A name to attach to the origins of the manuscript

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I consider trade across the Alps around 1400 to be impossible. Passable for five months of the year on mule tracks on foot with pack donkeys. At the risk of not being able to return in the same year. See Via Claudia Augusta.

Stuff with high price to weight ratio, like paper or wine, could be traded around the Alps -- e. g. by ship through Marseille or Trieste, or by land along the coast.

Or by sending it through the Alpine passes in the Summer.  On pack donkeys, yes.  Why not?  It would not have been a hundred tons of paper per month...

And paper (and paper making) was popular in France before it spread to Germany. It did not have to come from Italy.

Anyway, the point is that, wherever it was available, paper was cheaper than vellum.  That is the only reason why it spread to all of Europe, and replaced vellum.  It is the only reason why someone would choose to write anything on paper instead of vellum.

And large manuscript books on paper were being produced in Switzerland and Germany in the early 1400s.



All the best, --stolfi