Part 1

Chapter 13,187 wordsPublic domain

THE REIGN OF THE MANUSCRIPT

BY PERRY WAYLAND SINKS, S.T.D.

_Author of_ "_Popular Amusements and the Christian Life_," "_Jesus and the Children_," "_About Money_," "_Whittlers of the Word of God_," "_In the Refiner's Fire_"

_And the books, especially the parchments._ --_II. Timothy 4:13_

BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED

Made in the United States of America

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

TO OUR BELOVED SONS AND DAUGHTERS OUR EARNEST CARE AND CROWN OF JOY

AN APPRECIATION

I have examined the manuscript of your book with care. The conception seems to me to be admirable, and new in form of presentation. There is a great deal of valuable material for which one would search a long time and then not find it in the orderly and compact form which you have given it. It seems to me that Sunday school teachers would welcome it especially, and leaders of teacher-training classes would desire to use it as an auxiliary text book. I trust it will be widely read.

ERNEST BOURNER ALLEN _The Washington Street Congregational Church._

_Toledo, 1917_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I THE EPOCHAL INVENTION OF PRINTING 11 II THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRINTING PRESS 16 III THE PERIOD OF MANUSCRIPT LITERATURE 19 IV THE AMPLITUDE OF THE BIBLE IN MANUSCRIPT 33 V THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN LITERATURE 40 VI MATERIALS EMBODYING LITERATURE 46 VII VARIETIES AND CHANCES IN THE MATERIALS OF BOOKS 55 VIII PARCHMENT AND VELLUM 59 IX PAPYRUS 66 X PAPER AND ITS MANUFACTURE 72 XI OTHER MATERIALS OF LITERATURE 78 XII INKS 83 XIII IMPLEMENTS OF WRITING 87 XIV THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PALÆOGRAPHY 89 1 THE HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING 92 2 THE CUNEIFORM WRITING 99 3 THE ALPHABETIC WRITING 104 4 THE CLASSIC WRITING 112 5 THE TWO GREAT STAGES OF CLASSIC WRITING 113 6 THE ANGLO-SAXON WRITING 115 7 PALÆOGRAPHY AND THE DATE OF LITERARY PRODUCTIONS 117 XV MECHANICAL AND ARTIFICIAL DEVICES OF LITERATURE 120 XVI SOURCES OF THE BOOK-MAKING INDUSTRY 127 XVII THE LITERARY PREËMINENCE OF ALEXANDRIA 133 XVIII VARYING FORTUNES OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY 143 XIX CONSTANTINOPLE THE LATER CENTER OF LITERATURE 146 XX MONASTERIES AND THE MONASTIC INSTITUTION 154 INDEX 172

THE REIGN OF THE MANUSCRIPT

THE EPOCHAL INVENTION OF PRINTING

The invention of printing at about the middle of the fifteenth century marks an epoch in the world's literature and in the history of the human race. Previous to this invention were spread out the events, the scenes, and the achievements of ancient and medieval times; after it came the marvelous unfoldings of the modern age.

The introduction of typography or the art of printing by means of movable types set in operation an instrumentality which, for multiplying the effectiveness of all literary productions, is far beyond all adequate conception;--and this all apart from the time of its origin and the person of its originator.

Printing as an invention and an art--for it is both--has been ascribed to the Chinese, and is said to have been known from, or from before, the dawn of the Christian Era. Mr. George H. Putnam states it as a fact that "Printing from solid blocks was done in China as early as the first century A. D.," and credits the art of printing from movable types to a blacksmith who turned out books in China toward the close of the tenth century, A. D., or early in the eleventh. And a writer in the _Encylopedia Britannica_ (Eleventh Edition) asserts that printed books were common in China in the tenth century, and that examples of xylographic or block printing in Japan date from the period of 754 to 770 A. D. However this may be, it remains true that, in relation to the spread of literature and the development of civilization, typography is occidental rather than oriental. Furthermore, we need to distinguish between the block printing of China and the great invention at the middle of the fifteenth century. Comparing impressions from engraved blocks of wood with the type-printing of Gutenberg, Professor Dobschütz says: "People had used woodcuts before his time. Engraving large blocks of wood with pictures and letters, they printed the so-called block-books as a cheap substitute for illuminated manuscripts. Gutenberg's great idea was that instead of using a woodcut block for the page one might compose a page by using separate movable letters, putting them together according to the present need, then separating them again."[1] It is generally conceded that the invention of printing from movable types, as an epoch of human history, had its real beginning in Germany, dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, and is associated with one named Johannes Gutenberg.

