SCRIPTORIUM. — According to Isidore (Orig., VI, 9, 2), it is the stylus used to impress signs on wax; but in medieval lexicon it denoted the stand on which the sheet was placed during writing, and by extension the room where scribes carried out their work (writing workshop), and thus the center for the dissemination of writing. This meaning has been preserved in the technical language of paleography.
For the classical age and the early Middle Ages, there is insufficient data on the organization and characteristics of scriptoria, and it is even less possible to identify their geographical distribution and paleographic peculiarities. The elements provided by archaeology through paintings, museums,
constant attention, steady hand, patience: so it is not surprising to find here and there in manuscripts subscriptions or marginal notes that reveal fatigue or a sense of relief upon completion (cf. H. Leclercq, Scribe, in DACL, XV, 1, cols. 1028-30). Normally, once copying was finished, a revision was carried out, either by the scribe himself, or by the director of the scriptorium, or by another appointed person; sometimes, however, this check was left entirely to the reader.
[With the development of universities, lay scriptoria also formed: the need to multiply texts for school use led to the “industrialization” of copying work; professors delivered the corrected text to a “contractor” (stationarius) who distributed the exemplar, divided into fascicles (v. PECE), among various executors who thus worked simultaneously on the same manuscript, speeding up the multiple execution of copies. The furnishings of the scriptoria remained roughly the same; however, the sheet to be filled was no longer held on the knees, but placed on a table similar to modern school desks with a horizontal or slightly inclined surface. The humanistic age further altered the nature of transcription work: on one hand, scholars personally sought out texts in monastic libraries and personally copied them to enrich their own collections; on the other, princes who, out of love of culture or political patronage, commissioned sumptuous codices from specialized workshops, which became true court scriptoria. Soon, however, the rise of printing brought about the gradual but rapid disappearance of scriptoria.