done no more than to change their titles and thereupon 
     became calligraphers; in any event, they went right on 
     doing what had been their task for centuries. On the one 
     hand, it should be remembered that calligraphers 
     necessarily catered principally, if not exclusively, to the 
     “de luxe-bespoke” trade. On the other, it was not 
     apparent until the very late fifteenth century—or more 
     fully, perhaps, in the sixteenth—that calligraphy had 
     turned into an applied art or, at worst, a mere hobby. The 
     scriptoria themselves seem to have been unable to 
     compete with the printing firms and the publishing 
     houses which subsequently came into being—although 
     some managed to survive by becoming booksellers. Their 
     employees, however, enjoyed a variety of alternate 
     choices, in that they could contrive to attach themselves 
     to well-to-do patrons, to carry on a bespoke trade, or to