The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages

This book takes the reader on an immersive journey through medieval manuscript production in the Latin Christian world. Each chapter opens with a lively vignette by a medieval narrator – including a parchment-maker, scribe and illuminator – introducing various aspects of manuscript production. Sara J. Charles poses the question ‘What actually is a scriptorium?’, and explores the development of the medieval scriptorium from its early Christian beginnings through to its eventual decline and the growth of the printing press. With the written word at the very heart of the Christian monastic movement, we see the immense amount of labour, planning and networks needed to produce each individual manuscript. By tapping into these processes and procedures, we can experience medieval life through the lens of a manuscript maker.

About the Author :
Sara J. Charles works and studies at Senate House, University of London. She has previously published on various aspects of the history of the book.

Review :
From squirrel hair brushes to scripts, Sara J. Charles offers a comprehensive and engagingly accessible introduction to medieval book production. At times strikingly imaginative in form, this book brings together creative vignettes, intermittent chronologies, illustrations and lucid prose to trace the contours of manuscript making in this period. Glimpses of medieval belief and culture, trade, relationships with nature, and – most of all – individual medieval lives: Sara J. Charles’s brilliant book reveals the world of the Middle Ages through the pages of its manuscripts. In this compellingly written, fascinating must-read, Sara J. Charles leads us on sensory journey of the tactile, unexpectedly smelly, excruciatingly painful and divinely jubilant reality of manuscript-making in medieval Europe. A joyous page-turner! The Medieval Scriptorium vividly recreates the techniques and processes that underlay the production of books over the thousand-year period of the Middle Ages. Sara J. Charles’s intimate grasp of her subject gives us a volume that is filled with delightful detail while offering a richly insightful overview of its compelling topic. In The Medieval Scriptorium – an engaging and beautifully illustrated volume – Sara J. Charles traces the evolution of the book from the early Christian centuries to the development of printing, a story covering some 1,500 years . . . The author’s love of these books shines through and her enthusiasm and appreciation of the skill involved in making these works of art are infectious. The reader will learn much about medieval books, their makers and their making. Charles conjures the feel, sounds and smells of manuscript-making in this jaunty book, which is filled with imagined vignettes starring medieval figures, as well as extensive detail and analysis of tools, materials and religious contexts. A lively and very readable illustrated survey by University of London book historian Charles of all aspects of medieval manuscript production in the Latin Christian world, charting the decline and fall of the scriptorium and its makers over more than a millennium. The author describes how manuscripts were made, the colours and techniques used, including the roles of the parchment maker, scribe and illuminator and how they developed in medieval times. You can perceive the lives and the aura of the monasteries and monastic life – and it’s the amount of labour and detail put into every edition that also causes you to marvel . . . A fascinating account of manuscript making and writing and the relevance today with our lives caught up in smart phones, computers, social media and AI. The Medieval Scriptorium takes modern readers back to the origins – technical, social, economic and intellectual – of copying in late antiquity and the Middle Ages . . . Charles is a specialist in recovering medieval techniques of bookmaking, and her account is at its best when diving into the material culture of sharing ideas . . . Our present modes of copying may be immeasurably faster than the work of the medieval scribe, but this book demonstrates that the present has much to learn from the past The Medieval Scriptorium is a highly readable account of developments in book production in western Europe during the Middle Ages, surveying and contextualizing many of its best-known and most significant treasures while casting interesting light on the circumstances of their production. Sara J. Charles introduces us to various individuals behind the books and reminds us of the human cost: the sore backs, the eye strain and the freezing fingers. This fascinating book explores the medieval process of bookmaking and reproduction that was often arduous, back-breaking, eye-straining work for the scribes and copyists involved. We learn how colours were made and calfskin prepared to create parchment and how these beautiful and enduring objects developed. Illuminating.