Charles the Great authorised the Abbot of St. Bertin to
enjoy hunting rights so that the monks could get skins for
binding. In mid-ninth century, Geoffroi Martel, Count of
Anjou, commanded that the tithe of the roeskins captured
in the island of Oleron should be used to bind the books in
an abbey of his foundation. Few monastic bindings have
been preserved, because many great collectors have had
their manuscripts rebound. Several examples of Winchester
work remain. Mr. Yates Thompson has a mid-twelfth
century manuscript bound in the monastic style, the leather
being stamped with cold irons of many curious rectangular
shapes. The manuscript of the Winton Domesday has a
binding with stamps exactly like those on Mr. Thompson's
book. "At Durham in the last half of the twelfth century
there was an equally important school of binding, with
some one hundred and fourteen different stamps. The
binding for Hugh Pudsey's Bible has nearly five hundred
impressions."[1] In Pembroke College library an excellent
specimen of twelfth century stamped binding remains on
MS. 147. Such stamps were small, and frequently of
geometrical or floral design, always rudimentary; but
animals of the quaintest form--grotesque birds and dragons
--were also introduced.
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