How were books produced in the Middle Ages?

The production of a book in the Middle Ages was far more time-consuming and costly than it is today, and a whole series of specialized craftsmen were needed in the so-called scriptories, where books were made, before a codex could be completed.

The first thing to do was to obtain the necessary material for writing ; this task was taken over by the papermakers or parchment workers. For the parchment commonly used, the skin of farm animals such as goats, sheep or calves was needed, which was first scraped off and then treated with a lye solution. After the parchment had dried using a stenter frame, it withstood almost all exposure to moisture or heat. However, the cumbersome manufacturing process in the truest sense of the word also had its price, so that the raw material parchment was handled very carefully. Even damage such as holes was circumscribed or sewn, and some sheets were even written on several times, with the writing being erased with a sharp blade. Such documents are called palimpsests.

Paper made from rags in paper mills has also been used in writing since the 13th century. Thus, the production was much cheaper, but at the same time paper did not have the quality and value of parchment by far.

The materials used for writing, such as paints or ink, were also made by hand. However, before a text was actually written down, the scribes drafted the page layout on a wax tablet. The writing process itself was often a work-sharing process: while the text itself was often written by copyists, illuminators and illuminators decorated the pages, while the rubricator had the task of highlighting with red ink.

The finished parchment pages were then glued and bound by bookbinders, which required materials such as wood and leather for the book covers. In addition, the codex bindings could be decorated with metal fittings or other decorative elements such as precious stones. A specialist was also needed for this.

Before the actual binding, however, the described sheets first had to be folded. After folding, the sheets had to be trimmed, placed one inside the other and sewn by the booklet to create the actual book block.

Medieval codices have different formats depending on the type of folding, so we know the simply folded folio, in which two leaves, i.e. four pages, are made from a sheet of parchment. However, the sheets could also be folded twice or even three times. Accordingly, the quart designates a folding process in which four leaves or even eight leaves are created from the original slur. The characters 4° and 8° have also become established for the different formats.