The study and interpretation of medieval literature is inseparable from the conditions of its circulation in handwritten copies. In Paris, the first printing press was installed in 1470, some twenty years after Gutenberg started mechanically reproducing copies of his Bible in Germany. Prior to that time, the production of books was a labour-intensive process that resulted in individual, not multiple, copies. Technologies developed gradually in the period extending from the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance. The most common material support for written documents in ancient times in the Eastern Mediterranean had been papyrus, typically in the form of scrolls, but it was replaced starting in late antiquity by prepared animal skins, parchment or vellum, and began to be arranged in the format which is still the standard for books, that of the codex. The codex presented a text as separate pages bound together as opposed to the continuous format of the scroll: separate gatherings of folios, known as quires, were stitched together to form the finished book. Advantages of this innovative new format included the ability to use both sides of the page for text and much greater ease of consultation. Though the moves towards parchment and the codex format developed separately, they both seem to have become more or less the norm by the fourth century ce. Paper, a considerably cheaper alternative to parchment, was introduced into Europe in the twelfth century, but only became common in France in the course of the fourteenth century.