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An inquiry into the nature and form of the books of the ancients
An inquiry into the nature and form of the books of the ancients Author:John Hannett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 43 CHAPTER III. MONASTIC AND OTHER BINDINGS UP TO THE INVENTION OP PRINTING. For upwards of two thousand years it has been shown in the preceding chapte... more »r that the Art of Bookbinding, by means of attaching the leaves to the back and affixing boards to the sides, has been practised, the addition of embellishment following in its train as a matter of taste, if not of necessity. Having, as we trust satisfactorily, established these facts, it will now be necessary to pass to the consideration of the subject as connected with the monastic institutions of Europe, when, from the annals of religious communities, and the appearance of bindings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we shall not only be able to show what was the state of the art at that time ; but, reasoning from what we find it then to be, confirm what has been advanced as to the knowledge of it possessed by the ancients. It will be first necessary to advert to the state of literature and scarcity of books in this and other countries of Europe in early times, being partly illustrative of the progress of the art, connected as the making and binding of books will now be found to be. Before the invention of paper from linen, books were so scarce and dear, as to be beyond the reach of all but the rich, and it may reasonably be computed that the price of books was a hundred fold their present value. Though the materials of which they were made had been as cheap and as plentiful as paper is at present, the labour of multiplying copies in manuscript would always have kept them comparatively scanty. Hence learning was almost exclusively confined to people of rank. The papyrus was in most general use; but when the Saracens conquered Egypt in the seventh century it could no longer be procured. Parchment, the only sub...« less