A medieval book was made because an individual or community wanted to read, and own, the text contained on its pages. Some miniatures show readers surrounded by books, as in Figure 63 at p. 119. Looking at this particular scene, one cannot help thinking how contently the man looks at the colourful books in front of him (we return to this person in Chapter 28, where his unusual-looking desk is discussed). However, despite the plentiful books in this miniature, owning books in the age before print was a luxury. Due to the expensive materials used, the cost of a book's production was significant, even if it contained no decoration or miniatures. It may seem odd, then, that despite their expense, medieval readers wrote in their books, voicing their opinions on the text wherever they could, often extensively (Figure 64). In Chapter 2 we saw how scribes extended the manuscript's margins to facilitate marginal additions. Let us now look at the same phenomenon from the readers’ point of view. What did they add to the pages in front of them? And what do their additions reveal about their motivations for reading?

Annotations

The most common voices heard on the medieval page come from marginal annotations on the text. While in some manuscripts only a few annotations are encountered in the margins, in others these are filled to the brim, as Figure 64 shows. Readers had different reasons for doing this. While reading St. Augustine, one may suddenly remember a relevant passage in the work of another Church Father. With a quick stroke of the pen the reader could place a reference in the margin, perhaps even citing the name of the other authority next to it. Or a quote could be added, either by heart or copied from another book. Monks in particular had access to sizable reference libraries: their contents were true temptations for critical readers seeking to interact with the text in front of them.

Alternatively, a reader may jot down a clarifying word, phrase, or sentence next to a passage that was hard to understand. In Latin books such notes may start with id est (“this is” or “this means”). They are particularly common in university textbooks, but are also frequently encountered in books from other environments, including monasteries.