Roman schools needed cities, endowments and a tax base. When those failed, learning moved to the one institution that could feed itself. You are running a Benedictine house around the year 700: divide the day, work the estate, and spend a year’s calfskins on the books you think are worth it. Everything you do not copy is gone forever — and you will find out exactly what you just lost.
The Ruleprayer · labour · reading
the divine officemanual labourreading & the scriptorium
The opus Dei, the work of God, is the first duty in the Rule. It is also the hours you are not farming or copying.
Fields, herds, mills, buildings. A house that cannot feed itself has to beg from a lord, and a lord who feeds you owns you.
Reading and copying take whatever is left of a sixteen-hour waking day: 6 hours.
This year’s copying programme — click in order of priority
Scraping washes an existing book off its parchment so the skins can be reused. It costs you the last classical text you finished. Medieval libraries did this constantly.