Bibliomania in the Middle Ages

The book surveys the culture of manuscript collecting and study in the Middle Ages, presenting portraits of scribes, illuminators, collectors, Bible students, and the monastic officers who cared for libraries from early medieval centuries to the introduction of printing. Drawing on rules, catalogues, and anecdotes, it explains how monasteries organized, preserved, repaired, bound, and loaned volumes, and how cloistered routines and institutional regulations encouraged intense book-collecting and scholarship. Interwoven sketches illuminate manuscript production, library administration, and the personal passions that sustained textual transmission before print.