Scriptorium

Illuminated manuscript, Wallace Collection

The word scriptorium rolls off the tongue rather deliciously. It refers to a ‘writing room,’ especially in a monastery or abbey where monks used to copy manuscripts. The word derives from the Latin, ‘scribere’ to write, from which we also have ‘scribe.’ This in turn apparently comes from Pan Indo European root, ‘skribh.’

In the medieval part of ‘The Twelfth Cross,’ the main character is Brother Clement, a French Benedictine monk from Abbotsbury, Dorset, who has been seconded to the household of Queen Eleanor of Castile as her scribe. Though Clement is a fictional character, Eleanor actually had 2 scribes and an illuminator in her entourage. She was a patroness of learning and particularly supported the Dominican order whose emphasis was on education. When the story opens, he is visiting his monastery at Abbotsbury to copy the Scivias of Hildegarde of Bingen. I chose this work to showcase a rare example of a female academic and visionary from the period.

Saint Hildegarde (c1098 – 1179) was a German Benedictine Abbess. She was a polymath and wrote works on medicine, maths and philosophy as well as accounts of her spiritual visions. I don’t know if Eleanor’s scribes ever copied the works of Hildegarde for her. But in the last year of the queen’s life one of the works she did commission was a chess manual. Presumably she wanted to gain an advantage when playing with her husband, King Edward I.

And here I sit today in my scriptorium. The means of writing are different today but the purpose is the same. Now, where did I put my quill?