Our alphabet and the book as we know it is a legacy of Roman antiquity. The alphabet is Latin and the book is the codex. A simple yet brilliant construction with a varying number of leaves that are stitched together in the spine and covered by two wooden plates for protection of the inner part of the book against outer pressure and destruction. The codex became the book of the Middle Ages, and the only reason that so much is preserved of classical and mediaeval literature is that people in the Middle Ages meticulously copied past and contemporary literary works in books made of durable materials. In the books one can also find some of the most impressive artistic expressions of the Middle Ages, as illustrations of texts or as pure aesthetics.

The Royal Library owns considerable collections of mediaeval manuscripts. Not only Danish but from all over Europe. Shown here are examples of texts and pictorial art in books from about the year 1000 to the end of the Middle Ages.