From the Latin ‘script’ and ‘scribere’ that means ‘to write’ (See Oxford Dictionary).

The scriptorium was a room in a medieval monastery where the monks would write, translate or copy manuscripts. When manuscript production took off in the ninth century there were numerous scriptoria around Europe, not only in monasteries, but later also at royal courts or universities. (See Colum Hourihane, The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012;, pp. 192-195 and Alison Stones, ‘Scriptorium: the term and its history’ in: Perspective Volume 1 (2014), pp. 113-120).

Related Term: Scribe.