Extreme Materialist Readings of Medieval Books
Obermann Seminar, June, 2008
Medieval Bookbinding, Gary Frost
draft, 06.21.08, footnotes not shown

“It cannot be persuasively argued that early Christianity “invented” the codex, nor that Christians were the first to use it for something more than notes. The evidence shows only that Christians adopted the codex in preference to the roll as a medium for literature sooner and more decisively than their contemporaries and so promoted its popularity. That they did so says something important about the uses and functions of early Christian writings.” Harry Y. Gamble

A Premise

The euphemism for human divinity; “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”, (John 1:14), also perfectly defines the nature of the codex book. That the advent of the two innovations, of concept and medium, are coincident in early Christian history, tell us as much about the “situations of their origin” (of the gospels) as about their “subject”. One certainty is that composers of the gospels could read and write and had folded exemplars in hand. Could the template of the exemplar codex have acted in accord with the abstraction of a human manifestation of God?

Such a simple interplay of objects and ideas does not explain the underlying paradox of conveying concepts in physical objects. But it is a fact that copyists and book makers of the middle ages conveyed to us concepts of Antiquity and of their own times using a refined communication device. If our own digital culture is to be conveyed forward we will also need such a legible, impartial, efficient, dependable and self-authenticating device. For reliable transmission of knowledge across time and cultures, which technology, that of the medieval book or that of computer media, is more advanced?

So let our discussion pose many questions about the materialist nature of medieval bookbindings. Let us ask; what do they exemplify, what do they look and feel like, how do they work, how do they endure and how are they and their material qualities are studied? Considering these questions alone will not encompass materialist reading of medieval bookbindings, but it will be a start.

What do they exemplify?

Awash in an environment of manufactured stuff and the wasteland if its disposal, we are poorly situated to apply aesthetic to the handmade goods of the medieval world. The first exercise in materialist philology will be to vaporize our inclinations to judge good, better, and best parchment. Instead we should look to a craft transmission, labor time and harvest risk valuations.
Another invisible assimilation disturbs our sense of the materiality of the book. This is our presumption that anything, old or new, is a master for its own photo reproduction. Beginning with technologies of color printing and copying on paper all extended with electronic transmission we assume that every original book is the parent of its own simulation. This assumption could not exist prior to the advent of such means of reproduction.

If the medieval manuscript, in context, could not be imagined as its own photo master then the assumption that it could be an exemplar was materially different and the material status of the exemplar was also safe in a state its own self-reference. In the context of a medieval era every thing in material culture acted as an exemplar. Exemplars were not merely the text of a book but the physical presence as well.
There is a final circumstance relevant to the interpretation of materialist qualities of the book. Simply put; will screen delivery supercede print for academic publication? Screen advocates anticipate a rapture when we will leave bodies of physical media and connect directly to conceptual works. Materialist qualities disappear. An inflected language of dead trees, obsolescence and inconvenience disparages print. There is a rant against tangible library collections. There is an assumption that screen simulation of print is an equivalent, fungible substitute. Generally there is a contention that physical media and their materialist qualities are dispensable.

What do they look and feel like?

