5. CHAPTER V.
REVIVAL OF INK.
THE DISAPPEARANCE AND PRESERVATION OF INK WRITINGS, AS ESTIMATED BY
LA CROIX—COMMENTS OF OTHER WRITERS—DE VINNE'S INTERESTING EXPLANATIONS
OF THE STATUS QUO OF MANUSCRIPT WRITINGS DURING THE DARK AGES WHICH
PRECEDED THE INVENTION OF PRINTING—PRICES PAID FOR BOOKS IN ANCIENT
TIMES—LIMITATIONS OF HANDWRITING AND HANDWRITING MATERIALS AT THE
BEGINNING OF THE FIFTH CENTURY—WHO CONTROLLED THE RECORDS ABOUT
THEM—INVENTION OF THE QUILL PEN—THE CAUSE OF INCREASED FLUIDITY OF
INKS—ORIGIN OF THE SECRETA—CHARACTER OF INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM
THEM—IMPROVEMENT OF BLACK INKS IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY AND EMPLOYMENT OF
POMEGRANITE INK.
LA CROIX' preface to his "Science and Literature of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," refers to the
Dark Ages:
"In the beginning of the Middle Ages, at the
commencement of the fifth century, the Barbarians
made an inroad upon the old world; their renewed
invasions crushed out, in the course of a few years,
the Greek and Roman civilization; and everywhere
darkness succeeded to light. The religion of Jesus
Christ was alone capable of resisting this barbarian
invasion, and science and literature, together with
the arts, disappeared from the face of the earth,
taking refuge in the churches and monasteries. It
was there that they were preserved as a sacred deposit,
and it was thence that they emerged when
Christianity had renovated pagan society. But
centuries and centuries elapsed before the sum of
human knowledge was equal to what it had been at
the fall of the Roman empire. A new society,
moreover, was needed for the new efforts of human
intelligence as it resumed its rights. Schools and
universities were founded under the auspices of the
clergy and of the religious corporations, and thus
science and literature were enabled to emerge from
their tombs. Europe, amidst the tumultuous conflicts
of the policy which made and unmade kingdoms,
witnessed a general revival of the scholastic
zeal; poets, orators, novelists, and writers increased
in numbers and grew in favour; savants, philosophers,
chemists and alchemists, mathematicians
and astronomers, travellers and naturalists, were
awakened, so to speak, by the life-giving breath of
the Middle Ages; and great scientific discoveries
and admirable works on every imaginable subject
showed that the genius of modern society was not
a whit inferior to that of antiquity. Printing, was
invented, and with that brilliant discovery, the Middle
Ages, which had accomplished their work of
social renovation, made way for the Renaissance,
which scattered abroad in profusion the prolific and
brilliant creations of Art, Science, and Literature."
This author to some extent discredits himself, however,
p. 455, where he remarks:
"Long before the invasions of the Barbarians
the histories written by Greek and Latin authors
concerning the annals of the ancient peoples had
been falling into disfavor. Even the best of them
were little read, for the Christians felt but slight
interest in these pagan narratives, and that is why
works relating to the history of antiquity were already
so scarce."
Another authority writing on the same subject discusses
it from a different standpoint, remarking:
"As in the middle ages invention busied itself with
instruments of torture, and as in our days it is taken up almost as much
with the destructive engines of war as with the productive arts of
peace, so in those early ages it applied itself to the fabrication of
idols, to the mechanism and theatrical contrivances for mysteries and
religious ceremonies. There was then no desire to communicate
discoveries, science was a sort of freemasonry, and silence was
effectually secured by priestly anathemas; men of science were as
jealous of one another as they were of all other classes of society. If
we wish to form a clear picture of this earliest stage of civilization,
an age which represents at once the
naiveté of childhood
and the suspicious reticence of senility, we must turn our eyes to the
priest, on the one hand, claiming as his own all art and science, and
commanding respect by his contemptuous silence; and, on the other hand,
to the mechanic plying the loom, extracting the Tyrian dye, practising
chemistry, though ignorant of its very name, despised and oppressed, and
only tolerated when he furnished Religion with her trappings or War with
arms. Thus the growth of chemistry was slow, and by reason of its
backwardness it was longer than any other art in ridding itself of the
leading-strings of magic and astrology. Practical discoveries must have
been made many times without science acquiring thereby any new fact. For
to prevent a new discovery from being lost there must be such a
combination of favorable circumstances as was rare in that age and for
many succeeding ages. There must be publicity, and publicity is of quite
recent growth; the application of the discovery must be not only
possible but obvious, as satisfying some want. But wants are only felt
as civilization progresses. Nor is that all; for a practical discovery
to become a scientific fact it must serve to demonstrate the error
of one hypothesis, and to suggest a new one, better fitted for the
synthesis of existing facts. But (some) old beliefs are proverbially
obstinate and virulent in their opposition to newer and truer theories
which are destined to eject and replace them. To sum up, even in our own
day, chemistry rests on a less sound basis than either physics, which
had the advantage of originating as late as the 17th century, or
astronomy, which dates from the time when the Chaldean shepherd had
sufficiently provided for his daily wants to find leisure for gazing
into the starry Heavens."