Gutenberg was of patrician parentage and was born at Mainz (the modern Mayence), Germany, about 1400 A. D. His life was a prolonged struggle with adverse circumstances. He died in 1468, poor, childless, and almost friendless--scarcely dreaming that he had laid the foundations of a benefaction which chronicled the turning-point of universal history, set a permanent guide-post in the world's progress, and proclaimed a new era in civilization. But so it was.

While we are without definite information as to how the first copies were printed, yet it is obvious from Gutenberg's famous forty-two line Bible that they used a mechanical press. The earliest picture of a printing-press shows an upright wooden frame with a screw post attachment by means of which the required pressure for impression was obtained and then reversed to release and remove the printed sheet. This screw post was operated by a movable bar. This kind of press continued to be used for a hundred and fifty years. The first types were cut from wood, but the ink used had a softening effect thereupon and lead was substituted. Lead, in turn, was found to be too soft a metal to resist the pressure requisite for printing. After experimentation, an alloy of antimony and lead proved to have the adaptable strength and softness; it was also capable of delicate and clear-cut manipulation. These metal types were first cast in sand and, later, in clay molds. The ink used for printing with the Gutenberg press was a mixture of linseed oil and lamp-black and was applied to the type-form by means of a "dabber" made of skin and stuffed with wool. It is stated that the first types as used in China were made of plastic clay; later, of copper; and then of lead, inasmuch as copper had come to be utilized as coin. (Putnam.)

It is worthy of our note in this connection that the first important product of the printing-press was the Bible;--was devoted, as has been said, "to the service of heaven." This first "production" was on 641 leaves of vellum, two columns to a page, and forty-two lines to each column. "Probably," says Professor Dobschütz, "not more than 100 copies of the Bible were printed, a third of these on parchment. Out of thirty-one copies which have been preserved, or, to speak more accurately, are known as such, ten are luxuriously printed on parchment and illuminated, each in a different way, but all very fine and costly."[2] (One copy of Gutenberg's first printed Bible was sold for $20,000.) The first copy of this edition known to scholars--the Latin Vulgate--was discovered long after (in 1760) in the library of Cardinal Mazarin, whence its designation, "the Mazarin Bible." Nine other copies which were upon vellum and a score that were printed on paper (two of which are in New York City) are all that are known to the bibliographers of the first "edition" of the printed Bible. While engaged in the production of this first book (which required four years, 1453-1456, to complete) Gutenberg printed smaller works--school books and the like--for immediate financial returns. In this first edition of the printed Bible the initial letters were not struck off by press but were left, together with the marginal decorations, for after illumination by hand. A Bible printed at Mainz in 1462 is the first printed book that bears the date of its production.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRINTING PRESS

