This library is of
interest because one hundred and five of the one hundred
and twenty-one books in it were printed. The manuscript
age is well past, and the costliness of books, the chief
obstacle to the dissemination of thought, was soon to give
no cause for remark.
[2] The point is disputed; cf. Einstein, 32; Lyte, 386; Camb.
Lit., iii. 5, 6; Rashdall and Rait, New. Coll., 93; Dr. Sandys
does not mention Vitelli.
CHAPTER X. THE BOOK TRADE
Secular makers of books have plied their trade in
Europe since classic times, but during the early age
of monachism their numbers were very small and
they must have come nigh extinction altogether. In and
after the eleventh century they increased in numbers and
importance; their ranks being recruited not only by
seculars trained in the monastic schools, but by monks
who for various reasons had been ejected from their order.
These traders were divided into several classes: parchment-
makers, scribes, rubrishers or illuminators, bookbinders,
and stationers or booksellers. The stationer usually controlled
the operations of the other craftsmen; he was the
middleman.
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