A paper on a material object during the medieval period - Essay Example

However for the bulk of this period the availability of the Holy Bible as a material object was restricted for practical as well as theological reasons.1 During the medieval period access to the Holy Bible, as a material object was in fact restricted due to various intentional and unintentional factors. Books of any description were generally very expensive material objects throughout the medieval period taken as a whole.2 The high cost of books put all but the wealthiest people off buying them in the first place.

Books were highly expensive because of the methods used to produce them, paper and parchment was costly to make, meaning that writing errors and mistakes were often just crossed out, or even ignored completely.3 The Holy Bible during the majority of the medieval period was hand written as the Chinese invention of the movable printing press took a long time to reach Europe (not doing so until the late fifteenth century).4 Therefore the production of the Holy Bible was slow as well as painstaking if done properly.

Then again it could take just as long to produce copies of the Holy Bible, which were riddled with mistakes, and inaccurate wording.5 Indeed it frequently took days for people usually monks to write out new copies of the Holy Bible in full by hand. There was not a high demand for new copies of the Holy Bible due to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches wanting to control who actually read the gospel, as well as they interpreted the content of the gospel.6 The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern orthodox churches were particularly keen on restricting access to the Holy Bible to those it trusted.

In other words they’re own clergy, monks, nuns, and the wealthier citizens within European societies. For the majority of the medieval period it was only the clergy and the members of the religious orders that were predominantly literate, although the male