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A scriptorium () was a writing room in medieval European monasteries for the copying and illuminating of manuscripts by scribes.
The term has perhaps been over-used—only some monasteries had special rooms set aside for scribes. Often they worked in the monastery library or in their own rooms. Most medieval images of scribing show single figures in well-appointed studies, although these are generally of well-known authors or translators. Increasingly, lay scribes and illuminators from outside the monastery also assisted the clerical scribes. By the later Middle Ages secular manuscript workshops were common, and many monasteries bought more books than they produced themselves.
When monastic institutions arose in the early sixth century (the first European monastic writing dates from 517), they defined European literary culture and selectively preserved the literary history of the West. Monks copied Jerome Latin Vulgate Bible and the commentaries and letters of early Church Fathers for missionary purposes as well as for use within the monastery.
In the copying process, there was typically a division of labor among the monks who readied the parchment for copying by smoothing and chalking the surface, those who ruled the parchment and copied the text, and those who illuminated the text. Sometimes a single monk would engage in all of these stages to prepare a manuscript.Barbara A. Shailor, The Medieval Book, (Toronto: U Toronto Press, 1991), p. 68. The illuminators of manuscripts worked in collaboration with scribes in intricate varieties of interaction that preclude any simple understanding of monastic manuscript production.cf. Aliza Muslin-Cohen, A Medieval Scriptorium: St. maria Magdalena de Frankenthal series Wolfenbüttler Mittelalter Studien (Wiesbaden) 1990.
The products of the monasteries provided a valuable medium of exchange. Comparisons of characteristic regional, periodic as well as contextual styles of handwriting do reveal social and cultural connections among them, as new hands developed and were disseminated by travelling individuals, respectively what these individuals represented, and by the examples of manuscripts that passed from one cloister to another. Recent studies follow the approach, that scriptoria developed in relative isolation, to the extent that Paleography are sometimes able to identify the product of each writing centre and to date it accordingly.
By the start of the 13th century, secular workshops developed, De Hamel, 1992, p. 5 where professional scribes stood at writing-desks to work the orders of customers, and during the Late Middle Ages the praxis of writing was becoming not only confined to being generally a monastic or regal activity. However, the practical consequences of private workshops, and as well the invention of the printing press vis-a-vis monastic scriptoria is a complex theme. for example, cf. De Hamel, 1992, p. 5
There is also evidence that women scribes, in religious or secular contexts, produced texts in the Middle Ages. Archaeologists identified lapis lazuli, a pigment used in the decoration of medieval illuminated manuscripts, embedded in the dental calculus of remains found in a religious women's community in Germany, which dated to the 11th-12th centuries. Chelles Abbey, established in France during the early medieval period, was also well known for its scriptorium, where nuns produced manuscripts and religious texts. There is also evidence of Jewish women working as scribes of Hebrew texts from the 13th to 16th centuries, though these women primarily worked out of their homes rather than religious institutions, as daughters and wives of scribes. Women were not only the producers of these texts, but could also be the consumers or commissioners of them. There were also women who worked as professional, secular scribes, including Clara Hätzlerin in 15th century Augsburg, who has at least nine surviving manuscripts signed by or attributed to her.
, Sloane MS 2468) "Old St. Paul's Cathedral" William Benham, 1902. (gutenberg.org). Plate 24. Please also note Sloane MS 2468 ]]
References in modern scholarly writings to 'scriptoria' typically refer to the collective written output of a monastery, somewhat like the chancery in the early regal times is taken to refer to a specific fashion of modelling formulars, but especially traditional is the view that scriptoria was a necessary adjunct to a library, as per the entry in du Cange, 1678 'scriptorium'.Du Cange, et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887 (10 vol.). Scriptorium
Cassiodorus' description of his monastery contained a purpose-built scriptorium, with a sundial, a water-clock, and a "perpetual lamp," that is, one that supplied itself with oil from a reservoir. The scriptorium would also have contained desks where the monks could sit and copy texts, as well as the necessary ink wells, penknives, and quills. Cassiodorus also established a library where, at the end of the Roman Empire, he attempted to bring Greek learning to Latin readers and to preserve texts both sacred and secular for future generations. As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus collected as many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing his monks in the proper uses of texts. In the end, however, the library at the Vivarium was dispersed and lost, though it was still active around 630.
In the earliest Benedictine monasteries, the writing room was actually a corridor open to the central quadrangle of the cloister.Fr. Landelin Robling OSB, Monastic Scriptoria, OSB.org, accessed 2 May 2007. The space could accommodate about twelve monks, who were protected from the elements only by the wall behind them and the vaulting above. Monasteries built later in the Middle Ages placed the scriptorium inside, near the heat of the kitchen or next to the calefactory. The warmth of the later scriptoria served as an incentive for unwilling monks to work on the transcription of texts (since the charter house was rarely heated).
