This in the monasteries was done in the case of
large and important MSS., and afterwards, when illuminating became a
lay-craft, subdivision of labour was the common practice. Binding was
done in a special apartment, and by one specially skilled therein.
The _scriptorium_ was looked upon as a sort of sacred place, and the
work of copying often considered as a labour of piety and love--entered
upon with devout prayer, and solemnly blessed by the superior,
especially in cases where the books to be written were Bibles, or
connected with the services of the house, the Lives of the Saints, or
Treatises on Theology.
Very frivolous or absurd indeed are sometimes the inducements to
copyists to do gratuitous work of this kind, such as that every letter
transcribed paid for one sin of the copyist, and it is said that a
certain monk--a heavy sinner--only owed his salvation to the fact that
the number of letters in a Bible which he copied exceeded by a single
unit the sum total of his sins.
CHAPTER XIII
MONASTIC ILLUMINATION--_continued_
The copyists--Gratuitous labour--Last words of copyists--Disputes
between Cluny and Citeaux--The Abbey of Cluny: its grandeur and
influences--Use of gold and purple vellum--The more influential abbeys
and their work in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
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