Medieval monk in the painting
If there were no medieval monks and copyists, many important ancient works would not have survived to our times. Copyist’s work efficiency was 3-6 cards in quarto per day – in Quarto in letterpress it is a double-folded sheet of paper that consists of four cards and eight pages. It took a year to rewrite, for example, the “Bible”. A copyist could rewrite 40 works in his lifetime.
It is noteworthy, however, that copyists rewritten works which they believed deserved it and were the most useful works of classical literature.
Sources
- William Birney, Did the monks preserve the latin classics?
- Victoria Corwin, Medieval Book Production and Monastic Life
