"[1] At Abingdon hired scribes were
sometimes employed, and the rule was for the abbot to
find the food, and the armarius, or librarian, to pay for
the labour.[2] This was commonly done when libraries
were first formed. When Abbot Paul began to collect a
library at St. Albans none of his brethren could write well
enough to suit him, and he was obliged to fill his writing-
room with hired scribes. He supplied them with daily
rations out of the brethren's and cellarer's alms-food; such
provision was always handy, and the scribes were not
retarded by leaving their work.[3] Sometimes scribes were
employed merely to save the monks trouble. At Corbie,
in the fourteenth century, the religious neglected to work
in the writing-room themselves, but allowed benefactors to
engage professional scribes in Paris to swell the number
of books. The Gilbertine order forbade hired scribes
altogether, perhaps wisely.
[1] Maitland, 56.
[2] Chron. mon. de Abingd, ii. 371.
[3] Gesta abb. m. S. Albani, i. 57-58.
The scribe's method of work was simple. First he
took a metal stylus or a pencil and drew perpendicular
lines in the side margins of his parchment, and horizontal
lines at equal distances from top to bottom of the page.
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