[MUSIC] Very few medieval book bindings have been preserved, and even less pre-medieval book bindings. The reason is that being the function of bookbinding, protecting the book, it receives the worst part of all damages, and therefore, a replacement frequently becomes necessary. Another reason is that the big collectors and bibliophiles often like to give some degree of uniformity in their recollections, and had their codices rebound. This was possible because, until very recently, bookbinding was not considered as an essential component of the codex, but just something superimposed on it, and therefore, it didn't receive much attention, unless when it had been decorated. In any case, in spite of our dearth of medieval book bindings, the relatively few that have been preserved allow us to trace the evolution of techniques and styles. And that shall be our objective for these two videos, although very superficially. In them, I shall follow, for the most parts, Szirmai's The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding. This outstanding monograph is available online free of charge, and contains many illustrative diagrams and photographs, although just in black and white. In our quick review of the history of bookbinding, we shall meet between this video and the next one the following phases. In this video, earliest book bindings, Byzantine book bindings, and Islamic book bindings. And in the following one, Carolingian book bindings, Romanesque book bindings and Gothic book bindings. For the time being, we shall leave aside the flexible, or limp book bindings, and the so called treasure book bindings. The invention of book binding was a natural consequence of the codex format. The roll had been a single piece in itself because of its very morphology and its integrity was guaranteed by the use of a capsule. The codex, built up of many gatherings, needed some means of keeping the gatherings together. We simply don't know the date when book binding was born, but it had to be more or less at the same time than the codex format or as [INAUDIBLE] later. As a curiosity, there are some very early representations of codices. In the image, we see an engraving from the beginning of the 17th century, reproducing one of those representations and showing both rolls and codices and all codices are already provided with a book binding. But the oldest preserved book bindings don't go back beyond the 3d or the 4rth century. They belong to the collection of Gnostic papyrus manuscripts that were found in 1945, in this cave in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi. They are extremely simple, but many details shall remain unknown because the study of this manuscript, that was undertaken under the auspices of UNESCO, didn't include the book bindings. At least, not in depth and as a matter of fact, the book bindings were removed from the manuscripts. What we can ascertain beyond any doubt is that these books are of the single-quire type, and one of them has more than 150 pages. The fixing of the single-quire to its cover was made by means of a straight tacket of twisted leather that went through two pairs of holes drilled on the fault at a distance of 20 to 45 millimeters of each other. These targets were knotted on the outside, that is on the spine of the book and occasionally, inside the quire. A possible variant was to knot the tackets on the spine but not directly on the cover but on an independent strip that was placed under the cover. This last solution was thought as more beautiful because the tackets remained concealed but structurally it was weaker. The cover consisted of a piece of leather that wrapped a cardboard made of several papyrus leaves glued together. Because of the structure of this type of book, the block tends to open. To prevent this, a triangular or quadrangular flap was added, provided with a leather thong that turns several times on the book, and kept it closed. The same function had the extra straps fixed to the head and tail of the covers. In any case, the vast majority of codices are not of the single quire type, but have a number of quires each a few by [INAUDIBLE]. Where all the codices of this sort come from Egypt as well and are datable between the second and the fourth century, but they are in a very fragmentary state. The sort of binding we appreciate in them is the so called Coptic binding that uses the link stitch that we saw in the previous video. In these sort of codices, the union between quires can be described in terms of the thread movement. This goes through the centerfold and exits through the holes previously practiced on the fault of its quire, looping around the link stitch of the previous quire and coming back through the same hole where it left. In the preserved Coptic codices, the thread is of vegetal origin and some one millimeter in diameter. Its movement is shown in the figure. In the first and last sewing stations, the thread doesn't return to the same hole. Instead, the binder set a new gathering on top of the previous one and introduced the sewing needle through the first sewing station. The boards of these codices are made of wood of a thickness between four and nine millimeters, and in most cases, they remained uncovered. They were joined to each other by means of some leather bands that worked as hinges and later, the bookblock was glued to the inner side of these leather bands. Later, Coptic book bindings from the 7th to the 11th centuries kept on using the link stitch sewing. But in almost every case, the books are made of sort of papyrus cardboard, where reused or low quality papyrus was amalgamated with a straw and even small pieces of parchment, leather and cloth. It is possible that some sort of mold was used to make this papyrus cardboard. The boards were fixed to the bookblock using the same sewing thread. The techniques was the following. In the board, 20 to 30 millimeters from the edge, some holes were practiced and through them the sewing thread was looped several times. These loops serve to link stitch the first gathering. When it started directly from the first loop, it went into the first sewing station of the first quire and then exited through the second one to make the first link stitch with the second loop of the board and so on. Regretfully, no endbands have survived, but some [INAUDIBLE] suggest that it was an important structural component. It followed a variant of the sewing link stitch as shown in the figure. The covers were made of leather or parchment dyed in some color. Decoration techniques included blank tooling on the wet leather in the shapes of curves or straight lines, joining pieces of leather of different colors, or a sort of attachment of a strip of leather of a different color or parchment. Here we already see proper fastenings built on a leather strap that went from the upper board to fix in a peg mounted on the edge of the lower board, and kept the book closed. The first preserved Western book bindings use very similar techniques to the ones described thus far. The oldest known is the famous Gospel of St John found in the grave of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne who died in 687 and now be admired in the Stonyhurst College library. The so called Byzantine book binding overflows, as a matter of fact, the space time limits of the Byzantine Empire, and can be divided in two broad categories. The book bindings produced in the Byzantine empire proper, and the book bindings produced in the West from the 15th century on, called alla greca, but under a general Byzantine appearance hide the structural elements that are typically occidental. Regretfully, hardly any Byzantine book bindings prior to the 13th century have survived. In this case, to the general causes that led to the disappearance of book bindings, one must add the destruction of the Greek heritage, which occurred after the Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Ottomans. The distinguishing characteristics of Byzantine book bindings are link stitch sowing, more than two sewing stations, reinforcement of the spine by means of a piece of fabric that extends on the outer side of the boards. Flat spine, wooden boards with grooved edges fixed to the bookblock by means of the sewing thread, boards flushed with the textblock and bands extended to the inner edges of the boards, strap and peg fastenings. Maybe the most curious thread of Byzantine book bindings is the fact that although not always, the textblock has been divided into more or less equal halves. The first of which has been sworn on the upper board and the second on the lower board. This sort of sewing is called biaxial stitch disposition and it might be the result of a desire of keeping an absolute symmetry between both boards. The endbands of Byzantine bookbindings are very idiosyncratic. They are built on mostly groove support that extend a few centimeters on the sides of the boards to which they are linked by means of a series of holes practiced not far from the border. This sort of end band confers a good deal of mechanical resilience to the joint of the boards and the textblock. As decorative elements, the end band could make use of colored in different patterns. It is probable that the Arabs received the art of book binding from Ethiopia in the pre-Islamic period, during the brief time where Christianity was the prevalent religion in the Arabic peninsula. Later, Islamic book bindings incorporated the influences from the different regions that were conquered, from the Middle East to Egypt, North Africa, and the Byzantine Empire. In general, book architecture was simplified, while the decorative elements were enhanced. The oldest Islamic codices up to the 11th century are oblong in format and have a box binding. Then increasingly, during the 12th and 13th centuries, they evolved to the vertical format with boards of wood or cardboard and flat on the full edge, so included of different forms. In the following video, we shall see the different styles of book bindings that were produced in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. That is, Carolingian book bindings, Romanesque book bindings and Gothic book bindings. [MUSIC]
