Abstract

If little is known about the origins of the University of Siena in the 1340s, even less is known about how university book production was carried out - no documents exist that evidence whether the pecia system was used or not. However, the civic library of Siena (Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati) houses three exemplaria (two of which were produced around the mid-1200s, and the other a few decades later) that leads us to believe that also in Siena the copying of university texts throughout the 1200s was done by means of exemplaria in peciae. Nothing leads us to think that this also occurred in the 14th century, and it is highly likely that the copying of unbound manuscripts was no longer carried out. However, Sienese manuscripts containing notes for pecia copying purposes and dating to the 15th century have been found.