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Medieval Manuscript Culture
In 13th century, Paris was first place to have large commercial trade of manuscripts. Book trade did not consist of the methods which we think of now. Instead of making large numbers of books and then attempting to sell them, the manuscript-book producer was commissioned to make a specific book. Paris was also one of the first cities which had a large enough population of wealthy literate that it could support the livelihood of people producing manuscripts. So manuscripts could now be made outside of the monastery and in cities by these people. Commercial workshops or ateliers operated out of Paris in the middle 13th century. These workshops often collaborated on jobs. Research from François Avril, Joan Diamond and others have confirmed that two or more artists have alternated, or otherwise shared, in the illumination of a single manuscript. However it is unclear exactly how the logistics of this kind of production worked out.

Most medieval scribes had kept their gathering together as they copied, but some did separate books into sections to copy them in parts. It can be seen that previously in the monasteries, work had been broken up between the scribes and the illuminators. One can find examples of where at the beginning of a new paragraph, the scribe would space out for and write out a small cursive letter which would have been painted in at a later time by the illuminator. These are basic forms of distributing the work for coping a manuscript, but it was with the pecia system which really develops and perfects breaking the book into parts to be copied.

Pecia system develops in Italian university cities by the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it became a regulated procedure at the University of Paris in the second half of the century. The pecia system breaks up the book into sections called pecia. Individuals like students can rent out section by section to copy. If there was 70 pecia, which potentially meant that 70 people could copy that book in the same amount of time that it would take one person to copy an entire book if they alone had the whole single copy.



The original collection of pecia for a book from which all future copies will be based off of is called the exemplar. The process of making an exemplar was supposed to be an orderly procedure: Masters of the university who compiled a new work were to edit, correct, and submit this authentic text to a stationer; he in turn copied from it an exemplar in pecia, corrected these against the author’s text with utmost care, and finally submitted them to the inspection of the university’s delegates for approval and for the setting of a rental price. Only then were pecia available for rental and copy.

In reality, it came down to the stationer- part of whose job was renting out pecia- finding and offer for rental the works which he thought would be demanded. And this pressure on the stationers prompted them to acquire exemplars in as good a state and in as short a time as possible. The emphasis was on speed of acquisition instead of the quality of the product. If a certain work appeared as if it might become a “best seller,” a stationer would make a copy of the best text immediately available, and would have his exemplar-pecia corrected as well as time permitted. 305 At times, the stationer sought the text; at other times, it was the author who offered his newly completed work to the stationer, but it was never the university as a formal body which made requests or developed what was to be offered.

Booksellers During the time of the Medieval Manuscript
King Philip the Fair of France, 1285-1314, instituted a .4% commercial tax on all goods. It was in 1307 that Philip the Fair exempted all the librarii universitatis from paying the commercial tax, the taille. This exemption empowered the universities’ all over France over the booksellers because if they did not swear the oath there would be no tax exemption.

Librarius is a general term and stationarius refers to one specific kind of librarius. Librarius is elastic and can mean anything from scribe, bookseller, and librarian. Stationarius or stationer refer to those types of librarius who rented out peciae. Both however were involved in secondhand trade; produced new books; were equally thieves, frauds and cheats; regulated by the university and without any distinction between each other aside from the stationer having the added job of renting out pecia.

The oaths the librarii or booksellers had to swear to the universities’ restrictions and requirements for the tax exemption were extremely restrictive in regard to the resale of secondhand books. They were suppose to act more like intermediaries between the seller and the buyer while their profit was limited to essentially four pence in the pound. They were further required to display the secondhand books prominently in their shops, give a professional assessment of the likely price of the books submitted to them, and put would-be buyers in direct contact with the seller.

The bookseller had to swear not to underpay when bought and not to overcharge when sold. The stationers rented out copies of useful texts, one quire at a time, so students and masters could make their own copies. Both fees were regulated by the university. Both kinds of booksellers had to guarantee their compliance to their oath by posting a bond of 100 pence.

While there were many restrictions on the bookseller, the job did have its benefits. The bookseller was free to produce and sell books, illuminate, or write for anyone they pleased like: the Court, cathedral, or the wealthy laymen of the capital and provinces so long as they met their obligations to the university which they had sworn oaths to. In fact, most of their trade fell outside of the university regulation. There is an important distinction between the regulation of how books were traded within the university and how the booksellers were able to charge whatever the open market would bear. To the non-student or masters, there were no such restrictions on the booksellers. Between 1300-1500 the position of libraire was a closed position only open upon the resignation or death of a previous one. Aside from cheap books, it was only the libraire who was allowed to sell books in Paris. The university essentially guaranteed a monopoly on the sale of books for libraires. It was not just the booksellers which the universities regulated. Additionally, university regulations forbade parchmenters from hiding the good parchment from university members wanting to buy. There were plenty of other demands for parchment outside the university such as: the record-keeping for the royal government, every similar entity of a commercial or mercantile guild, every religious house that issued a charter or kept a rent roll, every public letter-writer, everyone from major international trader to local shop-keeper who kept accounts. They all demanded parchment in greater numbers and were willing to pay higher than the regulated price which the university members paid. And so, the universities feeling such pressures often chose to regulate parchment as well.