History of the transmission of ancient books to modern times / together with the process of historical proof; or, a concise account of the means by which genuineness of ancient literature generally, and the authenticity of historical works especially are ascertained including incidental remarks upon the relative strength of the evidence usually adduced in behalf of the Holy Scriptures

by Isaac Taylor

2. A large proportion of existing manuscripts are found to be dated by the hand of the copyists, and in such a manner as to leave no question as to the time when the copy was executed.

3. Many manuscripts have marginal notes, added evidently by later hands, which through some incidental allusion to persons, events, or particular customs, or by the use of peculiar forms of expression, indicate clearly the age of the notes, and therefore carry that of the original manuscript somewhat higher.

4. The remote antiquity of a manuscript is often established by the peculiar circumstance of its existing beneath another writing. These re-written manuscripts—palimpsests, or rescripts, as they are termed, afford the most satisfactory proof of antiquity that can be imagined. Parchment, which has always been a costly material, came to be greatly enhanced in price at the time when paper, manufactured from the papyrus of the Nile, began to be scarce, and just before the time when that formed from cotton—called charta bombycina, was brought into general use. At the same period, owing to the general decline of learning, the works of the classic authors fell into very general neglect. Those, therefore, who were copyists by profession, and the monks especially, whose libraries often contained large collections of parchment books, availed themselves of the valuable material which they possessed, by erasing, or washing out, the original writing, and then substituting lives of the saints, religious romances, meditations, or such other inanities as suited the taste of the times. Nevertheless, often, the faithful skin, tenacious of its pristine honours, retained the traces of the original writing with sufficient distinctness to render it still legible. These rescripts, therefore, offer to us a double proof of the antiquity of the work which first occupied the parchment; for in most cases the date of the monkish writing is easily ascertained to be of the twelfth, or even the ninth century. The writing which first occupied such parchments must, of course, be dated considerably higher; for it is much more probable that old, than that recent books should have been selected for the purpose of erasure. Some invaluable manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures, and not a few precious fragments of classic literature, have been thus brought to light.

5. The age of a manuscript may often be ascertained, with little chance of error, by some such indications as the following:—the quality or appearance of the ink; the nature of the material; that is to say, whether it be soft leather, or parchment, or the papyrus of Egypt, or the bombycine paper; for these materials succeeded each other, in common use, at periods that are well known;—the peculiar form, size, and character of the writing; for a regular progression in the modes of writing may be traced by abundant evidence through every age from the remotest times;—the style of the ornaments or illuminations, as they are termed, often serves to indicate the age of the book which they decorate.

From such indications as these, more or less definite and certain, ancient manuscripts, now extant, are assigned to various periods, extending from the sixteenth, to the fourth century of the Christian era; or perhaps, in one or two instances, to the third, or second. Very few can claim an antiquity so high as the fourth century: but not a few are safely attributed to the seventh; and a great proportion of those extant were unquestionably executed in the tenth; while many belong to the following four hundred years. It is, however, to be observed, that some manuscripts, executed at so late a time as the thirteenth, or even the fifteenth century, afford clear internal evidence that, by a single remove only, the text they contain claims a real antiquity, higher than that even of the oldest existing copy of the same work. For these older copies sometimes prove, by the peculiar nature of the corruptions which have crept into the text, that they have been derived through a long series of copies; while perhaps the text of the more modern manuscript possesses such a degree of purity and freedom from all the usual consequences of frequent transcription, as to make it manifest that the copy from which it was taken, was so ancient as not to be far distant from the time of the first publication of the work.

Most, if not all, the Royal and Ecclesiastical and University libraries in Europe, as well as many private collections, contain great numbers of these literary relics of antiquity: and some of them could furnish manuscripts of nearly the entire body of ancient literature. There are few of the classic authors that are not still extant in several manuscript copies; and of some, the existing copies are almost numberless.

Although all the larger ancient libraries, such, for example, as those of Alexandria, of Constantinople, of Athens, and of Rome, were destroyed by the fanaticism of barbarian conquerors; yet so extensive a diffusion of the most celebrated works had previously taken place, throughout the Roman empire, and beyond its limits, that all parts of Europe and Western Asia abounded with smaller collections, or with single works in the hands of private persons. When learning had almost disappeared among the people, monasteries and religious houses became the chief receptacles of books; for almost every such establishment included individuals who still cultivated literature and the sciences with ardour; and who found no difficulty in amassing almost any quantity of this generally neglected property.

Happily for literature, religious houses were places of greater security than even the strongholds of the nobles, or the palaces of kings, which by conquest or revolution were, from time to time, violently rent from their possessors. Meantime, these sacred seclusions were usually respected, even by the fiercest invaders. Through a long course of ages, monasteries were occupied by an order of men who succeeded each other in a far more tranquil course of transition than has taken place in any other instance, that might be named. The property of each establishment (and its literary property was always highly prized) passed down, from age to age, as if under the hand of a permanent proprietor, and it was therefore subjected to fewer dispersions or destructions than the mutability of human affairs ordinarily permits.

Every church, and every convent and monastery had its library, its librarian, and its other officers, employed in the conservation of the books. Connected with the library was the Scriptorium—the hall or chamber where the elder or the educated monks employed themselves in making copies of such books as were falling into decay; or of such as there was still some demand for, in the open world.

By means such as these it was that the literature of more enlightened ages has been preserved from extinction; and when at length learning revived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a large portion of those long-hoarded volumes flowed into the collections of the munificent founders of libraries, and there, having become known to the learned, they were speedily consigned to the immortal custody of the press.