Making the Book

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# Triumph of the Codex:

##### The Manuscript through 1500
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#### Matthew J. Lavin
#### Clinical Assistant Professor of English and Director of Digital Media Lab
#### University of Pittsburgh
#### September 2018

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### "The power of writing was reinforced by the iconic nature of the book in a religious context" (Brown 182)

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### "Combined with the intellectual raw material of Latin literacy and Carolingian script, monasteries controlled the making, selling, reading, and circulation of books--essentially the entire European market--for the better part of a millennium" (Stoicheff 78)

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### Middle Eastern churches retained their own languages but the Roman Catholic church privileged Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (Brown 183)

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### Insular nuns and monks made books (Brown 184)

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### Carolingian Empire "standardized script" (Brown 185)

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# Manuscript Culture

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- ### Carolingian Miniscule: script makes Latin alphabet more recognizable (Brown 189)
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# Women in early book culture

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- ### Among the leading book owners
- ### Could be scribes and authors (Brown 191)

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# Manuscript Culture after 1100

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### What does Clanchy tell us about the status of scribes? (195-197)

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# Manuscript Culture after 1100

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- ### Friars and mission work (Clanchy 201)

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# Manuscript Culture after 1100

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- ### By 1400, book production was mostly commercial (Clanchy 204)

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# Manuscript Culture after 1100

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- ### "The achievement of the years 1100 to 1500 was to extend book-learning from monasteries and churches into the domestic sphere of the family" (Clanchy 205)

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# Materials and Meanings

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### "Nature originally provided the surfaces, writing tools, and media for any human communication that sought permanence" (Stoicheff 73)

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# Materials and Meanings

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### "These writing and ideographic systems were integrated with the immediate natural settings" (Stoicheff 73)

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# Materials and Meanings

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### "Instead of separate graphic systems such as alphabets, these forms of communication had meaning by virtue of their relationship with oral teachings" (Stoicheff 73)

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# What Changed by 400

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- #### Hierglyphics: permanence (Stoicheff 74)
- #### Clay tablets: erasable, reusable, no labor intensive checked_string_types (Stoicheff 74)
- #### Tortoise shell (Stoicheff 75)
- #### Wax tablet (Stoicheff 75-76), also discussed by Brown (see Brown 179)
- #### Animal skin: improvements made at Pergamum (Stoicheff 76-77)

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# Indian palm leaf format
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<img style="height: 30%; width: auto;" src="palm-columbia-1st5.jpg" />

From "An Indic Palm-leaf Manuscript," http://library.columbia.edu
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# Tibetan Pecha format
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### The Adirondack Sutra

<pre>http://digitalcollections.stlawu.edu/collections/adirondack-sutra</pre>
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# Accordion book
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#### Thai accordion-style book, HRC Eastern Manuscripts Collection
<img style="height: 45%; width: 45%;" src="accordion.png" />

<pre>From "The World Beyond,"

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/world/</pre>
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# Parchment, Codex

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- #### 5th and 6th centuries CE, Byzantine Empire, "new networks of power bases" (Brown 180)
- #### "The result was the most enduring and versatile writing surface invented prior to paper, and in some ways even after" (Stoicheff 78)
- #### Ascendency was "roughly simultaneous" with the rise of the codex (Stoicheff 78, Clanchy 199)
- #### Ireland "introduced word separation" circa 600 (Brown 182) Insular Christianity

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# Korean type
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#### 18th century, HRC Eastern Manuscripts #47
<img style="height: 35%; width: 35%;" src="korean-movable-type.png" />

<pre>From "The World Beyond," http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/world/</pre>

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# European Manuscripts
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#### 13th Century Bible from England
<img style="height: 35%; width: 35%;" src="illumination.png" />

<pre>http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/before/</pre>