Ross King on the Laborious Process of Bookmaking in the 15th Century
April 13, 2021
Producing new manuscripts of Cicero’s writings in the middle of the 15th century was clearly a more laborious and involved enterprise than combing the sleepy shelves of Franciscan libraries for neglected codices. The word “manuscript” comes from the Latin
manu scriptus, “written by hand,” but any manuscript was the product of much more work than simply the writing of a single hand. It was a months-or even years-long, multistep process calling for the expertise of a series of tradesmen and specialist craftsmen, from parchment makers to scribes, miniaturists, goldbeaters, and even apothecaries, carpenters, and blacksmiths.