snoop in the history of the book is a little 'how to shake the dust of time : There is just something old and charming, something mysterious, evoking images of a closed and silent.
Today, in the Internet age and libraries on-line, you're losing the charm of the book in her hands peeled, the magic of the contact page rubbed between forefinger and thumb. Yet, not many centuries ago, the book was a real precious and few were those who could boast the possession of only a few dozen copies. The costs were prohibitive for a book, because of the time required for the production and especially the support material. Until the fifteenth century, parchment was still the preferred material of rags and paper take some time to replace the oldest - and noble - antagonist, although promised to reduce costs by 20% at least. Which stood already in Spain during the twelfth century and in France in the thirteenth, the use of new material in the book manuscript generalize not before the fourteenth century, but only in that later, in the fifteenth century, will take hold with a certain consistency. The reasons for the slow diffusion of the book are made up with sheets of paper of different kinds. The first is the low resistance of the new support material, which makes the book very valuable especially when it came to important texts that would become the subject of inheritance. The second was related mainly to the refined taste of the wealthy few who could afford the luxury of collecting objects so rare and valuable and that they saw in the book made of sheets of parchment an object of discrimination, almost a symbol showing the status of 'wise'. We must in fact consider that the men of culture who lived between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were primarily men of knowledge and wrote books represent both the basis of this knowledge as the means by which you sent. Unfortunately it was also half long and difficult to produce and then, as already mentioned, expensive.
From a sheep's skin could produce no more than two, sixteen pages, depending on the format. Therefore, to compose a book of 160 sheets (320 pages), depending on the size of the volume, it was necessary to sacrifice 10 to 80 sheep. In addition, copying (by hand) was very slow. It is estimated that a professional scribe was able to copy just two sheets and half a day. So in a year a good clerk could produce five books for two hundred pages. For playback of a thousand volumes was necessary to employ two hundred men in full-time. The system of
alopecia, which was introduced in Bologna and Paris since the thirteenth century, did not improve the situation much. The books were unpacked in the files to be copied (the alopecia, in fact) and files delivered to different copyists. In this way, the time required for the reproduction of a volume only if they could get for those many volumes had been disassembled. However, production time in part, the costs remained high, it is estimated that in 1400 the average cost of a book amounted to seven days to gain a royal notary. Therefore, a person of high social rank could afford during the past twenty years of his career the purchase of 200, 250 volumes to the maximum. In fact, the private collections rarely exceed a few tens of volumes already in that case were considered worthy of admiration. A library that could boast a hundred books appeared even amazing. In the fifteenth century the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Good boasted the possession of no less than 880 volumes. But this is a rare exception. In general, private collections were more modest as those of inveterate bookworms were equally important: Roger Benoîton, former notary Royal became a canon of Clermont, in 1470 compiled with pride the catalog raisonne of 257 books belonging to the his private collection.
The problem of costs remained unchanged until, in mid-1400, not entered the printing with movable type. Its spread, however, was too slow and limited mainly to Germany. It is only since 1470 that the printers are beginning to migrate elsewhere. Moreover, the presses were still quite rare. It is estimated that at the time those outside Germany were only five or six really promising and the only two to Venice, where he was based from 1469 Giovanni da Spira and Paris, thanks to Ulrich Gering Constance who had opened a laboratory together with two companions near the Sorbonne.
Since the last two decades of the fifteenth increased printing works in Europe but were not able to eliminate the copying by hand, which stood until the early sixteenth century. Indeed, the handwritten maintained a clear supremacy over the printed book, recording a proportion in the composition of the libraries in its net benefit for several decades.
But now the adventure of the book with movable type had begun and its spread would soon become unstoppable, continuing until today, the era of multimedia and information technology.
How long will the printed book will maintain the attractiveness and charm - if you want, even romance - linked to the rustle of pages slipping between your fingers?
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