## Metadata - Author: [[Stephen Greenblatt]] - Full Title: The Swerve - Category: #books ## Highlights - Poggio did not like monks. He knew several impressive ones, men of great moral seriousness and learning. But on the whole he found them superstitious, ignorant, and hopelessly lazy. Monasteries, he thought, were the dumping grounds for those deemed unfit for life in the world. Noblemen fobbed off the sons they judged to be weaklings, misfits, or good-for-nothings; merchants sent their dim-witted or paralytic children there; peasants got rid of extra mouths they could not feed. The hardiest of the inmates could at least do some productive labor in the monastery gardens and the adjacent fields, as monks in earlier, most austere times had done, but for the most part, Poggio thought, they were a pack of idlers. ([Location 517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=517)) - When the newly elected bishop of Hildesheim, in the north of Germany, asked to see the diocesan library, he was brought to the armory and shown the pikes and battleaxes hanging on the walls; these, he was informed, were the books with which the rights of the bishopric had been won and must be defended. ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=524)) - The Benedictine Rule had called for manual labor, as well as prayer and reading, and it was always assumed that this labor could include writing. The early founders of monastic orders did not regard copying manuscripts as an exalted activity; on the contrary, as they were highly aware, most of the copying in the ancient world had been done by educated slaves. The task was therefore inherently humiliating as well as tedious, a perfect combination for the ascetic project of disciplining the spirit. ([Location 539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=539)) - Those who wrote unusually well—in fine, clear handwriting that the other monks could easily read and with painstaking accuracy in the transcription—came to be valued. In the “wergild” codes that in Germanic lands and in Ireland specified the payment of reparations for murder—200 shillings for killing a churl, 300 for a low-ranking cleric, 400 if the cleric was saying mass when he was attacked, and so forth—the loss of a scribe by violence was ranked equal to the loss of a bishop or an abbot. ([Location 550](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=550)) - To assemble a modest number of books, in the long centuries before the invention of the printing press forever changed the equation, meant the eventual establishment of what were called scriptoria, workshops where monks would be trained to sit for long hours making copies. At first the copying was probably done in an improvised setting in the cloister, where, even if the cold sometimes stiffened the fingers, at least the light would be good. But in time special rooms were designated or built for the purpose. In the greatest monasteries, increasingly eager to amass prestigious collections of books, these were large rooms equipped with clear glass windows under which the monks, as many as thirty of them, sat at individual desks, sometimes partitioned off from one another. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=556)) - Most books in the ancient world took the form of scrolls—like the Torah scrolls that Jews use in their services to this day—but by the fourth century Christians had almost completely opted for a different format, the codex, from which our familiar books derive. The codex has the huge advantage of being far easier for readers to find their way about in: the text can be conveniently paginated and indexed, and the pages can be turned quickly to the desired place. Not until the invention of the computer, with its superior search functions, could a serious challenge be mounted to the codex’s magnificently simple and flexible format. Only now have we begun once again to speak of “scrolling” through a text. ([Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=568)) - The finest parchment, the one that made life easier for scribes and must have figured in their sweetest dreams, was made of calfskin and called vellum. And the best of the lot was uterine vellum, from the skins of aborted calves. ([Location 581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=581)) - A sheet with a cutout window generally covered the page of the manuscript being copied, so that the monk had to focus on one line at a time. And monks were strictly forbidden to change what they thought were mistakes in the texts they were copying. They could correct only their own slips of the pen by carefully scraping off the ink with a razor and repairing the spot with a mixture of milk, cheese, and lime, the medieval version of our own product for whiting out mistakes. There was no crumpling up the page and starting afresh. Though the skins of sheep and goats were plentiful, the process of producing parchment from them was laborious. Good parchment was far too valuable and scarce to be discarded. This value helps to account for the fact that monasteries collected ancient manuscripts in the first place and did not consign them to the rubbish. ([Location 598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=598)) - The ancient poems, philosophical treatises, and political speeches, at one time so threatening and so alluring, were no longer in anyone’s mind, let alone on anyone’s lips. They had been reduced to the condition of mute things, sheets of parchment, stitched together, covered with unread words. ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=609)) - If the original ink proved tenacious, it could still be possible to make out the traces of the texts that were written over: a unique fourth-century copy of Cicero’s On the Republic remained visible beneath a seventh-century copy of St. Augustine’s meditation on the Psalms; the sole surviving copy of Seneca’s book on friendship was deciphered beneath an Old Testament inscribed in the late sixth century. These strange, layered manuscripts—called palimpsests; from the Greek for “scraped again”—have served as the source of several major works from the ancient past that would not otherwise be known. But no medieval monk would have been encouraged to read, as it were, between the lines. ([Location 616](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=616)) - The monastery was a place of rules, but in the scriptorium there were rules within rules. Access was denied to all non-scribes. Absolute silence reigned. ([Location 621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=621)) - If a scribe wanted to consult a psalter, he made the general sign for a book—extending his hands and turning over imaginary pages—and then, by putting his hands on his head in the shape of a crown, the specific sign for the psalms of King David. If he was asking for a pagan book, he began, after making the general sign, to scratch behind his ear, like a dog scratching his fleas. ([Location 624](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=624)) - What Poggio and other Italian humanists probably did notice, however, were the words of Ovid, words that were enough to send any book hunter scurrying through the catalogs of monastic libraries: “The verses of sublime Lucretius are destined to perish only when a single day will consign the world to destruction.” ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=736)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The volumes that Romans piled up in their libraries were smaller than most modern books: they were for the most part written on scrolls of papyrus. (The word “volume” comes from volumen, the Latin word for a thing that is rolled or wound up.) Rolls of papyrus—the plant from which we get our word “paper”—were produced from tall reeds that grew in the marshy delta region of the Nile in Lower Egypt. The reeds were harvested; their stalks cut open and sliced into very thin strips. The strips were laid side by side, slightly overlapping one another; another layer was placed on top, at right angles to the one below; and then the sheet was gently pounded with a mallet. The natural sap that was released allowed the fibers to adhere smoothly to each other, and the individual sheets were then glued into rolls. (The first sheet, on which the contents of the roll could be noted, was called in Greek the protokollon, literally, “first glued”—the origin of our word “protocol.”) Wooden sticks, attached to one or both of the ends of the roll and slightly projecting from the top and bottom edges, made it easier to scroll through as one read along: to read a book in the ancient world was to unwind it. The Romans called such a stick the umbilicus, and to read a book cover-to-cover was “to unroll to the umbilicus.” ([Location 787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=787)) - At first white and flexible, the papyrus would over time gradually get brittle and discolored—nothing lasts forever—but it was lightweight, convenient, relatively inexpensive, and surprisingly durable. Small landowners in Egypt had long realized that they could write their tax receipts on a scrap of papyrus and be reasonably confident that the record would be perfectly legible for years and even generations to come. Priests could use this medium to record the precise language for supplicating the gods; poets could lay claim to the symbolic immortality they dreamed of in their art; philosophers could convey their thoughts to disciples yet unborn. Romans, like the Greeks before them, easily grasped that this was the best writing material available, and they imported it in bulk from Egypt to meet their growing desire for record keeping, official documents, personal letters, and books. A roll of papyrus might last three hundred years. ([Location 797](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=797)) - Ancient Greeks and Romans did not share our idealization of isolated geniuses, working alone to think through the knottiest problems. Such scenes—Descartes in his secret retreat, calling everything into question, or the excommunicated Spinoza quietly reasoning to himself while grinding lenses—would eventually become our dominant emblem of the life of the mind. But this vision of proper intellectual pursuits rested on a profound shift in cultural prestige, one that began with the early Christian hermits who deliberately withdrew from whatever it was that pagans valued: St. Anthony (250–356) in the desert or St. Symeon Stylites (390–459) perched on his column. Such figures, modern scholars have shown, characteristically had in fact bands of followers, and though they lived apart, they often played a significant role in the life of large communities. But the dominant cultural image that they fashioned—or that came to be fashioned around them—was of radical isolation. ([Location 962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=962)) - “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city.” The key point, as Epicurus’ disciple Lucretius wrote in verses of unrivalled beauty, was to abandon the anxious and doomed attempt to build higher and higher walls and to turn instead toward the cultivation of pleasure. ([Location 1130](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1130)) - APART FROM THE charred papyrus fragments recovered in Herculaneum, there are no surviving contemporary manuscripts from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Everything that has reached us is a copy, most often very far removed in time, place, and culture from the original. And these copies represent only a small portion of the works even of the most celebrated writers of antiquity. Of Aeschylus’ eighty or ninety plays and the roughly one hundred twenty by Sophocles, only seven each have survived; Euripides and Aristophanes did slightly better: eighteen of ninety-two plays by the former have come down to us; eleven of forty-three by the latter. ([Location 1135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1135)) - The bookworm—“one of the teeth of time,” as Hooke put it—is no longer familiar to ordinary readers, but the ancients knew it very well. In exile, the Roman poet Ovid likened the “constant gnawing of sorrow” at his heart to the gnawing of the bookworm—“as the book when laid away is nibbled by the worm’s teeth.” His contemporary Horace feared that his book will