Draft:The Transition from Manuscript to Print

The transition from manuscript to print

The transition period from manuscript to print occurred over the half century following the invention of the moveable-type printing press around 1450. Before Gutenberg's press, all books had to be handwritten. Several factors contributed to Gutenberg’s invention such as the increased production of paper, the establishing of universities, and a rise in literacy that raised a demand for books in general. The printing press, however, did not immediately eradicate manuscripts, as many books and pamphlets were made in a hybrid form, combining both handwritten and printed components. Even before the printing press, scribes and illuminators innovated book production to find greater efficiencies.

Paris Bibles and the Pecia Method of Copying.

The term manuscript derives from the Latin manuscriptum, meaning “written by hand.” Manuscripts define a wide array of formats, including scrolls, folded sheets, and the codex, which is the familiar book form consisting of pages sewn into covers. From the fall of Rome to roughly the 12th century, manuscript production was the purview of monasteries and other religious organizations in Europe. Depending on the grandeur and length of manuscripts, monks could work anywhere from weeks to years. This slow process could not meet the enormous demand created by the students at the University of Paris, founded around 1200. As a result, new, more efficient ways of making books had to develop.

By the end of the 12th century, due to the founding of universities, a societal change gripped Europe as more people started to believe that knowledge was not solely reserved for the church. Intellectual life was now independent from religious affiliation, and universities required books, which put them in higher demand than ever before. Monasteries were not able to produce the number of books needed for university students. As a result, production moved out of monasteries and into the city of Paris, where secular craftsmen produced them.

The pecia method was a groundbreaking advancement in book-making which came into play at around 1230. Pecia is the system of using one approved version of the Bible and dividing it into sections. These sections were rented to scribes to copy, who would transcribe them individually, which not only produced a standardized text, but allowed a faster and more efficient production of books Prior to this, bibles existed in multiple versions. It was not until the pecia method that a unified and standardized version of books began to circulate around Europe. Copyists using the pecia method produced “pocket Bibles.” They were about 200 mm in height, which was small enough to be portable, as it was made for students. A book of this size was only made possible due to its pages comprising extremely thin parchment. In our modern age, we do not know how they were able to thin out the parchment to this size. The earliest surviving pocket Bible was copied in 1234 (Dole, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 15). The pecia method and the secularization of book production opened opportunities for other books, besides the bible, to be made. Unlike manuscripts made in monasteries, these books could be made with cheaper materials, did not require the same amount of embellishment, and had a greater variety of subjects than liturgical books made by monks. However, monks did not stop making manuscripts; rather, their production was overshadowed by secular urban craftsmen. This created a space where people were interested in a means of making cheap and easily reproducible books.

The Rise of Single-leaf Illumination

Manuscript makers found other ways to increase efficiency. After the book of hours became the main devotional manuscript for the laity around 1260, their production soared. Around 1390, illuminators began making miniatures on single leaves, which could be inserted into the manuscript later. This way, the scribes could work in one workshop, and the illuminators in a different workshop, and their labor was only brought together later. This allowed for a greater division of labor, and it brought the price of books of hours down, while at the same time ensuring they had many images in them. The buyers wanted images, so these colorful books appealed to them. Many of these books of hours were produced in Ghent and Bruges, which were in the shadow of the book-loving Burgundian books and became major centers for secular book production. Artists who made single-leaf miniatures for insertion into books of hours include the Masters of the Pink Canopies, the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, and the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht. The images they produced were often simple to draw, based on simple geometric figures, brightly colored, and lacking complicated backgrounds.

Print-manuscript Hybrids

Printed text did not immediately or fully supplant manuscripts. Another technology that increased the efficiency of manuscripts was the printing of images (which has a different history from the history of printed text). Printed images made with woodcuts or engraved copper plates could be pasted into manuscripts, thereby obviating the need to paint miniatures. Hybrid manuscripts which combined both printed and handwritten elements were produced beginning about 1440.

Printed elements may have been pasted onto parchment, otherwise handwritten texts. Although printed media were regarded as low-brow or cheaper versions of more masterfully handmade media, bookmakers solved this by adding hand-painted borders to the prints, thereby framing them with a craft technique. The ease of printing was constantly in conversation with the artistic conventions of manuscripts. Because most medieval manuscripts were written on parchment rather than paper, gluing a printed image to a manuscript text often meant affixing paper to parchment.

In particular, women in convents made manuscripts illustrated with pasted-in prints. Women did not often have the opportunities to learn to draw the human figure, as they could not normally go through the apprentice system. Convent sisters could add images easily by pasting them in. Other techniques of adding prints included sewing printed images onto the pages of the manuscripts. In the Van der Vlaest Hours from Ghent, someone has sewn a print depicting the Virgin and Child into the blank space on the manuscript page. Additionally, engravings also decorated many manuscripts well into the 16th century. An example of this can be seen in Lewis E 179, a hybrid manuscript detailing the life of Christ by including depictions of him in engravings, which were then surrounded by handwritten prayers.

The Introduction of Paper

Even though paper made its debut in Europe around 1100, parchment was preferred due to its stronger quality, smoother surface, and its ability to react better with the inks and paints. Namely, parchment does not “drink” the paint, and it therefore does not bleed. Also, parchment can be gilded more effectively than paper. The transition from manuscript to print relied on the production and adoption of paper as the primary medium. However, paper was not an overnight success in medieval European bookmaking. For the first 300 years that paper was being made in Europe, as it arrived from China in the 12th century, it was not the favored medium of bookmaking, and there were no real advantages of paper until the 1400s. Nevertheless, parchment production would never have been able to keep up with the production of printed text. Even though parchment production continued throughout the 14th and first half of the 15th century at stable proportions, it would have taken several hundred skins to produce a small book and up to thousands of skins for a larger format. By the late 14th century, paper mills began to spread into Germany, and by the 15th century paper was abundant in Europe. While paper did not fully eclipse the usage of parchment in the 1400s, it was critical to the invention of the printing press. Parchment was also still used primarily by monks and the creation of legal documents up to 300 years later.

Advent of the Printing Press

Printing press, engraving by W Lowry after John Farey Jr., 1819

The moveable-type printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany between the years 1446 to 1450. The Gutenberg printing press was able to produce 3,600 pages of text a day; in comparison most monks could only produce a couple of pages of handwritten text a day. Early printed texts from 1450 to 1500 were referred to as incunabula, the Latin word for “cradle” or “infancy”. It is believed that around 27,000 incunabula were printed in the fifty year period. The size of editions rose from 350 to 1,000 copies on average between the years 1480 to the end of the century.

How the Printing Press Moved through Europe

The first 50 years after the printing press was established is regarded as the infancy of the printing industry. Most of the presses established throughout Europe were started by German printers; during this time the diffusion of printing press technology was limited to the distance from Mainz, Germany. The presses were only found in cities, as printing technology was an urban development. Financial barriers were high as printing materials and the knowledge of printing techniques were relatively scarce until after the mid 1500s. This is due to the cost of acquiring all of the materials needed for printing presses, and due to the fact that a blueprint for the printing press was not published until 1540.