Editing Scriptorium (section)

== Institutions ==
In [[Byzantium]] or [[Eastern Roman Empire]] learning maintained importance and numerous monastic 'scriptoria' were known for producing Bible/Gospel illuminations, along with workshops that copied numerous classical and Hellenistic works.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Books : a living history|last=Martyn|first=Lyons|date=2011|publisher=J. Paul Getty Museum|isbn=9781606060834|location=Los Angeles|oclc=707023033}}</ref> Records show that one such monastic community was that of [[Mount Athos]], which maintained a variety of illuminated manuscripts and ultimately accumulated over 10,000 books.<ref name=":0" />

===Benedictines===
Cassiodorus' contemporary, [[Benedict of Nursia]], allowed his monks to read the great works of the pagans in the monastery he founded at [[Monte Cassino]] in 529. The creation of a library here initiated the tradition of Benedictine scriptoria, where the copying of texts not only provided materials needed in the routines of the community and served as work for hands and minds otherwise idle, but also produced a marketable end-product. Saint [[Jerome]] stated that the products of the scriptorium could be a source of revenue for the monastic community, but Benedict cautioned, "If there be skilled workmen in the monastery, let them work at their art in all humility".<ref>''Rule of Saint Benedict'', Chapter 57, [http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html#ch57 Kansasmonks.org], accessed 2 May 2007.</ref>

In the earliest Benedictine monasteries, the writing room was actually a corridor open to the central quadrangle of the [[cloister]].<ref>Fr. Landelin Robling OSB, ''Monastic Scriptoria'', [http://www.osb.org/gen/robling/03script.html#location OSB.org], accessed 2 May 2007.</ref> The space could accommodate about twelve monks, who were protected from the elements only by the wall behind them and the vaulting above. Monasteries built later in the Middle Ages placed the scriptorium inside, near the heat of the kitchen or next to the [[calefactory]]. The warmth of the later scriptoria served as an incentive for unwilling monks to work on the transcription of texts (since the charter house was rarely heated).

====St. Gall====
The Benedictine [[Plan of St. Gall]] is a sketch of an idealised monastery dating from 819 to 826, which shows the scriptorium and [[Carolingian Libraries|library]] attached to the northeast corner of the main body of the church; this is not reflected by the evidence of surviving monasteries. Although the purpose of the plan is unknown, it clearly shows the desirability of scriptoria within a wider body of monastic structures at the beginning of the 9th century.<ref>A.C. Murray, ''After Rome's Fall,'' (Toronto: University Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 262, 283.</ref>

===Cistercians===
There is evidence that in the late 13th century, the Cistercians would allow certain monks to perform their writing in a small cell "which could not... contain more than one person".<ref>George Haven Putnam, ''Books and their Makers During the Middle Ages'', (New York: Hillary House, 1962), 405.</ref> These cells were called scriptoria because of the copying done there, even though their primary function was not as a writing room.

===Carthusians===
The [[Carthusian]]s viewed copying religious texts as their missionary work to the greater [[Roman Catholic Church|Church]]; the strict solitude of the Carthusian order necessitated that the manual labor of the monks be practiced within their individual cells, thus many monks engaged in the transcription of texts. In fact, each cell was equipped as a copy room, with parchment, quill, inkwell, and ruler. Guigues du Pin, or Guigo, the architect of the order, cautioned, "Let the brethren take care the books they receive from the cupboard do not get soiled with smoke or dirt; books are as it were the everlasting food of our souls; we wish them to be most carefully kept and most zealously made."<ref>C.H.Lawrence, ''Medieval Monasticism'', Ed.2 (London & New York: Longman, 1989) 162.</ref>

===The Orthodox church===

====The Resava====

After the establishment of [[Manasija]] Monastery by [[Stefan Lazarević]] in the early 15th century, many educated monks have gathered there. They fostered copying and literary work that by its excellence and production changed the history of the South Slavic literature and languages spreading its influence all over the Orthodox [[Balkans]]. One of the most famous scholars of the so-called School of Resava was Constantine the Philosopher /Konstantin Filozof/, an influential writer and biographer of the founder of the school (Stefan Lazarević).

====Rača====
During the Turkish invasions of the Serbian lands (which lasted from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 19th centuries) the monastery was an important centre of culture. The scriptorium of each monastery was a bastion of learning where illuminated manuscripts were being produced by monk-scribes, mostly Serbian liturgical books and Old Serbian ''Vita.'' [[hagiographies]] of kings and archbishops.

Numerous scribes of the Serbian Orthodox Church books—at the term of the 16th and the beginning of the 18th centuries—who worked in the [[Rača monastery]] are named in Serbian literature – "The Račans". Among the monk-scribes the most renown are the illuminator Hieromonk Hristifor Račanin, [[Kiprijan Račanin]], [[Jerotej Račanin]], [[Teodor Račanin]] and [[Gavril Stefanović Venclović]]. These are well-known Serbian monks and writers that are the link between literary men and women of the late medieval ([[Late Middle Ages]]) and [[Baroque]] periods in art, architecture and literature in particular.