After being away from my blog for a few days, I thought it time to share some thoughts. That being said, I've entered my essay on scribal literacy, which many of us found fascinating as a result of the visit to the rare books collection at Columbia University.

Scribal Literacy and Craft Literacy: Past as Prologue

Of the world of transcribed language, this will be a brief overview and exploration of the idea of scribal literacy and craft literacy as it was a part of the Middle Ages prior to the invention of movable metal type. Scribes still worked after Gutenberg’s printing of The Bible in 1456 but with lesser frequency. What was the form and content of the various manuscripts and codices prior to Gutenberg? We should be aware that writing grew out of the need to perform some form of archival function, a form of bookkeeping, out of which grew the beginnings of scribal literacy and later the writing systems we use today. Walter J. Ong maintained that, “skilled oral art forms preceded and in part determined the style of the written works which constitute literature” (Ong 1), and that, “in medieval manuscript culture, books were subtly assimilated more to oral utterance and less to the world of physical objects” (1). Ong further extrapolated the idea that, “manuscripts were commonly read aloud or sotto voce even when the reader was alone” (1).

Why were manuscripts read aloud? Paul Saenger elaborated on this theme with a somewhat different argument, the contention that word separation, spaces between words, were a later introduction in scribal literacy. Manuscripts were transcribed in a continuous sequence of letters forming words without separation called scriptura continua. In order to parse the meaning of scriptura continua, the writing without spaces between the words, it was physiologically necessary to sound out the syllables that make up the words. The idea and concept of scriptura continua made perfect sense to Saenger, who stated, “when we speak there really is no space between our words. It would be very artificial to pause between each word and, in fact, if you don't know a language you can't really tell where one word begins and one word ends” (ABC Radio National). For Saenger there were two intrinsic factors necessary for the decoding of text. First was “the structure of the language itself….and the way the language is transcribed” (Saenger 1). But, “of the countless languages…spoken over the millennia…most have disappeared unrecorded…. Of the some 3000 or more languages spoken today, only some 78 as yet have a literature” (Ong 5). What gave us the written evidence of those languages we may study was the invention of the alphabet and the significance of the early scribes and how they labored to record oral utterances or copy those discursive writings that had existed prior to their efforts.

Eventually, with the introduction of vowels by the Greeks to the already existing Sumerian script, interpuncts, “points placed at midlevel between words” (Saenger 10), gradually disappeared from written Greek and then from Latin in the second century A.D. Scriptura continua became the standard for manuscripts. In the ancient world there was no pressing need to make reading swifter, easier, or more accessible. Among many if not all of the elite of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, self-motivated reading was not a readily accepted concept. The reality for autonomous reading was a foreign idea and presented itself as arduous and perhaps a waste of time. But, there was still the necessity to understand and to be considered sophisticated, if not intelligent. To define craft literacy one must understand the “difficulties of lexical access arising from scriptura continua” (10). It was not easy to decipher, but what it did do was create a need for skilled servants who acted as “professional readers and scribes” (11). “During the course of the nine centuries following Rome’s fall, the task of separating written text, which had been for half a millennium a cognitive function of the reader, became instead the task of the scribe” (13). This was craft literacy.

It doesn’t occur to us to think about the tools with which we write. The scribe had to think very carefully about his tools, which were an intrinsic part of his workplace mis-en-place, those items he puts in place for his craft. First, there were the surfaces on which the scribe wrote, primarily parchment and vellum. These were the precursors of paper. Parchment and vellum, used for writing, were made from prepared animal skins. Parchment was made from calf, goat or sheep skin. Vellum, which is from the French veau is a kind of parchment made from calf skin. The process for manufacturing parchment was quite involved. Upon skinning the animal, all the hair and flesh remaining is cleaned away. The skin is then stretched on a wooden frame. A “parchminter scrapes the surface of the skin with a special curved knife” (National Archives website). Multiple steps of scraping, wetting and drying are used to prepare the skin to achieve the ideal “thickness and tautness” (National Archives website). Frequently, an abrasive is used to facilitate the surface’s ability to accept ink.

Second, a quill pen was the scribe’s writing instrument. The best feathers proved to be the five or so outer wing pinions of a goose or swan. Trimming and peeling the quill for use was of paramount importance. Fresh feathers are too flexible. They need hardening, a process that can be accomplished by air-drying for several months, or by alternately soaking and drying them in a tray of heated sand. More preparation, including scraping and rubbing, is required to prepare the pen. What you are left with is a durable, translucent tube, as the quill is naturally hollow. Paring away the tip with a short, sharp knife (a penknife), leaves a nib shaped liked a fountain pen. A slit is then cut up the centre of the nib. Finally, the scribe creates a squared-off tip with his penknife. A medieval scribe could accomplish this very quickly, but a busy scribe would need a number of pens, and could possibly sharpen his quills up sixty times in one day. The quill was the perfect shape to accept ink when dipped into the inkpot. St. John, in the Book of Hours, is illustrated looking at his pen, sharpening and preparing it for use.

The prosaic need for ink is the third concern. The two major types of ink were carbon ink, made with lamp-black or charcoal, mixed with a gum, which acted as an adhesive, and metal-gall ink, called iron-gall ink, made from oak apple, a solution of tannic acids and gum, but used as a thickener not at adhesive. Oak apples are formed when gall wasps lay their eggs in the growing buds of an oak tree, and soft pale-green apple-like spheres begin to form around the larvae. To work well, quill pens need the viscosity of gum. The iron-gall ink, when exposed to the air, darkens on the manuscript, and it soaks well into parchment. On the other hand, carbon inks can be rubbed off relatively easily. The iron-gall ink is shinier than carbon ink which is grittier and blacker. Red ink was made with mercuric sulfide, egg white and gum arabic. Quite often, medieval scribes would have, on the right of their desk, two inkhorns. The second inkhorn is thought to have been used for red ink, which was generally used for titles, initials, rubrics, and red-letter days.

Unlike writing today, the scribe worked with both hands. The exemplar, his prototype, was placed alongside the scribe’s copy on the desk. Since parchment manuscripts have a tendency to close themselves up, they must be held open. Sometimes the scribe would utilize weights hanging on either end of a string. The scribe worked at a steeply sloped desk, quite often with the chair attached to the desk. He would use his left hand to hold the knife, which was used not only for sharpening the quill but removing smudges and stains caused by running ink, or to keep the parchment from closing up, or rubbing against something. With both hands occupied with knife and quill, this left the scribe without a free hand to follow the model in the exemplar. This was the how of scribal and craft literacy.

In the Middle Ages, “the feudal system gradually crumbled, with wealth and power beginning to shift to a new merchant class” (McGrath 6). With the growth of personal fortunes among the merchant class control of society “was slowly…shifting from the old patrician families to the entrepreneurs…. Literacy [had been] rare…limited to the clergy” (7). With the dawning of the Renaissance in fourteenth century Italy, culture based on the classical language, literature and arts of Ancient Rome and Greece engendered the reflowering of the humanities. Now there was “considerable emphasis on cultivating both reading and writing. To be literate…was a sophisticated cultural achievement….The possession of books was now seen as a social virtue” (8). By 1456 Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, producing books cheaply, had supplanted the need for scribal literacy and its concomitant craft literacy.

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