From Cave Paintings to the Internet An Annotated Interactive Timeline on the History of Information and Media 1300 to 1400 Timeline

The Hereford Mappa Mundi preserved at England's Hereford Cathedral was drawn by "Richard of Haldingham or Lafford" about this time. "Superimposed on to the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include of around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology. '... it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, . . . and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.' (Christopher de Hamel) "

The Metz Pontifical is an unfinished illuminated manuscript produced for the French bishop, Raymond de Bar, at this time. Its manner of production is shown through animation on the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, website at this link. Study of unfinished examples may be the best way to learn how illuminated manuscripts were actually produced.

On the death of Pope Boniface VIII, the papal library, the eventual basis of the Vatican Library, is moved to Avignon.

Rashid al-Din Tabib writes in the Persian language an enormous history entitled Jami al-Tawarikh. Portions survive in lavishly illustrated manuscripts, some produced during the lifetime and perhaps under the direction of Rashid al-Din. This history contains a discussion of printing in China. "This is the earliest notice of Chinese printing, aside from the making of paper money, outside of East Asiatic sources. It is evident that Rashid had a reasonably reliable source of information and that the printing in which he was interested was the printing of books, especially historical records. Where he failed was in not grasping the importance of the new art as an economical means of disseminating literature and in seeing it merely as a means of authenticating the exact text--a characteristic of Chinese offical printing that has already been noticed . . . ." (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed[1955] 173).

Though he was obviously aware of the new technology, Rashid al-Din seems never to have contemplated having his history printed, probably because the new technology was not available in the Middle East. Instead he left instructions in his will and provided funds for the purpose so that "each year two full copies of all his works shold be made by hand, one in Arabic and one in Persian, until gradually there should be a complete copy in the mosque of every large city of the Moslem world." (Carter).

Date of the first recorded use of paper in England.

Oxford Franciscans compile on the basis of on-site surveys, the Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum--a manuscript union catalogue of manuscript books in England, Scotland and Wales. It lists the works of 96 authors owned by 187 monasteries

The earliest extant catalogue of the library of the Sorbonne is written at this time. The library--the richest in Christendom at this time--contains 1722 volumes divided into two parts. The first portion called the communis or magna libraria consists of 330 volumes chained to the reading desks. The rest of the collection, designated the small library, consists of 1090 volumes. About 300 volumes relisted from the prior catalogue written in 1290 are designated as missing or in circulation. The writer(s) of the 1338 catalogue "furnished a large amount of information about each volume. He gives not only the contents, but also the name of the donor, the estimated value, and first words on the second leaf and on the next to the last leaf. This device, intended to help identification of books belonging to the Library and to prevent mutilation, is invaluable to us in trying to identify surviving volumes of the collection. Some professors kept out books on indefinite loan, like their successors today. Such books were appropriately called libri vagantes, 'strays' from the scared precincts of the Library. It should be said that usually a money deposit was required of borrowers. We even have loan records of the Library during the fourteenth century. The appraisal of each book given in the catalogue was intended to facilitate payment for books lost by borrowers. Chained books were occasonally loaned but only after a faculty vote. There was even a rudimentary inter-library loan system. And that is not all: a union list of books in the monasteries of Paris was made as early as the thirteenth century for the use of the Sorbonnistes. The catalogue of the reference library is in two parts, a shelf-list and a classified catalogue." (Ullman, The Library of the Sorbonne in the Fourteenth Century. The Septicentennial Celebration of the Founding of the Sorbonne College in the University of Paris. [1953] 35-36).

" The collections of the other colleges of the period included no more than three hundred works. . . ." (Martin, The History and Power of Writing [1994] 153)

Two color (black and red) printing is produced in China.

Richard Aungerville, commonly known as Richard de Bury, treasurer and chancellor of England under Edward III, writes Philobiblon, perhaps the earliest treatise on the value of preserving neglected or decaying manuscripts, on building a library, and on book collecting. It will printed for the first time in Cologne, 1473.

Examples of wood block printing in Arabic excavated in 1880 in the region of El-Fayyum in Eygpt are thought to date from this time. They are preserved in the Erzherzog Rainer Collection in the Austrian National Library. (Carter, Invention of Printing in China 2nd ed.[1955] 176-181).

The Benedictine monk Henry of Kirkestede, prior of the royal abbey of St. Edmund at Bury in Suffolk, and traditionally known as Boston Burienis, compiles a manuscript union catalogue of manuscripts in English libraries entitled Catalogus de libris autenticis et aposcrifis. He names 674 authors and assigns to them about 3900 works. (Richard H. Rouse & Mary A. Rouse, eds., Henry of Kirkested, Catalogues de libris autenticis et aposcrifis [2004]).

Fragments of block-printing on paper in Arabic and Hebrew from the Cairo Genizah preserved in the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library indicate that block-printing may have been practiced by Arabs and Jews as early as the mid-14th century.

