Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books

Buhler in his The Fifteenth-Century Book (Philadelphia, i960) points out (p. 41) that "The invention of the press came at a time exactly suitable for its advent." Although the economic factors of the availability of an abundant supply of paper and an increasing literate population were the chief reasons for this situation, contributory to it was an important human factor: both the scribes and the authors were ready for the printed book. Witness to this are the many colophons penned by weary copyists. Of these, one of the most restrained, yet most effective, is a single hexameter line, in heavy spondees, that occurs in a twelfth-century manuscript from the Abbey of St. Victor (Paris, lat. 14954, f· 920· At the end of a dull commentary on Martianus Capella the scribe wrote, "Tarn longmn tandem finisti penna laborem" (Now at last, little quill, you have finished your very long task) . If the scribes complained of their tedious work, the authors, too, were impatient, chiefly with the imperfect workmanship of the scribes. Petrarch, for instance, speaks (Epistolae jamiliares, XVIII. 12) with bitterness of the indolence and ignorance of scribes that have caused "an incredible loss to scholarship, as books of a difficult nature have ceased to be intelligible, and, completely neglected by everybody, have perished in the end." One also recalls Chaucer's harsh words to his own scrivener: