![]() For Christ’s sake, give me a drink.” Education agents – modern day monksįast forward over a thousand years or so to the present. One even wrote, at the end of his script: Often monks would express their desperation in the margins of a manuscript they copied. Monks whose every waking hour was devoted to copying texts often suffered from acedia, a “foul darkness” that causes the affected to act anxious, apathetic, and hopeless, “as if the sun was too slow in setting”. It is a terrible ordeal for the whole body“. ![]() It dims your eyes, makes your back ache, and knits your chest and belly together. “ Only try to do it yourself and you will learn how arduous is the writer’s task. In the tenth century one monk complained: The best ones were exempted from daily prayers and given extra candles so they could work into the night.Ĭopying texts was hard on the body and the mind. A monastic scribe would work for at least six hours a day, usually in an uncomfortable and poorly lit room. Finishing a single copy could take weeks even with long hours devoted only to copying. The process of medieval copying was tough. Before that time books in medieval Europe – particularly bibles or other religious texts – were often produced through manual copying by monks. Scriptorium – literally “a place of writing”, is used to refer to a room in medieval European monastaries devoted to the writing and copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes.Īround 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the metal movable-type printing press in Europe.
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