The printing-press, in many essential respects, is the most significant invention of all human history. It has touched and vitalized civilizations, countries, nations, languages, and dialects. As an invention it has contributed immeasurably to the currency and the perpetuity of all literature. It also sounded the doom of the written book. Hallam, the Historian of the Middle Ages, says: "Since the invention of printing the absolute extinction of any considerable work seems a danger too improbable for apprehension. The press pours forth in a few days a thousand volumes, which, scattered like seeds in the air over the Republic of Europe, could hardly be destroyed without the extirpation of its inhabitants." And, concerning the exposure to which the manuscript production of all previous history was subjected, he says: "In the times of antiquity manuscripts were copied with cost, labor, and delay; and if the diffusion of knowledge be measured by the multiplication of books (no unfair standard) the most golden ages of ancient learning could never bear the least comparison with the last three centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental fire, the desolation of a few provinces by unsparing and illiterate barbarians, might annihilate every vestige of an author, or leave a few scattered copies, which, from the public indifference there was no inducement to multiply, exposed to similar casualties in succeeding times."[3] In a word, printing has the double advantage over writing of a more rapid multiplication of copies and their increased accuracy. But even with the increased accuracy of printing, few books of considerable size are issued in which errors are not to be found. It is said to be the fact that, after incredible care on the part of editors and professional proofreaders, the offered reward of a guinea for each detected error in the Oxford Revised Version of the Bible brought several errors to light. (International Stand. Bib. Encyclopedia.)

The invention of printing, through its associated process of proof corrections, has virtually exempted books from the mundane laws of decay and has greatly aided as well in their preservation and their widest circulation. This invention has made definite and immutable the records of the world since then and it has contributed also to the purification and renewal of the more ancient literary productions. Printing as an invention has given to an edition of a particular work a measure of importance hundreds or thousands of times greater in every respect save one, viz., the labor of transcription, than that which had previously attached to the production of a single book. The invention has therefore involved and necessitated a proportionately larger consideration in the making of a printed book, lest defects and errors in the type-plates from which the book is printed should become permanently fixed in a thousand or ten thousand impressions therefrom. (Isaac Taylor.) And it was printing that made uniformity of text possible. Guizot estimates the importance of this invention thus: "From 1436 to 1452, printing was invented:--printing, the theme of so much declamation, and so many commonplaces, but the merit and the effect of which no commonplace nor any declamation can ever exhaust."

The invention of printing has peculiar significance within the realm of religious life and knowledge; for, in relation to the scripture text, to the spread of religious intelligence and the progress of Christianity, and to the growth and stabilization of the individual character,--in a word, in relation to Redemption itself, who can apprehend, much less measure, the significance of this invention? Truly, the Bible which _en_folds the basis of our faith as the bud does the blossom and the fruit, as well as _un_folds the way of life as the guide-post directs the traveler on his journey, has come into the world for man, and has come to stay. For the great discoveries and inventions, in wide areas of human investigation, but brighten its pages and multiply its capacity to fulfill the purposes of God on the earth.

III

THE PERIOD OF MANUSCRIPT LITERATURE

The age in which literature was disseminated and preserved extended from the time of the earliest intellectual compositions designed for communication--as the papyri hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt and the leather and parchment rolls of the early Persian and Jewish peoples; and included also those compositions which had a limited circulating character, like the tablets and cylinders of ancient Assyria--down to the time when the printing-press was invented. This, inclusively, is the period of the manuscript literature. Throughout this entire period of the world's ongoing, for many hundreds or some thousands of years, each and every kind of production, whether in hieroglyph, cuneiform, or alphabetic characters, was made by itself--the producer inscribing, painting, or printing (letter by letter or character by character) through hundreds and thousands of pages. "To the time of the invention of printing, and until the printed book had driven it out of the field, the manuscript was the vehicle for the conservation and dissemination of literature and discharges the function of a printed book."

