The invention of the codex greatly impacted the middle age’s culture. For one it was the new way of keeping records and writing down information. The codex Was more condensed and durable so records and other important documents were less likely to get lost or destroyed. The codex was the bridge into modern day books. The Codex was the first ever book like design. It is important to learn about the things that impacted the middle ages because they greatly impacted society today and the culture of their day; the codex is a great example of middle aged events that impacted todays life and culture in the middle ages. It is not important to study the middle ages culture.
Before the codex the records and writings where written on papyrus.(Figure 1)Papyrus was not as durable and sturdy as the codex so it did not last as long. Also, the codex had a hard cover to protect the writings inside of it. The codex made for a longer lasting and safer way to keep teachings and records of the Middle Ages on a written source.
The Codex was more convenient to use. The codex holds considerable practical advantages over other book formats, such as compactness, sturdiness, ease of reference (a codex israndom access, as opposed to a scroll, which is sequential access)( David Diringer)The Codex could hold multiple writings inside of it. The people living at this time could just look inside the codex instead of having to fin al the different scrolls. The codex followed a pattern as well it was not all over the place. The codex was orderly.
“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.” (pigott) the 6th century everything was written in a codex. This shows how the culture of writing and language arts was changed. The codex itself was revolutionary to the language arts and art of writing things down.
The codex made a lot of things easier. It was easier to write down information and records and it was easier to find information and records. Without the invention of the codex everything would still be written on one page papyrus. The thousands of pages text books we use would be thousands of papyrus scrolls. It would be much harder to keep from getting lost and a lot harder to use. It is important to learn about events and inventions of the Middle Ages so we can better understand the Middle Ages culture
figure 1
appendix
Bibliography
Pigott, R. (n.d.). Learning English - Words in the News - World's oldest Bible put online.BBC - Homepage. Retrieved May 3, 2011, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/l
David Diringer, The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental, Courier Dover Publications, New York 1982, ISBN 0486242439
Figure 1 Family bible, 6th century, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Family-bible.jpg photo taken in 2006
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