We will be talking about the qualities and actions of medieval bookbinding and we will discuss a particular type of medieval bookbinding with wooden boards in the covers. There are other kinds of covers of medieval bookbindings, but wooden boards were typical and they are predominant among the book bindings that survive from that era. As we will see, wood was also well adapted to bind books as they became bigger, thicker, heavier and squarer.
The classical anatomy of wooden boarded bookbinding is nicely confined to the middle ages . Earlier book covers of late Antiquity are associated with cartonnage of papyrus while book covers by the end of the wooden board era, beginning mid 16th century, are associated with pasteboard made from paper sheets. The wooden board structure absorbed transitions from papyrus to parchment and from parchment to paper and the transition from manuscript to print.
The wooden boards of medieval bookbindings were skillfully hewn from the quarter cuts of fine beech and oak timber. These wooden boards were covered in materials of exquisite quality including fine textiles, supple and snowy colored tawed skins or filigree metalwork with inset crystal and jewels. We can add to this the elaborate embroidery of endbands, ribbon markers and knotted index tabs and, perhaps, a velvet or damask chemise. And everyone remarks on the girdle book. All these embellishments were multiple coverings over the bare wood.
A particular sewing method is also associated with the wooden board book cover of the middle ages. Here another divide occurred at the beginning of the ninth century between earlier codex sewing using thread alone and a new practice of sewing gatherings onto supporting bands. While unsupported, thread only, sewing persisted in Byzantium, in the Eastern Church and in the Islamic world, the Western continental medieval binding adopted the method of sewing onto supports of stout flax cords or thick skin thongs and lacing these supports into strong wooden cover boards.
All this extra construction was needed. Medieval books were larger, thicker and heavier than the portable, traveling papyrus codices of late Antiquity. They frequently gathered numerous works by a single author or extensive collections of commentary, scripture or exposition and they were secured in churches and monastic libraries as service or reference volumes where they had a fixed location on lecterns, in chests or cabinets. Many were venerated liturgical objects that became goals of pilgramage.
A more square shaped format of medieval books is another distinguishing feature. Papyrus of Antiquity was sold in rolls made from lap pasted sheets. When preparing sheets for a codex book the roll was cut into squares and these were folded to produce a half square. This economical cut-out was also in accord with the grain-neutral handle of the papyrus thatch. By contrast, the vellum books of the middle ages were based on the quadrants of animal skins which yield a more square shaped folded page. To us both formats seem strange; the elongated rectangle of the papyrus page and the squat shape of the medieval page. In part this is because we are more familiar with later printed books which were imposed from the size of sheets optimized by the paper mold.
So we can say that medieval bookbindings look like reliquaries or microcosms of the past. Crafts of needle work and weaving, metal work, skin curing and wood working provide their feel. While most medieval books survive only in later rebindings, the few still in their original bindings convey the expanse and technique of the expert crafts of the Western middle ages.

How do they work?

The motion derived from leverage of the board transmitted through the cover to the text produces a gymnastic action of the medieval codex. Variation of sewing supports, stitch patterns, lacing paths and adhered panel linings and other structural features determine the durability, efficiency and haptic influence of this transmission of board leverage.
While control of transmission of board leverage is apparent from the beginning and is managed with different success across the span of wooden board work, one culmination of improved control is a shoulder seated board. The ideal of the shoulder seated board applying a ìdrawn onî shape to the text back deserves recognition on its own. A principle, following from the sewing patterns and the accumulated thread swelling, encompasses three interlocking vectors. As swelling increases the round of the back deepens, the angle of the shoulder to the page plane increases while the height of the shoulder from the seat to the endpaper fold, shortens. As swelling decreases the convex of the back flattens, the angle of the shoulder to the page plane diminishes but the length of the shoulder from seat to endpaper fold increases. (see illustration) The demonstration of these interlocking vectors is the continuous gradation of parabolas that accommodates each distinctive sewing of each book.
The medieval wooden board binding has relatively heavy sewing supports and relatively heavy covering skins which cause the board to move off the shoulder on opening. This action must be accommodated and controlled through effective adhesion of the panel linings. These back linings, as well as any endleaf hinging, were put down on the inside of the board, and these are primary actors in the opening motion. Their materials, fit and their adhesion need close consideration. The lining tongues must be put down with only a slightly opened board so that the leverage of the board begins transmission in the first few degrees of opening and continues to open the book fully without swinging away further than ninety degrees.
In transmission of the leverage of closing the laced sewing supports, laced endband cores and covering skin are main actors. Here the last few degrees of motion are critical. At the end of the closing motion great compressive force can be applied via the outer bevel. This sudden, clamping action drives the inner bevel against the shoulder and drives the board against the text, expelling air from the leaves, locking up the shape of the back and transforming the whole book into a solid geometry. At that moment, with the covers held closed, the clasps are tripped into place.
The elegant parabola of the shape of the book back induced by the closing leverage of the wooden boards is among the most wonderful achievements of the art of the book. It is complimented by a graceful arching of the book on opening. Miraculously such a dynamic mobility conveys directly from the handling of a book by the medieval reader to a similar handling today by a modern scholar. The manipulation and mystery of both scenes is witnessed by the same medieval book binding.

