YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

80 LUMINITA FLOREA
Regardless of this rather emphatically expressed distinction between performers and
notatores, on the one hand, and scriptores and clerks, on the other hand, or of what
Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse have termed ‘the division of labour’ in the
context of commercial book production of the Middle Ages, 13 there are recorded
instances of copyists or scribes (scriptores) of early music treatises and liturgical
books who were notatores as well – that is, in addition to copying the text, they also
copied or even created the musical examples and chants involving the drawing of
staves, clefs, noteshapes, rests, and other signs pertaining to musical notation. 14 The
scriptor-notator could also be – and often was – a drawer of figure, in other words a
pictor, and, on occasion, a bookbinder. 15
To make the matter more convoluted, scriptor, compilator and editor were all
terms commonly employed in Latin documents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
to denote ‘author’, 16 and there seems to have been general agreement within
the body of medieval glossators and commentators who consciously utilized the Latin
verbs notare and scribere to denote ‘authoring’ or ‘composing’. 17
Many a scriptor must have been an avid reader. Those who worked in a richly
endowed private library or were engaged in medieval commercial book production
under academic or ecclesiastical patronage had access to a plethora of books on a
great variety of topics. So did those working for a monastic scriptorium, for some
religious orders were quite famous for keeping well-equipped libraries, as attested by
surviving and reconstructed library catalogues. And while some of the books were
the property of a particular monastery or convent, others – covering a variety of suit-
13 R.H. ROUSE and M.A. ROUSE, Illiterati et uxorati: Manuscripts and Their Makers, Commercial Book
Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500, 2 vols., Turnhout, 2000.
14 A case in point in England, for instance, was John of Rickmansworth, the scribe and notator of two
great Graduals, two great Antiphoners, and two books for the Mass of Our Lady; see R.W. HUNT, The
Library of the Abbey of St Albans, in M.B. PARKES and A.G. WATSON eds., Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts,
and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker, London, 1978, p. 263.
15 Adam of Redbourne, associated with St Albans, was a writer, notator, and binder; see HUNT, The
Library of the Abbey of St Albans, p. 263. John of Tewkesbury, the most likely candidate for the authorship
of the fourteenth-century treatises Quatuor principalia and De situ universorum (the latter known
in only one copy found in Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 6681), is believed to have been the
scriptor of both Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 90 (containing the earliest preserved exemplar
of the Quatuor principalia) and MS 6681 in Chetham’s Library; furthermore, it is clear that he was
also the drawer of the numerous diagrams in both works, and the musical notator in the Quatuor principalia.
N.R. KER, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Oxford, 1969–1983, 3, pp. 338–339,
suggested that John was also the binder of both books. On John of Tewkesbury, a fragment of his biography,
and the two texts he most probably authored and wrote, see L. FLOREA, For the Glory of God
and Holy Mother Church: A Modest Compiler and a Date for MS Manchester, Chetham’s Library 6681,
De situ universorum, in Scriptorium, forthcoming.
16 For the use of editor, see R.E. LATHAM ed., Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish
Sources, London, 1965, repr. London 1973, p. 161.
17 For instance in Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 6681, fols. 50r–v and elsewhere. For the use of
scriptor, see P. SAENGER, Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society, in Viator:
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1982), p. 385.