Course:ETEC540/2009WT1/Assignments/ResearchProject/FromHandwritingtoTyping/Handwriting

Illuminated Manuscripts

The practice of hand-copying texts used in courtly circles was also the chief means of distribution in the Church. Scribes were paid to laboriously copy out by hand the ornate Gothic script that was the staple of religious discourse. A room in the monastery reserved for this activity was called the scriptorium and here they not only transcribed texts but provided "illumination"--elaborately conceived initial letters, ornamental borders and gilded illustrations. Outstanding examples of illuminated texts include the seventh and eighth century works of the Irish School, particularly The Book of Kells and The Lindisfarne Gospels. Production costs were quite high: an account roll in Westminster Abbey records that one 14th century Mass book cost 35 pounds--the equivalent of several hundred pounds today--but of this the scribe received only 4 pounds for two years' work and 1 pound for clothing. Such books were, understandably, rarities and often chained to the walls of the monastery.

The technique of illumination sought to release the light, the truth, of a text from within. It was a light shone through the text, not on it. The text thus appeared as the walls of a gothic church. These churches were often made of porous stone which allowed light to filter through the walls, the light of God was thus all about the parishioners, it did not shine down on them from above but was the very medium through which they moved. From http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0263.html

Literary production was directed in one of two directions: church or court. In ecclesiastical circles, it was used largely to copy already extant works (particularly in the form of illuminated manuscripts). For the gentry, it was one of the decorous practices by which a courtier, a person of high-social ranking vying for a power at the royal court, might establish or improve his or her standing with the monarch. In this latter domain, writing took up its place beside not only such courtly activities as singing and dancing, but statesmanship and military leadership. Few, if any people, earned their living by the pen alone, and those who did write were generally dependent, if not land-owners themselves, on the gifts of patrons or royal appointments to the civil service.

Amongst this small elite, writers would circulate their works in manuscript form: bundles of loose leaf paper tied with a ribbon would make their way from person to person. Readers would copy out their favourite works into large bound volumes called commonplace books. (Book-binding is much older than the printing press: parchment sheets had been folded and sewn together as far back as the second century CE.) Even as printed books became increasingly available, manuscript circulation remained popular amongst the aristocracy as print carried a taint of the common and the mass. Woman writers of the court seem to have particularly felt restricted from entering the world of the movable type. from http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0262.html