<g>The Antiquarii</g> in monasteries, were industrious men continually employed in making copies of old books, either for the use of the monastery, or for their own emolument. Du Cange says, that _Antiquarii_ were those scribes who repaired, composed, and re-wrote books, old and obsolete with age, in opposition to the Librarii, who wrote both new and old books. Those of the religious community, who were found dull at the study of letters, were employed in writing and making lines. The monastic scribes were certain persons selected by the <g>Abbot</g>. The senior monks were employed on the church books; the junior monks in letter-writing, and matters which required expedition. Du Cange mentions a singular kind of scribes, called <g>Brodiatores</g>, who wrote books and letters in the manner of embroiderers, so lightly representing the object that it almost escaped the sight. It is to such writers, perhaps, that Petrarch thus alludes: “His writing was not wandering, nor loaded like that of writers of our age, who flatter the eye from afar, and fatigue it when near.”[150]
To the credit of the monastic scribes, “very few instances of bad writing,” says the late Mr. Fosbroke, “have occurred during my researches.” In one manuscript, indeed, there was a shocking scrawl, which he took to be the writing of a nun, the lines being irregular, the letters of various size, and of rude make. Writing, after the Norman invasion, was neglected by the Anglo-Saxons. A neat running epistolary hand is quite modern, except among papers written by lawyers. Hamlet says--
“I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair.”
<g>The Gilbertine</g> rule prohibited the employment of hired writers--more probably, as Mr. Fosbroke thinks, limners. “At St. Alban’s, however, such limners, or writers, had commons from the alms of the monks and cellarer, that they might not be interrupted in their work by going out to buy food.” These had the too frequent drunken habits of artisans, who (‘because every man,’ says Johnson, ‘is discontented with his avocation, from the obligation to pursue it at all times, whatever be the state of his mind’) too often abuse relaxation. Barclay, without knowing that stimulants--however injurious, in a prudential and medical view, and never a good means--prevent, by the providential extraction of good from evil, much hypochondriacal influence and tedium, which might end in madness or suicide, says--