account as literature, it is exceedingly interesting as a record of
centuries of industry in the face of such difficulties that to workers of
a later period might have seemed insurmountable.

A further fact worthy of mention is that book production was from the art
point of view fully abreast of the other arts during the period, as must
be apparent to any one who examines the collections in some of the
libraries of Europe. Much of this beauty was wrought for the love of the
art itself. In the earlier centuries religious institutions absorbed
nearly all the social intellectual movements as well as the possession of
material riches and land. Kings and princes were occupied with distant
wars which impoverished them and deprived literature and art of that
patronage accorded to it in later times. There is occasional mention,
however, of wealthy laymen, whose religious zeal induced them to give
large sums of money for the copying and ornamentation of books; and there
were in the abbeys and convents lay brothers whose fervent spirits,
burning with poetical imagination, sought in these monastic retreats and
the labor of writing, redemption from their past sins. These men of faith
were happy to consecrate their whole existence to the ornamentation of a
single sacred book, dedicated to the community, which gave them in
exchange the necessaries of life.

The labor of transcribing was held, in the monasteries, to be a full
equivalent of manual labor in the field. The rule of St. Ferreol, written
in the sixth century, says that, "He who does not turn up the earth with
the plough ought to write the parchment with his fingers."

Mention has been made of the difficulties under which books were
produced; and this is a matter which we who enjoy the conveniences of
modern writing and printing can little understand. The hardships of the
_scriptorium_ were greatest, of course, in winter. There were no fires in
the often damp and ill-lighted cells, and the cold in some of the parts
of Europe where books were produced must have been very severe.
Parchment, the material generally used for writing upon after the
seventh century, was at some periods so scarce that copyists were
compelled to resort to the expedient of effacing the writing on old and
less esteemed manuscripts.[5] The form of writing was stiff and regular
and therefore exceedingly slow and irksome.

In some of the monasteries the _scriptorium_ was at least at a later
period, co