The observations of a still earlier commentator are of
the same general nature. He says:
"In the first ages of Christianity, when the fathers of the
Church, the Jews, and the Heathen philosophers were so warmly engaged in
controversy, there is reason to believe that pious frauds were not
uncommon: and that when one party suspected forgeries, instead of an
attempt at confutation, which might have been difficult, they had
recourse perhaps to a countermine: and either invented altogether, or
eked out some obscure traditional scraps by the embellishments of fancy.
When we consider, amongst many literary impositions of later times, that
Psalmanazar's history of Formosa was, even in this enlightened age and
country (England, about 1735), considered by our most learned men as
unquestionably authentic, till the confession of the author discovered
the secret, I think it is not difficult to conceive how forgeries of
remote events, before the invention of printing and the general
diffusion of knowledge might gain an authority, and especially with the
zealous, hardly inferior to that of the most genuine history."
De Vinne, however, in his "Invention of Printing,"
New York, 1878, best explains the status quo of those
times, relative not only to book (MSS.) making, and
methods of circulation, but the causes which led up to
their eventual disappearance and the literary darkness
which ensued. His remarks are so pertinent
that they are quoted at length:
"The civilization of ancient Rome did not require printing. If
all the processes of typography had been revealed to its scholars the
art would not have been used. The wants of readers and writers were
abundantly supplied by the pen. Papyrus paper was cheap, and scribes
were numerous; Rome had more booksellers than it needed, and books were
made faster than they could be sold. The professional scribes were
educated slaves, who, fed and clothed at nominal expense, and organized
under the direction of wealthy publishers, were made so efficient in the
production of books, that typography, in an open competition, could have
offered few advantages.
"Our knowledge of the Roman organization of labor in the field
of bookmaking is not as precise as could be wished; but the frequent
notices of books, copyists and publishers, made by many authors during
the first century, teach us that books were plentiful. Horace, the
elegant and fastidious man of letters, complained that his books were
too common, and that they were sometimes found in the hands of vulgar
snobs for whose entertainment they were not written. Martial, the jovial
man of the world, boasted that his books of stinging epigrams were to be
found in everybody's hands or pockets. Books were read not only in the
libraries, but at the baths, in the porticoes of houses, at private
dinners and in mixed assemblies. The business of bookmaking was
practised by too many people, and some were incompetent. Lucian, who had
a keen perception of pretense in every form, ridicules the publishers as
ignoramuses. Strabo, who probably wrote illegibly, says that the books
of booksellers were incorrect.
"The price of books made by slave labor was
necessarily low. Martial says that his first book of epigrams was sold
in plain binding for six sesterces, about twenty-four cents of American
money; the same book in sumptuous binding was valued at five denarii,
about eighty cents. He subsequently complained that his thirteenth book
was sold for only four sesterces, about sixteen cents. He frankly admits
that half of this sum was profit, but intimates, somewhat ungraciously,
that the publisher Tryphon gave him too small a share. Of the merits of
this old disagreement between the author and publisher we have not
enough of facts to justify an opinion. We learn that some publishers,
like Tryphon and the brothers Sosii, acquired wealth, but there are many
indications that publishing was then, as it is now, one of the most
speculative kinds of business. One writer chuckles over the unkind fate
that sent so many of the unsold books of rival authors from the
warehouses of the publisher, to the shops of grocers and bakers, where
they were used to wrap up pastry and spices; another writer says that
the unsold stock of a bookseller was sometimes bought by butchers and
trunk makers.
"The Romans not only had plenty of books but they had a
manuscript daily newspaper, the Acta Diurna, which seems to have
been a record of the proceedings of the senate. We do not know how it
was written, nor how it was published, but it was frequently mentioned
by contemporary writers as the regular official medium for transmitting
intelligence. It was sent to subscribers in distant cities, and was,
sometimes, read to an assembled army. Cicero mentions the Acta as
a sheet in which he expected to find the city news and gossip about
marriages and divorces.
"With the decline of power in the Roman empire came the decline
of literature throughout the world. In the sixth century the business of
bookmaking had fallen into hopeless decay. The books that had been
written were seldom read, and the number of readers diminished with
every succeeding generation. Ignorance pervaded in all ranks of
society. The Emperor Justin I, who reigned between the years 518 and
527, could not write, and was obliged to sign state papers with the form
of stencil plate that had been recommended by Quintilian. Respect for
literature was dead. In the year, 476, Zeno, the Isaurian, burned
120,000 volumes in the city of Constantinople. During the year 640,
Amrou, the Saracen, fed the baths of Alexandria for six months with the
500,000 books that had been accumulating for centuries in its famous
library of the Serapion. Yet books were so scarce in Rome at the close
of the seventh century that Pope Martin requested one of his bishops to
supply them, if possible, from Germany. The ignorance of ecclesiastics
in high station was alarming. During this century, and for centuries
afterward, there were many bishops and archbishops of the church who
could not sign their names. It was asserted at a council of the church
held in the year 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in
Rome itself who knew the first elements of letters. Hallam says, `To sum
up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman of any
rank to know bow to sign his name.' He repeats the statements that
Charlemagne could not write, and Frederic Barbarossa could not read.
