From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media The Form of the Manuscript Book Gradually Shifts from the Roll to the Codex (Circa 150 CE – 450 CE)

Between about 150 and 450 CE the form of the manuscript book shifted from the roll to the codex. However, the transition was very gradual as most readers preferred the traditional roll format which had been in existence for over 2000 years. The transition may not have been "complete" until the fifth century.

"Ultimately, as its etymology indicates, the codex book evolved from wooden tablets, often with wax-filled compartments, used in ancient Rome for more or less ephemeral jottings and figurings. A group of such tablets, tied or hinged together, was known as a caudex / codex, a word originally indicating a tree trunk or block of wood (and, in Terence, a blockhead). At some stage before the Christian era folded parchments (membranae) came to be used for the same ephemeral purposes, and then were eventually adopted for permanent storage of written matter, even literary texts; and by the third century A.D. the term 'codex' had become assimilated also to these non-wooden objects" (Needham, Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings 400-1600 [1979] 4).

The gradual transition from the roll to the codex has often been credited to early Christians, who apparently did not feel bound by tradition, for they did not continue to use the papyrus roll like the classical Greeks and Romans, nor the parchment roll like the Jews. To write the books of the Bible the Christians used the codex to a greater and greater extent, first on papyrus and then on parchment. Some of the best examples of early Christian papyrus codices in single quire Coptic bindings are the Nag Hammadi Library discovered in 1945.

Though the papyrus roll continued to be used until at least the fifth century for pagan literature,

"this was strikingly not the case with Christian literature, and particularly the Christian Bible. Even its earliest surviving fragments, dating from the second century, whether written on parchment or papyrus, are ordinarily in codex form. It is not until the fourth century, at roughly the time the Empire became officially Christian, that the age of the codex was inaugurated for non-Christian literature. The question of why the codex book was apparently aboriginal to Christianity is an important and difficult one. The most profound student of the question, Mr. C. H. Roberts, has made the attractive suggestion that we see here a reflection of the Roman origin of Christian writing. Assuming that Mark's was the earliest of the gospels, and that, as tradition has it, it was written in Rome, Roberts has postulated that the codex format was brrowed from the notebooks and account books current in St. Mark's milieu, that of 'Jewish and gentile traders, small business men, freedmen or slaves,' and that the format then became general among the Christians, whose copies of the new writings were made outside the world of professional scribes and their standard roll-form. The implication is that the authority of the Word helped crystallize its form, leading to the retention of the codex format even, for instance in Egypt, where the commonest writing material, papyrus, was (being much less pliable than leather) not inherently suited to the new form" (Needham, op cit., 4).

Whether the Christians were responsible for the transition from the roll to the codex or they adopted it, the fourth century saw both the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire and a revolution in book production which made it possible to make books large enough to hold the whole Bible in one volume, and also to hold all of Virgil's poems in one volume. Christians preferred the codex format for the Scriptures used in liturgy since a codex is easier to handle than a roll, and one can write on both sides of the leaves of a codex, allowing more information to be recorded in less space. This was also a form of information storage preferable for people on the move. The codex also allowed the development of bindings which were protective as well as decorative. Bindings would have increased the longevity of codices versus scrolls, and over time this would have been recognized as a significant advantage.

During the transitional period, for first drafts, brief writings, and notes the Romans used various forms of bound parchment leaves. For diplomas and other brief documents they wrote on bronze, lead, and wood. They used erasable wax tablets for notes, and in certain cases sealed wax tablets for legal documents. For formal presentations they preferred the papyrus roll. Scribes preferred to write on the side of papyrus with the fibers running horizontally. When they wrote on the outside of the roll the writing on the outside was easily worn off. One of the limitations of papyrus rolls was that an individual roll could hold a text only about the length of one book of Homer.