The production and preservation of books
For centuries, the production and preservation of books has been associated with monastic communities. Many monks and nuns, and later lay persons, were trained in the time and labor-intensive process of transcribing books by hand before embracing mechanical printing, introduced by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450 CE.
As a result, medieval monasteries are often credited with safeguarding essential volumes in a diversity of disciplines during centuries of civil conflict. By the mid-thirteenth century, what had largely been a monastic enterprise had become the undertaking of lay craftsmen due to a mounting demand for books that coincided with the founding of universities throughout Europe. Teams of scribes would duplicate texts scrupulously loaned from collections throughout the continent, often employing multiple persons to prepare parchment and write, decorate, and bind their work.
This illuminated breviary, or devotional text, contains a compendium of psalms, hymns, and prayers used for privately reciting the Divine Office. On the right, floral marginalia embellishes the page to symbolize the sacrality of the text.
Book of Hours English, ca. 1450.
86 unnumbered leaves, tempera, ink, and gold on parchment with calfskin binding over wooden boards, Latin.
Saint Vincent Special Collections