip Augustus.”[277]

The “book-trade” was held to include all the dealers and artisans who were concerned with the production and distribution of manuscripts; that is, the copyists and their employers, the binders, the illuminators, the sellers of parchment, and, later, the manufacturers of paper. While the control of the university was exercised over the entire book-trade, the interest of the authorities was naturally much keener in regard to the divisions having to do with the production of books than in the work of the booksellers. The matter of chief importance, in fact, according to the accepted theory, the sole purpose for the existence of the book-trade, was to secure for the members of the university a sufficient supply, at a fixed and moderate charge, of correct and complete texts of the prescribed works; while it was also essential to protect those members from the contamination of heretical writings or of heretical comments on books of accepted orthodoxy.

A regulation of December, 1316, prescribes that no stationarius shall employ a copyist until such employee shall have been duly sworn before the university, or before the Rector and four procureurs, to execute his functions faithfully, and, having been accepted as a trustworthy scribe, shall have had his name inscribed on the official register.

As a partial offset to the series of restrictions and limitations under which was carried on the work of these early publishers, it is in order to specify certain privileges and exemptions enjoyed by them as members of the university. These included exemption from taxes; exemption from service on the watch or on the city guard; and the privilege of jurisdiction, commonly known as committimus. Under this last, they were empowered in suits or cases, civil or personal, and whether engaged as plaintiffs or defendants, to bring witnesses or other principals before the Juges Conservateurs, functionaries charged with the maintenance or protection of privileges.[278]