Some system of the kind was necessary to guard against corruptions of copyists, while the care bestowed upon it no doubt reacted so as to enhance the sanctity ascribed to the text.
Many apparent puerilities, such as the counting of letters and the marking of the middle point of books, had a practical use in enabling copyists of MSS.
When zoological records failed, Egypto-Hellenic ingenuity was never at a loss for a fanciful invention distilled from the text itself, but which to succeeding copyists appeared as part of the teaching of the original Physiologus.
He was not jealous of brother friars because of their funds, instruments and materials for copying and their ability as skilled copyists.
It was on this account that the council could sometimes be called, not without exaggeration, "an assembly of copyists" or even "a set of grooms and scullions."