A _book_ has been defined as "any record of thought in words." This may be a correct definition as far as it relates to literature but not as it relates to the "record of thought." There is a "record of thought" independent of words and, perhaps, long antedating the record in words of any language. A _word_ has been defined as "the sign of an idea." But were there not "ideas" long before they were communicated by words? If there are "songs without words" may there not be, or, at least may there not have been, "ideas without words"? An affirmative answer is admirably illustrated--and the illustration is confirmatory--by a group of six great mural paintings by Mr. John W. Alexander, in the Library of Congress at Washington. These pictures illustrate historically the probable genesis and evolution of the "book." The first painting is of the rude _Cairn_ or heap of stones piled up on the seashore or elsewhere by prehistoric man in order to commemorate some event or achievement, and thus to stand as a "record" or landmark of a fact or truth. The second picture is illustrative of _Oral Tradition_, and represents the "narration" of facts or doings by the word of mouth. The third is called the _Pictograph_ which consists in delineations of events or experiences as drawn by some implement upon the surface of skins, or on the leaves or bark of trees or plants, and by means of which there was created a kind of permanent "record" of past "happenings" or doings. The fourth is the _Hieroglyphics_--which brings us to the historic period--in which there were carved on the face of cliffs, on the walls of structures of any kind, or on wood, the pictured and, may be, progressive delineations of events or ideas. The fifth is the _Manuscripts_ or the record contained in written language and which was phonetic, syllabic, or alphabetic,--the end toward which all earlier stages of "record" tended. The sixth and last picture is the _Printing Press_, the embodiment and consummation of all the earlier phases and stages in the "records of the past." It is the obvious lesson from these great paintings that a "record of thought" by means of "words" was not fully achieved until the manuscript entered upon its world-wide and enduring career, or, in which "words" became the embodiment and depository of permanent and communicable "ideas." The words of Mr. E. C. Richardson are quoted as bearing upon the period of manuscript literature: "Some of the pictures on the cave walls of the neolithic age seem to have the essential characteristics of books and certainly the earliest clay tablets and inscriptions do. These seem to carry back with certainty to at least 4,200 B. C. By a thousand years later, tablet books and inscriptions were common and papyrus books seem to have been well begun. Another thousand years, or some time before Hammurabi, books of many sorts were numerous. At the time of Abraham, books were common all over Egypt, Babylonia, Palestine, and the eastern Mediterranean as far at least as Crete and Asia Minor. In the time of Moses, whenever that may have been, the alphabet had perhaps been invented, books were common among all priestly and official classes, not only in Babylonia, Asyria, and Egypt, but at least in two or three scores of places in Palestine, north of Syria and Cyprus."[4]

The earliest literature of the ancient Greeks was first preserved in oral traditions, folk-lore, and legendary minstrelsy, and not in written language. It is possible, nay, probable, that in Greece, Egypt, China, Japan, and Persia also, folk-lore and folk-tales were perpetuated through memory by means of recitations, as in the instances of the _rhapsodists_--the class of professional reciters who publicly declaimed the Homeric literature and the folk-lore of the ages with more or less artistic inflection or intonation of the voice. The proclamations of rulers, the compositions of poets and historians, and the oracles of religion were anciently published orally, often, by heralds, minstrels, and prophets. The great Hebrew Lawgiver embodied a wide-spread principle and practice in his final injunction to the Hebrew nation: "Now therefore write ye this song for you and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel." (Deut. 31:19.) Aside from narrower applications of this practice, the great achievements and deliverences of the Israelitish people were celebrated and perpetually memorialized in song and psalm. On the shores of the Red Sea, Moses and his people sang their song of deliverance from the hand of their enemy. And when, at a later age, the Ark of the Covenant was borne to its resting place within the Sacred City, it was amidst the antiphonal chanting of the psalm which David, himself, had composed for the occasion. The psalms in themselves--as one of the purposes of their composition--were a partial witness to the place and prominence of song and chant in teaching religious truth and thus in keeping faith alive on the earth. Plato states that the first laws of all nations were composed in verse and sung. There is a remembrancer in Plato's statement concerning the first laws of nations of our own primitive pedagogical methods within certain departments of learning. And so, by tradition, recitative, minstrelsy, and psalmody--of wide application in the early ages--both a wider currency and a more tenacious hold was taken by these laws, proclamations, and truths upon the popular mind. Especially so as the popular mind was deficient in the art of reading, even when literature had been embodied in writing. And this was true in both sacred and profane history. Thus, minstrelsy, chant, and tradition have performed an important function in the beginnings of many ancient peoples. And, strange as it may seem to us, Plato, notwithstanding his voluminous writings and his place in the literary world for nearly three thousand years, put a low estimate on the importance of written as compared with oral teaching.