Peciae

One page in a collection of pecia (with pecia marks visible in the margins).

Summary

Plural of pecia ("pieces"), these were folded collections of five to eight pages, each comprised of two 62-line columns of text. These were typically smaller portions of larger texts used in universities and bookstores. They were small and easy to loan out for copying. This streamlined the process of loaning books. Many completed pecia manuscripts remain in the possession of universities, libraries, and collectors. They are most easily identified using "pecia marks", or numerical tags placed in the margins of copied texts to mark the end of one pecia and the start of the next.

Origins and Details

The pecia system originated in Europe during the early thirteenth century. At this time, scribes (also known as copyists), had become a professional occupation, and they were frequently contracted by students and masters to copy portions of important texts, typically of a legal, theological, or medical nature. However, before the inception of the pecia system, copying down texts was a lengthy, cumbersome, and inefficient task. If a copyist, student, or master borrowed a book for copying, it would remain unavailable until the entire book was successfully transcribed, which frequently took a month or more. This meant that there was often a backlog of scholars waiting to sign out the same book, thereby hindering their research.

The Pecia (or "pieces") system was quite simple but very effective. These pecia manuscripts were complete, unbound books broken down into smaller segments, which could then be loaned out individually. This made the process of loaning and copying books much easier and efficient. At the time it was first devised, universities did not exist as formal institutions, and books were held by bookshop owners. These bookshop owners soon took to printing their pecia manuscripts on cheap parchment with simple lettering, called exemplars. These were not used as an educational resource but rather loaned out for copying because they were cheap to make/replace.

Contract of Vercelli

Bologna, Italy was a center of legal studies and book production in the early thirteenth century, which fostered a strong intellectual community within the city. However, in 1222 a group of Bolognese law students raised grievances against the Commune and left for Padua, where a new university formed. When they ultimately returned to Vercelli, they brought with them a number of demands. There were three major objectives which the subsequent Contract of Vercelli satisfied. The first was that there be enough exemplars to keep the basic legal texts and their commentaries easily accessible. The second requested proper supervision of the accuracy of the exemplars' work. Copyists were notorious for failing to complete an assignment or leaving inconsistencies in their transcriptions. Lastly, they demanded protection from stationers' infamous price gouging and extortionary practices. These demands were granted in the Contract and the students, with their masters, returned.