It is a matter of some importance to know by what class of persons, chiefly, the business of copying books was practised; and it gives no little support to our confidence in the genuineness of existing manuscripts, to find that individuals of all ranks, influenced by very different motives, were accustomed to devote themselves to this employment. From the earliest times in which literature flourished, there were, in all the principal cities of Greece and its colonies, great numbers of professional scribes; that is to say, persons who gained their subsistence by copying books. Labourers of this class, it may well be supposed, aimed, in general, at nothing but to gain custom by the fairness and the fidelity of their copies. But it appears to have been not uncommon for persons of rank and leisure to occupy themselves in this employment. Thus it is that in the list of copyists we find the names of the nobles of the Constantinopolitan empire. Some created their libraries for themselves by transcribing every book that came in their way. To persons of a sedate temper, or who by indisposition were confined to their homes, this occupation may be imagined to have been highly agreeable. Nor was it a wasted labour to those who had leisure at command; since the high price of books made the collection of a library, by purchase, scarcely practicable, except to the most opulent.
The influence of Christianity very greatly extended the practice of private copying; for motives of piety operated to stimulate the industry of very many in the good work of multiplying the sacred books, and the works of Christian writers. The highest dignitaries of the Church, and princes even, thought themselves well employed in transcribing the Gospels and Epistles, the Psalter, or the homilies or meditations of the Fathers; nor were the classic authors, as we shall see, entirely neglected by these gratuitous copyists.
But from the third or fourth century downwards, the religious houses were the chief sources of books, and the monks were almost the only copyists. The employment was better suited than any other that can be imagined, to the rules, and usages, and to the modes of feeling peculiar to the monastic life. The mental and bodily inertness which the spirit and rules of the conventual orders tended to produce, when conjoined, in individuals, with some measure of native industry, would find precisely a field for that lethargic assiduity which it needed, in the business of copying books. In many monasteries this employment formed the chief occupation of the inmates; and by few was it altogether neglected.
Various appellations occur in the Greek authors, by which the several orders of writers were designated. Among the scribes or notaries attached to the service of public persons, there were always some who were eminent for the rapidity with which they wrote, and who therefore bore the title of tachygraphoi, or “swift writers.” But those who followed the business of copying books, in which legibility was the chief excellence, generally called themselves kalligraphoi, or “fair writers.” Yet these appellations are often used interchangeably.
The copyists usually subscribed their names at the end of every book, with the year in which it was executed: to which they often added the name of the reigning emperor; sometimes, though rarely, the name of the patriarch of Constantinople, for the time being, is added to the subscription of the copyist. Manuscripts written in Sicily, bear the name of its kings; those executed in the East, mention the Arabian or Turkish princes. The Greeks of the early ages commonly dated from the creation of the world, which they placed 5508 years before Christ. Sometimes they reckoned time from the death of Alexander the Great; sometimes from the accession of Philip Aridæus; sometimes from the accession of Diocletian; and, occasionally, they give some notice of the signal events of their times. From these incidental references much important historical information has often been collected. These signatures are usually written by the hand of the transcriber of the book.
Besides the signature of the copyist, the margins of many manuscripts contain notes—often very trivial or absurd, from the hands of successive proprietors of the book; each accompanied with some date or reference to persons or events, serving to fix the time of the annotator, and, by inference, proving the antiquity of the manuscript. In a few instances the transcribers copied the subscription of the transcribers of the book from which they wrote; and if that former subscription bears a date, we have a double indication of antiquity.
The fidelity of the copyists, and the genuineness and integrity of ancient manuscripts, have been warmly and learnedly defended by the laborious Father Mabillon, on every occasion throughout his great work, De Re Diplomatica.[2] The leading motive which impelled the indefatigable author to the prosecution of the researches of which this work gives the result, seems to have been the desire to establish the genuineness and integrity of ecclesiastical, and especially of monastic charters. In the course of his inquiries, he brings forward a vast variety and amount of information relating to the modes of writing practised in the monasteries, and in the courts of the French kings, during the middle ages. These facts are of course most available in arguments that relate to the genuineness and antiquity of existing manuscripts in the Latin language; but there is so much of the substance of the argument touching the genuineness of all ancient writings in the following passages, that they may well be placed before the reader. The work itself is little likely to come under the eye of those for whom this volume is intended.
This learned writer says:—“Before I conclude this supplement, I think it may be proper to say something concerning the integrity and authority of ancient books, which some persons dispute. For assuredly, if the genuineness of charters and public deeds is doubted, the authority of ancient manuscripts in general is also called in question; and, if these doubts can be substantiated, it will appear that those who employ themselves in collating the printed editions of the Fathers, or other sacred books, with ancient manuscripts, spend their labour in vain. And hence, too, we must believe, contrary to the opinion of all learned persons, who think the world greatly indebted to the labours of the monks in transcribing books, that they toiled to no good purpose. Such persons, to give colour to their opinion, affirm that the existing ancient manuscripts were executed by ignorant men, whose blunders are easily perceived by the learned; and on this prejudice they have founded the decision, that manuscripts having been written, for the most part, by unskilful hands, and derived many from one, are of little avail in understanding or restoring an author.
“But if this principle were admitted, our confidence in the printed editions, as well as in the ancient manuscripts, must fall to the ground. Neither the acts of councils, the works of the Fathers, nor the Holy Scriptures, would retain any authority. For whence, I ask, proceeded the printed editions, both of profane and sacred writers? were they not derived from ancient manuscripts? If, therefore, these are of no authority, those can have none; and thus, by this paradoxical opinion, the foundations, both of literature and of religion, are torn up. And, on this principle, there would be no force in the argument used by St. Augustine against the Manichæans, who calumniously affirmed every place of Holy Scripture, by which their errors might be confuted, to be falsified and corrupted. But Augustine, in reply to Faustus, reminds him that whoever had first attempted such a corruption of the Scriptures, would have immediately been confuted by a multitude of ancient manuscripts, which were in the hands of all Christians.
“On this principle the labours of the Fathers, Jerome, Augustine, and others, in collating ancient books with modern copies, would have been fruitless. In vain the appeals of councils to such authorities for the determination of controversies; in vain the costs and cares of princes and kings in collecting manuscripts from the remotest countries. And if the case be thus, the Vatican, the Florentine, the Ambrosian, and the royal (French) libraries are nothing better than useless heaps of parchment. And it was to no purpose that the Roman pontiffs and the kings of France, as well as other prelates and princes, sent learned men to the farthest parts of the East to obtain ancient books in the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages. And then the ancient transcribers must lose their credit, and especially the monks, who devoted themselves entirely to the copying of books; such were the disciples of St. Martin, among whom, according to Sulpicius, no art but that of writing was practised. For they thought they could not be better employed than while at once edifying themselves in the continual perusal of the Holy Scriptures, and spreading the precepts of the Lord far and wide by their pens. Of this opinion was the pious Guigo: ‘As we cannot preach the word with our lips,’ says he, ‘let us do it with our hands; for as many books as we transcribe, so many heralds of the truth do we send forth.’ And thus also Peter the venerable, writing to Gislebert, a recluse, exhorts him to diligence in this exercise: ‘For so you may become a silent preacher of the Divine Word; and though your tongue be mute, your hand will speak aloud in the ears of many people. And in future times, after your death, the fruit of your toils will remain, even as long as these books shall endure.’