Perhaps nothing better evokes the spirit of medieval discipline than manuscript production in the monastic houses of Europe. Casting our minds back to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, we can easily imagine rows of scribes sitting in beatific silence, diligently copying out religious texts on parchment as an act of prayer. 

The impetus to spread the word of God in western Europe came largely from monks and nuns, keen to share the good news of Christ’s resurrection. The power of God’s word was magnified by the books through which it was transmitted. For a largely illiterate society, the sight of a book bedecked in jewels opening to reveal shining gold letters on imperial purple backgrounds must have been as much a statement of the glory of God as any reading from the New Testament. 

Bibles, the most sacred of texts, were the most important products of monastic scriptoriums. Other religious works, such as psalters, penitentials and hagiographies, were also produced, along with chronicles, riddles, poems and treatises on maths, science, astronomy and medicine. Scribal activity, however, was just a small part of the