Books and Bookmaking

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2003

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Recommended Citation “Books and Bookmaking”. Encyclopedia of Medieval Iberia. Ed. Michael Gerli. NY: Routledge, 2003. 178-79.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BONIFAZ, RAMO´ N

by the kingin the repartimiento of Seville and named were reputed to boast 400,000 volumes. The adoption a royal official in 1252. of parchment and the definitive adoption of the codex Bonifaz’s descendants dominated the social, eco- form date from the early Visigothic period. The classic nomic, political and ecclesiastical life of Burgos for Spanish codex, with gatherings of inscribed bifoliate the next century and a half, holdingimportant benefits leaves sewn across cords or parchment straps that were (includingthe deanship of the cathedral chapter of then attached to wood boards and covered with leather Burgos) and municipal and royal positions. They also (sometimes with a Moorish-style flap that wraps invested heavily in the land and real estate market in around over the front cover), endured through the tran- and around Burgos, a policy already initiated by the sition from parchment to paper and only saw serious elderly Bonifaz. modification with the advent of printing, when the TEO´ FILO RUIZ leather-clad boards were replaced with cheaper limp covers. Bibliography Paper was introduced into al-Andalus by Islamic craftsmen in the twelfth century and grew into a highly Avila y Dıáz-Ubierna, G. El primer almirante de Castilla: advanced industry. Spanish paper, counted amongthe D. Ramoń de Bonifaz y Camargo. Burgos, n.d. most prized in the Islamic world, was exported to sites Ruiz, T. F. “Los Sarracıń y los Bonifaz: Dos linajes patricios as far away as Damascus and presumes a large number de Burgos, 1248–1350.” In Sociedad y poder real en of local paper mills, mostly in the eastern half of the Castilla . Barcelona, 1981. 121–44. Iberian Peninsula but with several in the Guadalquivir valley below Co´rdoba. The most famous site of Moor- BOOKS AND BOOKMAKING ish paper manufacture was in Ja´tiva (Valencia), gradu- The codicology of medieval Spanish books is still in ally incorporated into the kingdom of Aragoń after its infancy. While there are good general studies avail- 1244 by Jaime I, who inflated and nearly ruined the able on the history of decorative bookbindingand man- industry by optioningthe entire output of its mills to uscript illumination in Spain, monographic treatment stoke his paper-based bureaucracy, the first in Europe. of the archeology of the book is still wanting, and the Alfonso X included cautionary restrictions on the use difficulty results from many factors. Exemplars prior of paper in the Siete Partidas, (Partida III.28.5), per- haps based on lingering prejudices against this Moor- to the tenth and eleventh centuries are scarce, and many ish artifact but also due to its still limited market as books were carelessly rebound in later centuries, in- a taxable commodity within and beyond Iberia. The cludingour own. Many fine examples of Spanish craft existence of a lively local trade in paper in southern bindings were executed by and for Muslims and Jews Spain already in the mid-thirteenth century is sug- whose works were destroyed by Islamic and Christian gested by the reams of blank script for sale in the mini- censors; our best information on practices amongthese ature accompanying cantiga 173 in the co´dice rico Iberian connoisseurs of the book comes from witnesses (Escorial T.I.1). Paper established itself as the domi- elsewhere throughout the medieval Islamic (Tunisian, nant book support in Spain by the early fourteenth cen- Moroccan) and Jewish worlds. As early as 531, presti- tury. gious Christian books were ravaged for their covers As elsewhere in premodern Europe, the produc- decorated with jewels, metalwork, and carved ivory or tion of books in Spain was a principally monastic affair suppressed because of their contentious theological or until the start of the thirteenth century. Medieval Span- liturgical content. Finally, the examination of the de- ish universities, usually under royal rather than eccle- sign, structures, and supports of books as integrated siastical patronage, never succeeded in sustaining a physical objects has commonly been subordinated to commercial infrastructure of parchmenters, stationers, an interest in their decoration, whether on the illumi- book manufacturers, copyists, illuminators, and bind- nated page or on their tooled leather surfaces. ers, as happened in Oxford and Paris. Interestingly, In terms of writingsupports, Hispano-Romans however, the visionary Alfonso X codified rules (Par- probably employed the same materials as in the rest tida II.31.11) for maintainingstationers and certifying of Romania—namely, sheets of lead, papyrus, split the reliability of the textbook chapters they rented out wood, and wax tablets (still in use duringthe life of to students at the newly chartered universities in Sala- Gonzalo de Berceo). The longdistance from Egypt manca (1254) and elsewhere. These rules antedate evi- and the disruption of sea lanes made the importation dence of similar arrangements in Paris (1275) by a of papyrus to Iberia unreliable. Isidore of Seville rec- quarter of a century. Alfonso X can be credited with ords the availability of parchment from animal skins, beingthe first true bibliophile of Spain—both com- and the same support later supplied the needs of the missioned books and treasured them as aesthetic ob-

