Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/646

 552 Outlines of Europe mi History It may be that sometime some such fearfully destructive com- pound may be discovered, that the nations may decide to give up war altogether as too dangerous and terrible a thing to resort to under any circumstances. The inventions of the compass, of the lens, and of gunpowder have helped to revolutionize the world. To these may be added the printing press, which has so facilitated and encouraged read- ing that it is nowadays rare to find anybody who cannot read. The Italian classical scholars of the fifteenth century suc- ceeded, as we have seen (pp. 548-549, above), in arousing a new interest in the books of the Greeks as well as of the Romans. They carefully collected every ancient work that they could lay hands on, made copies of it, edited it, and if it was in Greek, translated it into Latin. While they were in the midst of this work certain patient experimenters in Germany and Holland were turning their attention to a new way of multiplying books rapidly and cheaply by the use of lead t}-pe and a press. The Greeks and Romans arid the people of the Middle Ages knew no other method of obtaining a new copy of a book except by writing it out laboriously by hand. The professional copyists were incredibly dexterous with their quills, as may be seen in Fig. 199 — a page from a Bible of the thirteenth cen- .wxy which is reproduced in its original size.^ The letters are 1 Figs. 199 and 200 are reproductions, exactly the size of the original, of two pages in a manuscript Bible of the thirteenth century (in Latin) belonging to the library of Columbia University. The first of the two was chosen to" ill-ustrate the minuteness and perfection of the best work ; the second to show irregularities and mistakes due to negligence or lack of skill in the copyists. The page represented in Fig. 199 is taken from i Maccabees i, 56-ii, 65 (a portion of the Scriptures not usually included in the Protestant Bibles). It begins, "... ditis fugitivorum locis. Die quintadecima mensis Caslev, quinto et quadra- gesimo et centesimo anno aedificavit rex Antiochus abominandum idolum desola- tionis super altare Dei ; et per universas civitates Juda in circitu aedificaverunt aras et ante januas domorum, et in plateis incendebant thura, et sacrificabant et libros legis Dei com[busserunt]." The scribes used a good many abbrevia- tions, as was the custom of the time, and what is transcribed here fills five lines of the manuscript. The second less perfect page here reproduced is from the prophet Amos, iii, 9-vii, 16. It begins, " vinearum vestrarum : oliveta vestra et ficeta vestra comedit eruca et non redistis ad me, dicit Dominus."