eventually become “food for vandal moths.” And for the Greek poet Evenus, the bookworm was the symbolic enemy of human culture: “Page-eater, the Muses’ bitterest foe, lurking destroyer, ever feeding on thy thefts from learning, why, black bookworm, dost thou lie concealed among the sacred utterances, producing the image of envy?” ([Location 1173](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1173)) - Starting as early as 300 BCE, the Ptolomaic kings who ruled Alexandria had the inspired idea of luring leading scholars, scientists, and poets to their city by offering them life appointments at the Museum, with handsome salaries, tax exemptions, free food and lodging, and the almost limitless resources of the library. The recipients of this largesse established remarkably high intellectual standards. Euclid developed his geometry in Alexandria; Archimedes discovered pi and laid the foundation for calculus; Eratosthenes posited that the earth was round and calculated its circumference to within 1 percent; Galen revolutionized medicine. Alexandrian astronomers postulated a heliocentric universe; geometers deduced that the length of a year was 365¼ days and proposed adding a “leap day” every fourth year; geographers speculated that it would be possible to reach India by sailing west from Spain; engineers developed hydraulics and pneumatics; anatomists first understood clearly that the brain and the nervous system were a unit, studied the function of the heart and the digestive system, and conducted experiments in nutrition. The level of achievement was staggering. ([Location 1220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1220)) - In the early fourth century the emperor Constantine began the process whereby Rome’s official religion became Christianity. It was only a matter of time before a zealous successor—Theodosius the Great, beginning in 391 ce—issued edicts forbidding public sacrifices and closing major cultic sites. The state had embarked on the destruction of paganism. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1257)) - Believers in Jupiter, Minerva, and Mars did not think of themselves as “pagans”: the word, which appeared in the late fourth century, is etymologically related to the word “peasant.” It is an insult, then, a sign that the laughter at rustic ignorance had decisively reversed direction. ([Location 1409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1409)) - A gifted scholar, Petrarch began to search for ancient texts that had been forgotten. He was not the first to do so, but he managed to invest this search with a new, almost erotic urgency and pleasure, superior to all other treasure seeking: Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one’s bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy. ([Location 1667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1667)) - It is almost impossible for jokes that are centuries old to retain any life. The fact that a few of the jokes of Shakespeare or Rabelais or Cervantes continue to make us smile is something of a miracle. ([Location 1997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=1997)) - (A century later, Luther, mounting a more successful challenge, remarked: “We are all Hussites without knowing it.”) ([Location 2415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=2415)) - With his contrasting vision of anxious, work-obsessed, overly disciplined Italians and happy-go-lucky, carefree Germans, Poggio believed he glimpsed for a moment the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure as the highest good. ([Location 2465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=2465)) - Note: How ironic. - Religions are invariably cruel. Religions always promise hope and love, but their deep, underlying structure is cruelty. This is why they are drawn to fantasies of retribution and why they inevitably stir up anxiety among their adherents. The quintessential emblem of religion—and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core—is the sacrifice of a child by a parent. ([Location 2712](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=2712)) - At the very time that Savonarola was urging his listeners to mock the foolish atomists, a young Florentine civil servant was quietly copying out for himself the whole of On the Nature of Things. Though its influence may be detected, he did not once mention the work directly in the famous books he went on to write. He was too cunning for that. But the handwriting was conclusively identified in 1961: the copy was made by Niccolò Machiavelli. ([Location 3087](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3087)) - “The world is but a perennial movement,” Montaigne writes in “Of Repentance,” All things in it are in constant motion—the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt—both with the common motion and with their own. Stability itself is nothing but a more languid motion. ([Location 3415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3415)) - “Of one subject we make a thousand, and, multiplying and subdividing, fall back into Epicurus’ infinity of atoms” (817). ([Location 3424](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3424)) - Montaigne wrote, “I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden” ([Location 3464](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3464)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Why should atoms in the High Renaissance have come to seem, in some quarters at least, so threatening? The short answer is that the recovery and recirculation of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things had succeeded in linking the very idea of atoms, as the ultimate substrate of all that exists, with a host of other, dangerous claims. ([Location 3515](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3515)) - That the ancient poem could now be safely left unread, that the drama of its loss and recovery could fade into oblivion, that Poggio Bracciolini could be forgotten almost entirely—these were only signs of Lucretius’ absorption into the mainstream of modern thought. ([Location 3668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005LW5J9O&location=3668))