Numerous scribes of the Serbian Orthodox Church books—at the term of the 16th and the beginning of the 18th centuries—who worked in the Rača monastery are named in Serbian literature – "The Račans". Among the monk-scribes the most renown are the illuminator Hieromonk Hristifor Račanin, Kiprijan Račanin, Jerotej Račanin, Teodor Račanin and Gavril Stefanović Venclović. These are well-known Serbian monks and writers that are the link between literary men and women of the late medieval (Late Middle Ages) and Baroque periods in art, architecture and literature in particular.
The Rule of Saint Benedict does explicitly call for monks to have ready access to books during two hours of compulsory daily reading and during Lent, when each monk is to read a book in its entirety. Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 48, Kansasmonks.org, accessed 2 May 2007. Thus each monastery was to have its own extensive collection of books, to be housed either in armaria (book chests) or a more traditional library. However, because the only way to obtain a large quantity of books in the Middle Ages was to copy them, in practice this meant that the monastery had to have a way to transcribe texts in other collections.Geo. Haven Putnam, Books and Their Makers During the Middle Ages, (New York: Hillary House, 1962), p. 29. An alternative translation of Benedict's strict guidelines for the oratory as a place for silent, reverent prayer actually hints at the existence of a scriptorium. In Chapter 52 of his Rule, Benedict's warns: "Let the oratory be what it is called, and let nothing else be done or stored there". Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 52, Kansasmonks.org, accessed 2 May 2007. But condatur translates both as stored and to compose or write, thus leaving the question of Benedict's intentions for manuscript production ambiguous.Fr. Landelin Robling OSB, Monastic Scriptoria, OSB.org, accessed 2 May 2007. The earliest commentaries on the Rule of Saint Benedict describe the labor of transcription as the common occupation of the community, so it is also possible that Benedict failed to mention the scriptorium by name because of the integral role it played within the monastery.
In 1134, the Cistercian order declared that the monks were to keep silent in the scriptorium as they should in the cloister.
" Only try to do it yourself and you will learn how arduous is the writer's task. It dims your eyes, makes your back ache, and knits your chest and belly together. It is a terrible ordeal for the whole body".Quoted in: Greer, Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. Tauris Parke, 2001. p. 155.
The director of a monastic scriptorium would be the armarius ("provisioner"), who provided the scribes with their materials and supervised the copying process. However, the armarius had other duties as well. At the beginning of Lent, the armarius was responsible for making sure that all of the monks received books to read, but he also had the ability to deny access to a particular book. By the 10th century the armarius had specific liturgical duties as well, including singing the eighth responsory, holding the lantern aloft when the abbot read, and approving all material to be read aloud in church, chapter, and refectory.Fassler, Margot E., "The Office of the Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and Customaries," in Early Music History, 5 (1985), pp. 35, 40, 42.
While at Vivarium c. 540–548, Cassiodorus wrote a commentary on the Psalms entitled Expositio Psalmorum as an introduction to the Psalms for individuals seeking to enter the monastic community. The work had a broad appeal outside of Cassiodorus' monastery as the subject of monastic study and reflection.
Abbot Johannes Trithemius of Sponheim wrote a letter, De Laude Scriptorum (In Praise of Scribes), to Gerlach, Abbot of Deutz in 1492 to describe for monks the merits of copying texts. Trithemius contends that the copying of texts is central to the model of monastic education, arguing that transcription enables the monk to more deeply contemplate and come to a more full understanding of the text. He then continues to praise scribes by saying "The dedicated scribe, the object of our treatise, will never fail to praise God, give pleasure to angels, strengthen the just, convert sinners, commend the humble, confirm the good, confound the proud and rebuke the stubborn".Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes (de Laude Scriptorum), Klaus Arnold, ed. (Lawrence, Kansas: Colorado Press, 1974), p. 35. Among the reasons he gives for continuing to copy manuscripts by hand, are the historical precedent of the ancient scribes and the supremacy of transcription to all other manual labor. This description of monastic writing is especially important because it was written after the first printing presses came into popular use. Trithemius addresses the competing technology when he writes, "The printed book is made of paper and, like paper, will quickly disappear. But the scribe working with parchment ensures lasting remembrance for himself and for his text". Trithemius also believes that there are works that are not being printed but are worth being copied.Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes (de Laude Scriptorum), Klaus Arnold, ed. (Lawrence, Kansas: Colorado Press, 1974), p. 65.
In his comparison of modern and medieval scholarship, James J. O'Donnell describes monastic study in this way:
" Each Psalm would have to be recited at least once a week all through the period of study. In turn, each Psalm studied separately would have to be read slowly and prayerfully, then gone through with the text in one hand (or preferably committed to memory) and the commentary in the other; the process of study would have to continue until virtually everything in the commentary has been absorbed by the student and mnemonically keyed to the individual verses of scripture, so that when the verses are recited again the whole phalanx of Cassiodorian erudition springs up in support of the content of the sacred text".
In this way, the monks of the Middle Ages came to intimately know and experience the texts that they copied. The act of transcription became an act of meditation and prayer, not a simple replication of letters.
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