BOOK. — This name properly denotes the writing material which, after suitable preparation, is used to receive and disseminate the graphic expression of thought, executed by hand or by mechanical means. Apart from examples of lesser importance (silk, lead plates, clay tablets, wax tablets), writing material has been represented above all, in the course of time, papyrus (v.), parchment (v.), and paper (v.); epigraphic materials (marble, bronze), on the other hand, fall outside the concept of b., as do even the same book materials when used for another purpose, even if they contain writing, as in the case of documents.
The form of the b. varies according to the material used: with papyrus, the roll (volumen) predominates, made from a long strip of sheets glued together side by side, which is wound around a small wooden or ivory rod; with parchment, on the other hand, the codex (codex), consisting of a number of sheets folded at the middle on a hinge and superimposed so as to form gatherings of two (binio), three (ternio), four (quaternio), or more double sheets. This more practical form was retained even after the adoption of paper.
In the first period of its history, extending from the remotest times to the middle of the fifteenth century, the b. was written by hand with various instruments and liquids. Texts were reproduced in writing workshops (scriptoria), in which copyists or amanuenses worked, forming a kind of craft class: their work was remunerated according to regulations that were first laid down in a definite manner in the Library of Alexandria during the Hellenistic period. With Christianity, however, a profound change also took place in this field, especially through the work of monasticism, to which belongs the merit of continuing and perfecting the scribal and doctrinal tradition; only around the twelfth century, with the rise of the universities, did the writing centers become secularized again, a process that was subsequently to become increasingly pronounced with Humanism and the Renaissance.
The first period, that of the manuscript b., was followed by that of printing with movable type. The technique of engraving colored drawings and figures on wooden blocks for printing on textiles, religious images, and playing cards was already known. Wooden blocks with fixed letters were also used to reproduce certain specific texts known as woodblock or block books, which had a limited circulation during the fifteenth century: but they have no relation of dependence with printing by movable type, whose first manifestations date from the middle of the fifteenth century. The inventor was Giovanni Genfleisch, Gutenberg (v.), who worked chiefly in Mainz. From Germany, printing (v. INCUNABULO) rapidly spread throughout Europe, and to Italy before anywhere else, where it soon reached a high degree of perfection (Subiaco, Rome, Venice, Milan, Naples, Florence, and many other cities) and experienced its greatest flowering in the sixteenth century (v. BLADO; GIULIO; GIUDA; MANILIO). In the seventeenth century, the most active and renowned center was found in the Netherlands (v. ELZEVIER (ELSEVIER)), but in the following century France (v. DIDOT) and Italy (v. BODONI) again came into prominence.
In the nineteenth century, the printing art became industrialized, until the twentieth century represented the complete triumph of mechanization in every manifestation of the book industry. More recently, photographic technology has opened a new chapter in the history of the b.: especially in the libraries of America, where the adoption of microfilm tends to replace printed works. It should nevertheless be observed that this system, which is highly useful in relation to the space it makes it possible to save, proves poorly suited to consultation when adopted for volumes with many pages or of large format. In any case, it presupposes the printed b.
The interest aroused by the b. as one of the most important manifestations of civilization, the importance it assumes for the dissemination of human thought, and the special care and expertise required for its collection and preservation have given rise around it to a particular discipline, bibliology, which not only
CANTO XXXII. 195
CANTO XXXII.
That contemplative one, at his pleasure,
Assumed freely the affection of the distinguished,
And these holy words resisted:
The throng that Mary entreated of them,
She who is so beautiful beneath our feet,
Is accustomed, who opened it and who pleased,
In the order made by the three seats,
Rachel sits, healthy, created,
With Beatrice, just as on their seats,
Sara, Rebecca, Julia, and Eule,
Who was good to the cauldron, who in grief
Said from the deed: Miserere me,
Then, in seeing her from threshold to threshold,
You may discern, as I, whose proper name
I go for the thing already from leaf to leaf.
And from the Christian degree in a circle, as
Engraved upon it, the Hebrews succeed,
Declaring all the closures of the end:
Because the gaze descends, which is
The faith in Christ; these are the sea,
To which the sacred steps depart.
(Int. Enc. Catt.)
LIBRO – Divina Commedia: Paradiso, XXXII, 1–21. Bodonian edition edited by Jacopo Dionisi (Parma, 1793) – Copy in the Vatican Library.
