Sandra Hindman: "Parchment is a much more robust support than our modern paper. In places like Paris, Oxford, and Florence specialized professionals in the book trade (scribes, artists, binders, publishers) belonged to guilds and were paid for their work."Īn illuminated psalter (a book contained psalms) manuscript on parchment from Southern Germany circa 1240-1260 offered by Les Enluminures for $170,000ĪbeBooks: The medieval period spans from the 5th to 15th centuries - how is it possible that manuscripts from this period have survived so long?
After around 1200 with the rise of towns and the growth of a money economy, production shifted to city centers. Before about the year 1200, medieval manuscripts were made in monasteries by monks and sometimes nuns, who were scribes and artists working in the service of God. Arranged in sequence, the gatherings were sewn, then threaded through channels in wooden boards, to make up the front and back covers of the binding.ĪbeBooks: We think of monks toiling away to make medieval manuscripts. Specially treated animal skins, or parchment, were cut, stacked, and folded in half to form 'gatherings.' After ruling, a scribe wrote the text, and artists decorated and illuminated the sheets. Sandra Hindman: "It wasn't easy to make a medieval manuscript. They are not printed."ĪbeBooks: What was the typical production process in creating a medieval manuscript? They are books written by hand (manu=hand scriptus=to write). AbeBooks posed a number of basic questions about medieval manuscripts and Sandra was kind enough to answer them.ĪbeBooks: What are medieval manuscripts? Should we think of them as books or something else? Professor Emerita of Art History at Northwestern University and owner of Les Enluminures, Sandra is author, co-author, or editor of more than 10 books, as well as numerous articles on history, illuminated manuscripts and medieval rings. Sandra Hindman is a leading expert on Medieval and Renaissance manuscript illumination.
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