The Didascalicon is Hugh of St Victor’s twelfth-century guide to study, and its second book sets out the seven “mechanical” arts. This is his chapter on the first of them, lanificium, and the term the page takes its name from. The chapter names the work by its kinds and its instruments, and the readings below are set beside it.
Read in contextWool-working includes all kinds of weaving, sewing and twisting, which are done by hand, needle, spindle, awl, reel, comb, bark, curling iron, cylinder, or any other instruments whatever: from any material of flax or wool, and every kind of scraped skins or those having hair, also hemp, or cork, rushes, hair, flocks, or any other such thing, which can be turned to the use of garments, coverings, linens, cloaks, rugs, carpets, curtains, chamber vessels, felts, webs, nets, ropes. Also the straws from which men are accustomed to weave hats and baskets: all these pursuits pertain to wool-working.