Copyright © 2002. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. rights All Group. Francis & Taylor 2002. © Copyright legendary libraries of the caliphate of Co´rdoba, which jects—but noble patronage of the book arts did not

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flower as a by-product of class until the fifteenth cen- vate collections, the privatization of intellectual pur- tury. suits, and the interiorization of devotional practices. Romanesque and Gothic bookbindings manufac- GEORGE D. GREENIA tured in Spain, especially in the northeast, are much like their counterparts elsewhere in medieval Europe. Bibliography One distinctively Spanish style of blind toolingon Bohigas, P. El libro espanõl (ensayo histo´rico). Barcelona, leather covers is commonly dubbed hispano-a´rabe or 1962. mude´jar, in not a few cases the creations of named Brugalla, E. El arte en el libro y en la encuadernacioń. Jewish and Moorish artisans workingin the traditions Bilbao, 1977. of figured Cordovan goat skin. Mude´jar here refers to Burns, R. I., S. J. “The Paper Revolution in Europe: Crusader the fusion of Islamic decoration—precise interwoven Valencia’s Paper Industry—A Technological and Be- plaitwork within sometimes complex geometric havioral Breakthrough,” Pacific Historical Review 50, frames creatingan interplay between areas of lightand no. 1 (1980), 1–30. CarriońGu´tiez, M. “La encuadernacioń espanõla en la Edad shadow—combined with the serial die stampingof Media.” In Los manuscritos espanõles. Ed. Escolar So- transpyrenean decorative styles includingstraightlines brino Hipo´lito. Madrid, 1993. 364–99. and hatchwork with stamped rows of small figures of Las edades del hombre. Libros y documentos en la iglesia animals and other heraldic devices. Subsequent fif- de Castilla y Leoń. Valladolid, 1990. teenth-century styles incorporate effects of raised (re- Encuadernaciones espanõlas en la Biblioteca Nacional. Ed. pujado) covers with larger devices, in leather or ap- J. Ollero. Madrid, 1992. plied metal work, sometimes set against or above rich Escolar, H. Historia del libro. Madrid, 1984. cloth surfaces. Survivingbindingsof this latter type Millares Carlo, A. Introduccioń a la historia del libro y de include those made for the Marque´s de Santillana and las bibliotecas.Me´xico City, 1971. Queen Isabel I the Catholic, two of the earliest secular Ruiz, E. Manual de codicologıá. Madrid, 1988. patrons of the book arts whose bindings survive in sufficient numbers for study. Toward the end of the BOURGEOISIE fifteenth century, Flemish bindings (and the plastic arts The development of the bourgeoisie in medieval Cas- in general) grew in influence in Spain, and a certain tile is closely related to the renewal of urban life in Antonio de Gavere of Bruges was court binder to Fel- the region. The growth of towns in northern Castile, ipe el Hermoso. Full-cover stampingplates, decorating the conquest of great Muslim urban centers (Toledo, with patterningwheels, and mosaics of colored leather Co´rdoba, and Seville), and the foundation of new cities patches are all postmedieval phenomena, but tooling alongconflictingfrontiers led to the emergenceof dis- in gold leaf, a clearly Renaissance innovation in the tinct patterns of economic development and social or- rest of Europe, was already practiced by Muslim arti- ganization. If by bourgeoisie in the medieval context sans in Spain in the thirteenth century and apparently one understands as those urban middlinggroupswho spread, alongwith mude´jar decorative motifs, to the stood outside the so-called feudal relations and who, rest of the continent duringArago ń’s possession of moreover, did not obtain their income from the land Naples in the mid-fifteenth century. but from artisanal crafts, commerce, and financial New areas of study that focus on the medieval transactions, then there was no bourgeoisie in Castile. book in Spain are emerging in recent decades. There It is doubtful that there were well-defined feudal ties is fresh interest in the book as a symbolic object repre- between lords and vassals in the region, or, at least, in sentingand bearingpower within medieval society, the manner in which those ties existed in France and and also as a nexus for the negotiation of meaning England. There were a few cities and small towns in between writers and readers. The physical constraints which the middlingurban groupsderived most of their of the medium enlighten studies of how books circu- income from longdistance trade—Burgos,some of lated and were reproduced, and also how they were the ports on the Bay of Biscay (Bilbao, San Sebastiań, used and shared by their consumers. The written page, etc.)—but even in such places, there is ample evidence with or without other decoration, is increasingly seen that the bourgeoisie invested heavily in land and often as an aesthetic unit worthy of examination, especially lived a good part of the year in their rural estates. What as it modulates the message of the text presented on types of social grouping, of social and economic orga- it. The study of the evolution of the formal elements nization can be thus described for medieval Castile? of Spanish books as cultural artifacts is also gaining The Revival of Urban Life greater regard as scholars explore their ties to the bur- geoning market economy, the expansion of literacy, Most of the towns in the ancient kingdom of Ast-

Copyright © 2002. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. rights All Group. Francis & Taylor 2002. © Copyright the diffusion of intellectual trends, the growth of pri- urias and later in its successor, the kingdom of Leo´n,

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