Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/701

 SCRIPTORIUM

635

SCRIPTURE

their perverse interpretations by means of which they had gradually laid a most heavy burden upon the peo- ple. They are also rebuked by Christ because of the undue importance ascribed by them to the "tradi- tions of the elders".

Their teaching on this point was that Moses him- self had dehvered to Israel an oral as well as a written Law. This oral Law, according to their theory, had come down in an authentic form through the Proph- ets to Esdras, the first and greatest of the scribes, and rested practically on the same Divine authority as the written Word. Through this conception of an oral law to which all their traditional customs and inter- pretations, however recent, were referred, the scribes were led into many departures from the spirit of the written Law (Mark, vii, 13), and even with regard to the latter their teaching was characterized by a slavish literalism. The ever-accumulating mass of legal traditions and legal decisions was designated by the name Halaka (the way). Togetherwith the writ- ten precepts it constituted the perfect rule of conduct which every Jew should follow. But while the scribes devoted their chief attention to the Law, both writ- ten and oral, they also elaborated in fantastic and ar- bitrary fashion, teachings of an edifying character from the historical and didactic contents of the Old Testament. These homiletic teachings were called Hagada, and embraced doctrinal and practical ad- monitions mingled with illustrative parables and legends.

GiooT, Outlincx of New Testament [lidonj (New York, 1902), 81

sq- James F. Driscoli,.

Scriptorium, commonly a large room set apart in a monastery for the use of the scribes or copyists of the community. When no special room was de- voted to this purpose, separate little cells or studies called "carrels" were usually made in the cloister, each scribe having a window and desk to himself. Of this arrangement the cloister of St. Peter's, Gloucester, now Gloucester Cathedral, supplies the most perfect examjile (see Cloister). The scrip- torium was under the care of the precentor or else of one of his assistants called the armarius, whose duty it was to provide all the requisites needed by the scribes, such as desks, ink, parchment, pens, pen- knives, i)uiuic('-stn(' for smoothing down the sur- face of the ])archin('nt, awls to make the guiding marks for ruling lines, reading-frames for the books to be copied, (tc. Most of those were manufactured on the premises: thus at Westminster the ink was made by the precentor himself, and he had to do it in the tailor's shop. The rules of the scriptorium varied in different monasteries, but artificial light was forbidden for fear of injury to the manuscripts, and silence was always enforced. As a general rule those of the monks who possessed skill as writers made this their chief, if not their sole active work. An anonymous writer of the ninth or tenth century speaks of six hours a day as the usual task of a scribe, which would absorb almost all the time available for active work in the day of a medieval monk. Very often the scriptorium of a monastery developed some peculiarities of writing which were perpetuated for considerable periods, and arc of great value in as- certaining the source from which a manuscript comes. Thus at St. Albans the scribes for a long time affected a peculiar thirteenth-century style of hand with the long strokes of certain letters bent back or broken, while certain special variations from the common form of spelling, such as imfra for infra, are also peculiar to their work.

Various names were in use to distinguish the dif- ferent classes of writers. In monasteries the term antiquarii was sometimes used for those monks who copied books, the common writers who despatched the •ordinary business of the house being called librarii, or simply scriptores. If a scribe excelled in painting

miniatures or initial letters he usually confined him- self to such work, and was called illuminator, while one who worked chiefly on legal documents was a notarius. The price of books varied a good deal at different dates, but was always what we should now call low, considering the time and labour involved. Thus in 1380 John Prust, a Canon of Windsor, re- ceived seventy-five shillings and eight pence for an Evangelium, or book of the liturgical Gospels; and in 1467 the Paston "letters" show that a writer and illuminator of Bury St. Edmunds received one hun- dred shillings and two pence for a Psalter with musical notes, illuminations, and binding. In 1469 William Ebesham wrote out certain legal documents at two- pence a leaf, and a book at "a peny a leaf, which is right wele worth". It is to be observed that on the invention of printing with movable types, although the new art met with strong opposition from the pro- fessional scribes, the monks commonly welcomed it, as is shown by the establishment of Caxton's press within the precincts of Westminster, and of very early presses at Subiaco and other monasteries.

Madan, Books in Manuscript (London, 1893); Thompson, Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography (London, 1894); Idem, Customary of the monasteries. . . of Canterbury and Westminster (London, 1902); Maitland, The Dark Ages (Lon- don, 1845); Feasby, Monasticism (London, 1898); Gasquet, English Monastic Life (London, 1904).

G. Roger Hudleston.

Scripture. — Sacred Scripture, is one of the several names denoting the inspired writings which make up the Old and New Testament.

I. Use of the Word. — The corresponding Latin word scriptura occurs in some passages of the Vul- gate in the general sense of "writing"; e. g., Ex., xxxii, 16: "the writing also of God was graven in the tables"; again, II Par., xxxvi, 22: "who [Cyrus] com- manded it to be proclaimed through all his kingdom, and by writing also". In other passages of the Vul- gate the word denotes a private (Tob., viii, 24) or pub- lic (Esdr., ii, 62; Neh., vii, 64) written document, a catalogue or index (Ps. Ixxxvi, 6), or finally portions of Scripture, such as the canticle of Ezechias (Is., xxxviii, 5), iind the sayings of the wise men (Ecclus., xliv, 5). The writer of 1 1 Par., xxx, 5, 18, refers to prescriptions of the Law by the formula "as it is written", which is rendered by the Septuagint translators Kara rrjv ypatp-ftv ; wapa TT)v ypaisionisfuiidinl l^sdr., ill, 4, and II Esdr., viii, 15; here we have the boginni iig of the later form of appeal to the authority of the inspired books y^ypairrai (Matt., iv, 4, 6, 10; xxi, 13; etc.), or /co^tis y^ypairrai (Rom., i, 11; ii, 24, etc.), "it is written", "as it is written".

As the verb ypd(l)eiv was thus employed to denote passages of the sacred writings, so the corresponding noun V ypa^TTj gradually came to signify what is pre-emi- nently the writing, or the inspired writing. This use of the word may be seen in John, vii, 38; x, 35; Acts, viii, 32; Rom., iv, 3; ix, 17; Gal., iii, 8; iv, 30; II Tim., iii, 16; James, ii, 8; I Pet., ii, 6; II Pet., i, 20; the plural form of the noun, al ypaal, is used in the same sense in Matt., xxi, 42; xxii, 29; xxvi, 54; Mark, xii, 24; xiv, 49; Luke, xxi v., 27, 45; John, v, 39; Acts, xvii, 2, 17; xviii, 24, 28; I Cor., xv, 3, 4. In a simi- lar sense are employed the expressions ypa7)TLKal (Rom., xvi, 26). The word has a somewhat modified sense in Christ's question, "and have you not read this scripture" (Mark, xii, 10). In the language of Christ and the Apostles the expression "scripture" or "scriptures" denotes the sacred books of the Jews. The New Testament uses the expres- sions in this sense about fifty times; but they occur more frequently in the Fourth Gospel and the Epis- tles than in the synoptic Gospels. At times, the con- tents of Scripture are indicated more accurately as comprising the Law and the Prophets (Rom., iii, 21 ;