The Rise of the University

By: Admin, developed from any resources

As descripted before, book has long journey to came to this sophisticated feature.

A rising merchant class and a new rise of cities, also meant a rising interest in the outside world. The first European university was founded in Bologna, Italy in 1119. Universities were established in Siena in 1203 and Vincenza in 1204. With the advent of the secular university, students were no longer studying for the clergy. In many cases, the university consisted of lecturers who lived in the town.

The shift from a religious focus on the next world and the worship of God to a secular focus on the present world and an interest in the natural world. With the rise of this new form of learning, they needed access to new kinds of books not readily available - e.g. non-religious texts.

So the university created a system of demand for books as well as a system for the use of books in ways not used with religious texts. This effect of the university on book production is what Febvre and Martin take as more revolutionary than the advent of the printing press.

Two new kinds of institutions grew up around the universities to provide for that demand: stationers and book copiers. These folks provided paper and libraries of text books that had been carefully studied and compared to other books for accuracy.

They made these books available for copying by students. When a student needed a text for a class, he would go down to the stationers and copy them - by hand. Or he could pay a book copier to copy the book for him.

There are several problems with this mode of book production. The most obvious is that inaccuracies get introduced as the book gets copied.