Why do they endure?

The bound format is an unnatural state for a medieval manuscript in the same way that a reliquarium is an unnatural state for a relic. Each medieval binding was made for a different reason and the initial binding represented a separate decision that may not have occurred in the period of the production of the manuscript. That said, the constructed medieval book is a timeless composite of exceptionally durable and permanent materials. While all the components are bio-degradable, in the absence of dampness or outright abuse, the entire book is admirably stable. Alkaline state is characteristic of both tawed skin and parchment, but surviving medieval books have not survived by chemical buffering alone.
Targeting and purging of libraries occurs throughout history and into the present while the overall devastation of natural disaster is a constant. Another layer of loss is rebinding and the revamping of medieval bookbindings to reflect decorative styles of a later period. Each surviving medieval bookbinding then also represents an improbable sequence of protective decisions taken across dozens of generations. This repeated commitment could have been broken by a single lapse so the string of attentive and fortuitous preservation actions is the real reason that medieval bookbindings have lasted so long.

How are studied?

Bindings subsequent to the initial binding of a manuscript have always caused damage to evidence from the period of production including disruptive association of disparate manuscript works and outright damage to physical pages and delicate images. The damage is notorious both to the object and to its study. It can consist of re-sewing, fold gluing, hammer rounding and backing, edge trimming and cropping, over pressing, inflexible back linings and, the final insult, a fashionable, ornamental new cover.
Three words; kerf, edge and crop all prompt field observations of the disturbed or intact physical structure of a medieval manuscript. These are the quick keys that indicate the presence or absence of an initial binding and its possible relation to the period of production of the manuscript. Kerf refers to the evidence of previous sewing stations and their patterns, edge refers to the clues of edge trimmings and re-trimmings and crop refers to evidence of missing annotation and margin.

Conclusion

Little anxiety is expressed over the continuing role of originals in the context of digital delivery. Likewise, little anxiety is expressed as print collections recede in status both for leisure and research reading. Only passing nostalgia for the book is typically considered, without serious thought given for any attributes of print that cannot be supplanted by on-line reading. False choices of either/or obscure the promise of an integrated merge of screen and print reading and research. What can a surviving medieval book possibly convey to us in todayís world of reading from the screen?
Perhaps the medieval book is even more important in the age of Google and print books are more important in a era of reading from the screen. The Google’s digitization of books is efficient because the same encodement that enables their rendering to the screen also enables their indexing. Physical books are notoriously not self indexing, but they are self-authenticating. This means that they are immutable or unchanging, and the encompass of their content is self-confirming. With a Google search you never know what you are missing. Physical books are also self-authenticating in the sense that they are artifacts or witnesses from the period of their production. Don’t look for any such tangibility from screen simulations.

The medieval book exemplifies the reliable transmission of knowledge across time and cultures. Popular commentary warns that we may be entering a ìdigital dark agesî where computer media fails to convey forward massive amounts of new knowledge. Certainly it is disturbing that so many resources are now dependent on spinning discs and power grids. There is nothing darker than a dark screen.
If medieval craftspeople could achieve the production of the medieval book, can we accomplish as much for reliable transmission using our own technologies? Can on-line resources be conveyed to distant future readers? At present, the preservation of digital resources and their authentication remains a major challenge. A sense of disconnect will also persist in a context of study of Medieval manuscripts via surrogates. However, study of the medieval book provides provocation for younger students if they can realize a role of material culture beyond consumerist addictions including addiction to screen based reading. Possibly such addictions could provoke a glimmer of counter perspective and recovery.

Here then is a lesson we can take from medieval culture. They lived in a time when society was largely illiterate and most transactions and communications were oral or spoken. To convey knowledge forward and assure its future readability over the long term they used a medium that was eye readable, interfaced by the reader alone, and physically accessed by direct manipulation and reproduced by physical recreation. This paradox of conveyance of conceptual works by physical objects was, somehow, better understood then than it is now. We can learn from this medieval insight how we can convey our own cosmographies from a digital culture.