Books and Manuscripts

During the Renaissance more books became available to more people than ever before. The invention of the printing press made books affordable to the lower classes, but handwritten manuscripts also remained popular. The flood of texts reflected not only scholarly humanist* ideals but also the growing emphasis on material goods during the Renaissance.

Manuscripts. Before the invention of printing presses, the only texts were copied by hand. The earliest manuscripts were rare collector's items with unique designs and layouts. They had pages of rugged parchment—dried and prepared skins of sheep, goats, or calves. Parchment was extremely expensive. In Paris in the 1400s, for example, a single skin cost up to five times as much as a loaf of bread, and a single book used hundreds of pages of parchment. A less expensive alternative, paper, did not reach Europe until the 1100s.

The first people to copy works on a large scale were medieval* monks whose religious rules required them to perform some manual labor. Throughout the Middle Ages monks copied and produced thousands of texts. Some manuscripts included illumination*, such as designs, miniature artwork, or decorative lettering. Kings, queens, and other wealthy individuals collected illuminated manuscripts much like other forms of art.

As medieval UNIVERSITIES expanded in the 1200s, they demanded more and more manuscripts. The universities became thriving centers of manuscript production and distribution when the stationarii, a licensed guild* of scribes*, set up their stalls near university lecture halls and began to copy texts. The guild separated an original manuscript into sections, or pecia, and divided the pecia among its scribes. The scribes worked like an assembly line to create copies section by section. This method enabled them to generate many copies cheaply.

Even after the development of the printed book, manuscripts remained common in Europe. Many readers valued manuscripts for their fine craftsmanship. Also, many intellectuals preferred to spread their ideas in manuscript form before printing them, especially when their views were controversial. Another common form of manuscript was the personal copybook, a handwritten collection of passages from a person's favorite works.

Printing and Publishing. Most scholars credit Johann GUTENBERG, a German printer, with the invention of the printing press. Although other cultures had already developed printing, Gutenberg was the first to use the screw press—a viselike machine that had been used for making paper and wine—to print books. Gutenberg also refined movable type, which used one die (metal block) for each letter of the alphabet. He produced the Gutenberg Bible—the first book printed with movable type—around 1455.

It took a team of three men to print a book. The compositor—the most skilled of the three—set the type, placing letters one by one in two frames to create pages. It was a time-consuming process. To keep the press running without delay, the compositor set the next day's pages while two other men—the inker and the operator—ran the press. The inker set the two frames in the press, one above the other. After smearing the type in the frames with ink, he inserted a sheet of paper between them. The operator then swung the press's lever to bring the two frames together, making imprints on both sides of the paper sandwiched inside. Once he released the lever, the frames separated, and the inker removed the printed page. The inker and the operator might repeat this process 1,000 times in a single day.

By the 1460s printers had set up presses in France and Italy. Spanish and English printers were at work by the 1470s. The spread of printing made more books available and drove the price of books down. In the late 1460s a printer might make 300 copies of a book. Ten years later that number reached 1,000. Printers also competed to make cheaper versions of popular titles, sometimes copying the books of rival printers. The development of the printing press and the business of publishing made books affordable to common people for the first time.

Books and Material Culture. During the Renaissance, people began to place more value on material possessions. Many collected expensive and exotic objects, such as paintings, tapestries, scientific specimens, and leather-bound books.

Books and manuscripts helped to fill the intellectual and material needs of many people. Some collectors read their texts carefully and cross-referenced ideas in their margins, while others prized books largely for their beauty. Illuminated manuscripts were treasures, but printed books also became central to Renaissance material culture. Collectors might pay for elaborate decorative bindings on their printed books to blend them in with the handsome manuscripts in their libraries. However, even members of the lower classes, who could not afford such fancy volumes, became eager consumers of books. The most popular works included religious texts and books on manners.

Private collections grew greatly between 1350 and 1600. In Venice a wealthy person's library might house hundreds or even thousands of books. Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and apothecaries* kept private collections of books about their professions. In Florence, many people had libraries of religious texts, although these rarely numbered more than 100 volumes. Some book collectors made their private libraries available to others. For example, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601) made his home in Padua a meeting place for local scholars. The great scientist Galileo GALILEI wrote several lectures while he was Pinelli's guest. Some private collections eventually formed the core of Europe's first public LIBRARIES.