John, king of Bohemia, and Philip, the Hardy, king of France, were
ignorant of both accomplishments. The graces of literature were
tolerated only in the ranks of the clergy; the layman who preferred
letters to arms was regarded as a man of mean spirit. When the
Crusaders took Constantinople, in 1204, they exposed to public ridicule
the pens and inkstands that they found in the conquered city as the
ignoble arms of a contemptible race of students.
"During this period of intellectual darkness, which
lasted from the fifth until the fifteenth century, a period sometimes
described, and not improperly, as the dark ages, there was no need for
any improvement in the old method of making books. The world was not
then ready for typography. The invention waited for readers more than
it did for types; the multitude of book buyers upon which its success
depended had to be created. Books were needed as well as readers. The
treatises of the old Roman sophists and rhetoricians, the dialectics of
Aristotle and the schoolmen, and the commentaries on ecclesiastical law
of the fathers of the church, were the works which engrossed the
attention of men of letters for many centuries before the invention of
typography. Useful as these books may have been to the small class of
readers for whose benefit they were written, they were of no use to a
people who needed the elements of knowledge."
In the more ancient times, however, when MSS. books
(rolls) were not quite so plentiful there was seemingly
no difficulty in obtaining large sums for them.
Aristotle, died B. C. 322, paid for a few books of
Leusippus, the philosopher, three Attick talents, which
is about $3,000. Ptolemy Philadelphus is said to have
given the Athenians fifteen talents, an exemption from
tribute and a large supply of provisions for the MSS.
of Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides written by
themselves.
Arbuthnot, discussing this subject, remarks that Cicero's
head, "which should justly come into the account
of Eloquence brought twenty-five Myriads of
Drachms, which is the equivalent of $40,000. Also,
"the prices of the magical books mentioned to be
burnt in the Acts of the Apostles is five. Myriads of
Pieces of Silver or Drachms."
Picolimini relates that the equivalent of eighty
golden crowns was demanded for a small part of the
works of Plutarch.
If we are to believe any of the accounts, the environment
of the art of handwriting and handwriting
materials at the beginning of the fifth century had
contracted within a small compass, due principally to
the general ignorance of the times.
As practiced it was pretty much under the control
of the different religious denominations and the information
obtainable about inks from these sources
is but fragmentary. What has come down to us of
this particular era is mostly found on the old written
Hebrew relics, showing that they at least had made
no innovations in respect to the use of their ritualistic
deyó.
The invention of the quill pen in the sixth century
permitted a degree of latitude in writing never before
known, the inks were made thinner and necessarily
were less durable in character. Greater attention was
given to the study and practice of medicine and
alchemy which were limited to the walls of the
cloister and secret places. The monk physicians endeavored
by oral instructions and later by written
ones to communicate their ink-making methods not
only of the black and colored, but of secret or sympathetic
inks, to their younger brethren, that they might
thus be perpetuated. All the traditional and practical
knowledge they possessed was condensed into manuscript
forms; additions from other hands which included
numerous chemical receipts for dyeing caused
them to multiply; so that as occasion required from
time to time, they were bound up together booklike
and then circulated among favored secular individuals,
under the name of "Secreta."
The more remote of such treatises which have come
down to us seem to indicate the trend of the researches
respecting what must have been in those times
unsatisfactory inks. Scattered through them appear a
variety of formulas which specify pyrites (a combination
of sulphur and metal), metals, stones and other
minerals, soot, (blue) vitriol, calxes (lime or chalk),
dye-woods, berries, plants, and animal colors, some of
which if made into ink could only have been used
with disastrous results, when permanency is considered.
The black ink formulas of the eighth century are but few, and
show marked improvement in respect to the constituents they call for,
indicating that many of those of earlier times had been tried and found
wanting. One in particular is worthy of notice as it names (blue)
vitriol, yeast, the lees (dregs) of wine and the rind of the
pomegranate apple, which if commingled together would give results not
altogether unlike the characteristic phenomena of "gall" ink.
Confirmation of the employment of such an ink on a document of the reign
of Charlemegne in the beginning of the ninth century on yellow-brown
Esparto (a Spanish rush) paper, is still preserved. Specimens of
"pomegranate" ink, to which lampblack and other pigments had been added
of varying degrees of blackness, on MSS., but lessening in number as
late as the fourteenth century, are still extant in the British Museum
and other public libraries.