Mediaeval MSS. not written to dictation
Substitutions of this kind, it should be noticed, do not imply that the scribe wrote to dictation. Dictation of MSS. was practised in ancient times, and came again into use when the book-trade revived. But so long as the writing of books remained in the hands of monks, who were not intent upon turning out a large number of copies of the same work, but rather on making a single copy for their own Monastery Library, dictation was unknown. Usually the copy had to be made as quickly as possible from a MS. lent for the purpose from another monastery. In such a case a number of monks might be set to work on it at the same time, if the book was divisible into parts, so that dictation would be out of the question. All that we can learn of the Monastery Scriptorium suggests to us rather a room where a number of copyists sat in silence, each engaged on a different task. Witness the lines of Alcuin, which may have stood on the wall of the Scriptorium of St. Martin's Monastery at Tours: “hic sedeant sacrae scribentes famina legis,nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum.
his interserere caveant sua frivola verba,
frivola ne propter erret et ipsa manus, etc.;
” also the description of the Scriptorium at Touruai: “si claustrum ingredereris, videres plerumque xii monachos juvenes in cathedris sedentes, et super tabulas diligenter et artificiose compositas cum silentio scribentes.” In fact we are told of an elaborate code of signs being in use in the scriptorium to prevent the silence being broken. A monk who wished to be supplied with a pagan work scratched his ear like a dog; if he wished a missal he made the sign of a cross; and so on. These errors of substitution then in mediaeval MSS. are rather mistakes of eye than mistakes of ear.1