In spite of the obvious fragility of spectacles, a reasonable number of extremely early examples have survived from the mid-fourteenth century onward. Images and information about them have been collected by David A. Fleishman on his website, Antique Spectacles and other Vision Aids.

Spectacles, so essential for reading and writing, and an important factor in the spread of literacy, are thought to have been invented in thirteenth century Europe; however, their inventor is unknown. Various unsubstantiated theories were proposed over the centuries concerning possible inventors--none supported by satisfactory evidence. Some of the theories are mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Glasses. Other contenders and snippets of evidence regarding possible inventors are listed on the the London College of Optometrists web page on the Invention of Spectacles.

Even though the name of the inventor or inventors of spectacles may never be confirmed, there is sufficient reason to believe that spectacles were invented toward the end of the thirteenth century, and that they became more widely used as the fourteenth century advanced.

"The earliest depiction of spectacles in a painted work of art occurs in series of frescoes dated 1352 by Tommaso da Modena in the Chapter House of the Seminario attached to the Basilica San Nicolo in Treviso, north of Venice. Cardinal Hugo of Provence is shown at his writing desk wearing a pair of rivet spectacles that appear to stay in place on the nose without additional support. The Cardinal actually died in the 1260s and could never have worn spectacles! Across the room Cardinal Nicholas of Rouen is depicted using a monocular lens in the style of later quizzing glasses. The artist has even tried to represent the physical effort of straining to see the book through the lens. The men depicted in this series of paintings are Dominicans (like Fra Rivalto), members of a dynamic monastic order founded in 1217 and regarded as 'the carrier of the sciences'. It is notable that visual aids are portrayed as devices for the use of literate men as well as aesthetes - they had, after all, commissioned this important work of early Renaissance art." (quoted from the London College of Optometrists website.)

King Charles V converts the fortress of the Louvre into a royal palace, and establishes a royal library there. This library will become the foundation of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

The papal library, basis eventually for the Vatican Library, is scattered, with parts in Rome, Avignon, and elsewhere.

"To give us an idea of the costs of making manuscript books in the Middle Ages we have an example of the costs incurred in making a copy of Henri Bohic's volumous Commentaires, which Etienne de Conty had made in 1374 and 1375 by the copyist Guillaume du Breuil. It is a work of two large in-folio volumes, one with 370 leaves and the other with 388. A note on the inside of each volume tells us that the work cost 62 livres and 11 sous in Parisian money. This sum was made up of the following:
- The copyist's salary: 31 livres 5 sous
- The purchase and preparation of the parchment, including the mending of holes: 18 livres 18 sous
- Six initial letters with gold: 1 livre 10 sous
- Other illuminations, in red and blue: 3 livres 6 sous
- The hiring of an exemplar for the copyist provided by Martin, Carmelite clerk: 4 livres
- Repairs to holes in the margins, and stretching: 2 livres
- Binding: 1 livre 12 sous
These manuscripts are now kept in the Bibliothèque municipale d’Amiens, shelfmark 365". (blog.Pecia: Le manuscrit medieval, 5 novembre 2007).

"The earliest references to playing cards in Europe that can be clearly differentiated from chess, follow each other with rapid succession in various countries--Germany 1377, Spain 1377, Luxemburg 1379, Italy 1379, Belgium 1379, France 1382. . . . (Carter, Invention of Printing in China, 2nd ed. [1955] 185). At this time playing cards in Europe are probably not printed.

The earliest surviving book printed from moveable type is an edition, the title of which translates as Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters, printed from bronze moveable type in Korea. It bears a date corresponding to 1377. A copy is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Costs for a missal produced in 1382 by Thevenin Langevin, preserved in La bibliothèque de l'ancien collège de Dormans-Beauvais à Paris: - copyist's salary: 24 livres
- illumination: 5 livres 4 sous (2.305 "grosses lettres" and 2.214 "verses"), and 5 livres 12 sous for "Joachim Troislivres", illuminator, who made the "histoires" and the large letters of gold and blue.
- the hiring of an exemplar : 32 sous
- binding: 32 sous
- "fermeilles" : 48 sous
- "pipe": 6 sous 4 deniers
- "chemisette" and "toille": 8 sous
- "enseignes": 3 sous (Elisabeth Pellegrin, Bibliothèques retrouvées [1990] p. 50)

The oldest map of the African continent is created in China on silk. It is thought to be a copy of a map sculpted into rock.

Ulman Stromer, a member of the Senate governing the city of Nuremberg, records in a manuscript that he is converting a mill on the Pegnitz river just outswide the western wall of the city to the production of paper. The manager of a trading company which had been importing paper from Italy, Stromer establishes his paper mill to meet the growing demand for paper in his country. To produce paper he hires Italian workers with technical experience in the trade. Stromer's diary, preserved in the Germanisches National Museum in Nuremberg, is the earliest European document on the production of paper. (Hunter, The Literature of Papermaking 1390-1800 [1925] 9-11). It also includes an account of the earliest known labor strike in the history of papermaking.

Date of the oldest surviving Korean text printed from moveable type.