Office
Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages (1000–1300) saw the rise of the medieval chancery, which was the place where most government letters were written and laws were copied within a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled-up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference. This kind of structure was a precursor to the modern bookshelf. The introduction of the printing press during the Renaissance did not impact the setup and function of these government offices significantly.

Medieval paintings and tapestries often show people in their private offices handling record-keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment. Before the invention of the printing press and its wider distribution, there was often no clear cultural distinction between a private office and a private library; books were both read and written at the same desk or table, as were personal and professional accounts and letters.

During the 13th century, the English word "office" first began to appear when referring to a position involving specific professional duties (for example, "the office of the....") Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have first used the word in 1395 to mean a place where business is transacted in The Canterbury Tales.

As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance, merchants tended to conduct their business in buildings that also sometimes housed people doing retail sales, warehousing, and clerical work. During the 15th century, the population density in many cities reached a point where merchants began to use stand-alone buildings to conduct their business. A distinction began to develop between religious, administrative/military, and commercial uses for buildings.
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