When there came to he, as in Rome, in the First and Second centuries A.D., a continued and increasing demand for copies of a work, the booksellers organized methods for speedier nml tipliention of copies than had been possible when each copy was produced by a single scribe. By using readers who dictated at one time to a group of from a dozen to fifty seribes, they seenred a very considerable speed in the multiplication of copies. Nearly all of these scribes were slaves, but they were well-educated slaves. Accuracy was. however, sacrificed to speed: there was often no proper collation, and many of the deficiencies in the texts of classic-al works are to be charged to the carelessness of these copyists. The scribes who prepared the manuscripts were known as librarii. This name came afterwards to be ap plied to the booksellers through whom the mani folded copies were sold. The smiler dealers had themselves given the manual labor for the pro dnetion of their wares; the larger librarii hired for the purpose the work of the slaves.
With the institution of the first Christian monasteries. with their scriptorin or writing rooms, the business of hook-making takes on a new phase. The material is parchment. The stylus is developed into a reed pen. The scribes are no longer slaves working under hire, or book sellers preparing copies for sale, but monks man 'folding sacred writings for the glory of God. We have thus at once a higher standard of work, both for accuracy and for beauty. The classic texts that exist today have come down to us in these parchment copies prepared by the monastic copyists. The texts from which the first of these scribe- worked were the papyrus sheets, which shortly thereafter disappeared altogether. For tunately for the literature of the world, the labor of these earlier generations of monks was not confined exclusively to the duplication of the Scripture or of the sermons of the Fathers. At the instance of Cassiodorus. who in 567 organ ized in his own monastery at Vivarium the first of these scriptoria, a portion of the working time was given to selections of the classics, though the books which were multiplied most frequently were the Scriptures in the Latin version of Saint Jerome. Saint Augustine's City of God, and the Consolations of Philosophy, by BoRhius. In fact, it was to the monastic scribes that the first printers owed the existence of the classical texts from which their own work was done. See BENEDICTINES.
The next period in the making of books conies with the organization of the oldest universi ties. Bologna and Paris. all of which date, as
far as their effective work is concerned, from the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. In these universities the making of books became part of the educational work. The book-makers, that is to say, the scribes who had charge of the multiplication of the texts. were appointed by the university authorities. They were held strictly responsible for the accuracy of their manuscripts, which were to be used as texts for the lecturers and for their students. The first scholarly editorial work in the collation and cor rection of the classic texts dates from this period. The name given to the officials who were charged with the duty of providing texts for the universi ties was stationarii. The work of these men comprised, in addition to the preparation of the texts, the renting at specified rates of the mann seript, so prepared to the students and instruc tors. During the earlier years of book-making in the universities the sale of manuscripts by the stationarii was not permitted.
Paper (q.v.) was introduced into Europe about the beginning of the Tenth Century. This earliest paper (eharta bombacina) was made from cotton. Paper made of linen first came into use, according to Mahillon, in the Twelfth Century. although Mentfaneon asserts that no specimens have been identified earlier than 1270.
According to tradition. the University of Bologna owed its foundation to Charlemagne. This connection is now held to be but a legend. It is true, however. that before the close of the Eighth Century Charlemagne rendered an important. service to the making of books. in 7S2 the monk Aleuin was called by Charle magne from hi- home monastery in York to the Court at Tours. Alenin established a series of royal schools. I II these schools was instituted a uniform system of script, which was prescribed for the and for the official documents of the realm. Fortunately for the work of the later scribes and for the interests of literature, Alcnin selected for his standard of form not the Gothic, but the Latin script. It was this script of Alcuin's which was accepted as the model for the seriptoria of the monasteries, and later for the working-rooms of the universities. It was this same script, as developed through the cen turies of book-writing in the universities, that became the model for the type-founders after 1472, who shaped the fonts of the Latin alpha bets; that is, of all the Western alphabets other than the Gothic or German.