The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [49]
Pressure for access to information also came from the growing number of universities and grammar and church schools, whose students were entering an increasingly commercial world. The kings and princes of Europe also needed ever-larger bureaucracies to handle the increasing responsibilities devolving on them as the feudal system gave way to centralised, tax-collecting monarchies. In fairs all over Europe, from the fourteenth century on, international trade had been stimulated by the use of Arab mathematics which made documenting easier than with the old-fashioned abacus and the Roman numerals of earlier times.
Tally sticks used by accountants in the thirteenth century. Notches on different sides and positions indicated different currency denominations. The stick was split: the larger piece acted as a receipt and the small segment (bottom) was kept as a copy.
Early paper-making used the power of a waterwheel to trip hammers which pounded linen rag to pulp (bottom right). The pulp was shaped into squares in trays while wet, then pressed and hung to dry in sheets.
The greatest pressure of all for literacy, however, was caused by the sudden availability of paper. Originally a Chinese invention, paper had been discovered by the Arabs when they overran Samarkand in the eighth century. Captured workmen had been sent to Samarkand from China to set up a paper-making factory. By the fourteenth century new water-powered technology was pounding linen rags as fast as they could be collected by the rag and bone man and turning them into cheap, durable paper. In Bologna at the end of the fourteenth century the price of paper had dropped by 400 per cent. It was much cheaper than parchment, though there was still some opposition to its use. ‘Parchment lasts a thousand years,’ they said. ‘How long will paper exist?’
As the paper mills spread, so too did the spirit of religious reform. The Church had long been criticised for simony and equivocal practices, and in the late Middle Ages came the birth of a reforming movement led by the Brothers of the Common Life who preached a simpler, purer form of Christianity. Their devotio moderna attracted many of the scholars of the day, including eminent men such as Erasmus. Above all their schools and others like them began to turn out relatively large numbers of literate clerics. These men rapidly found employment in the scriptoria, or writing shops, which were springing up all over the Continent to meet the demand for documentation from traders and governments, as well as from the lawyers and notaries who formed the single largest and fastest-growing professional body in Europe.
The earliest known illustration of spectacles, in an Italian painting from 1352. The cities of Florence and Pistoia both claim the invention as their own.
The best known scriptorium was in Florence. It was run by a man called Vespasiano da Bisticci, one of the new breed of ‘stationers’, so called because they had stopped being itinerant paper-sellers and had set up shop. At one time Bisticci may have employed as many as fifty copyists who were paid piece-rates for copying at home. He commissioned translators to bring in new texts, sent out his book list, lent texts on approval, and encouraged aspiring writers to have their finished works copied.
As the price of paper continued to fall, the development of eye-glasses intensified the pressure for literacy. Glasses had first appeared in the early fourteenth century, and a hundred years later they were generally available. Their use lengthened the working life of copyist and reader alike. Demand for texts increased.
But the apparently insoluble