Manuscript book production and urban landscape: Bologna during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

This essay focuses on some aspects of book production in Bologna, one of the greatest university cities of the Middle ages. In particular it examines the activities of some parchment makers and the topographical distribution of their homes/workshops as well as those of certain stationarii, that is some entrepreneurs who served as intermediaries for obtaining and buying manuscript books. Moreover, it also draws attention to the close relationship, even topographical, between the places of university teaching (the Studium) and those related to the book manuscript industry. It deals with the activities of the celebrated jurists of the Bolognese Studium who also had an important role in this economic and cultural sector. Not only the professors but also the university students played a fundamental role as producers (scribes, miniaturists, etc.) as well as commissioners of manuscripts. Examples of this phenomenon by concentrating on foreign students, in particular English ones, are presented. Bolognese communal sources, administrative and fiscal, for the most part unpublished, provided the basis for this analysis.