72. Other treatises are in Mrs. Merrifield's Arts
of Painting (1849).
In monasteries where the rule was strict the scribe
wrought at his task for six hours daily.[1] All work was
done by daylight, artificial light not being allowed. Lewis,
a monk of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, in a copy of Jerome's
Commentary on Daniel, speaks of writing when he was
stiff with cold, and of finishing by the light of night what
he could not copy by day.[2] Such diligence was not usual.
[1] Madan, 37.
[2] Pez, Thesaurus, i. xx.
In summer-time work in the cloister may well have
been pleasant; in winter quite the contrary, even when the
cloister and carrells were screened, as at Durham and
Christ Church, Canterbury. Imagine the poor scribe
rubbing his hands to restore the sluggish circulation, and
being at last compelled to forgo his labour because they
were too numbed to write. Cuthbert, the eighth-century
abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow, writes to a correspondent
telling him he had not been able to send all Bede's works
which were required, because the cold weather of the preceding
winter had paralysed the scribes' hands.
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