ANCIENT INK BACKGROUNDS (PARCHMENT AND VELLUM).
THE PERGAMUS LIBRARY COMPOSED PRINCIPALLY OF
PARCHMENT VOLUMES--CAUSES WHICH CONTRIBUTED
TO THE SUBSTITUTION OF PARCHMENT FOR PAPYRUS
--ANECDOTE ABOUT EUMENES AND PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS--
INVENTION OF METHOD WHICH MADE SKINS
AVAILABLE FOR FLUID INK WRITING--INTRODUCTION
OF DRESSED SKINS THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS THE
MODERN FORM OF BOOKS--WHEN PARCHMENT AND
VELLUM SUPERSEDED OTHER SUBSTANCES AS A GENERAL
MATERIAL FOR WRITING UPON--MANUFACTURE
OF BARK PAPER PREVIOUS TO THE INTRODUCTION OF
THE LINEN PAPER OF THE EAST--SOME OBSERVATIONS
ABOUT CHINESE PAPER--ALLUSIONS OF CLASSICAL
WRITERS TO INSCRIPTIONS ON SKINS AND DISCOVERY
OF SPECIMENS--EMPLOYMENT OF PARCHMENT BY THE
HEBREWS--OLD SCRIPTURAL MSS. DISCOVERED ON
PARCHMENT--NAMES OF THE MOST VALUABLE NEW
TESTAMENT CODICES--STORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF
THE SINAITIC CODEX AS TOLD BY MADAN--ASSERTION
OF SIMONIDES THAT HE FORGED IT--PAMLIMPSESTS
THE LINK BETWEEN CLASSICAL TIMES AND THE MIDDLE
AGES--OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THEM AND SOME DISCOVERIES
OF THE MORE FAMOUS ONES--USE OF PAPYRUS,
PARCHMENT AND VELLUM TOGETHER IN MSS.
BOOKS--OBSERVATIONS BY THOMPSON--CHARACTER
OF THE ROLLS AND RECORDS BELONGING TO EARLY
PARLIAMENTARY TIMES IN ENGLAND--COMPARATIVE
METHODS OF THEIR PREPARATION--MODES OF DEPOSITING
AND CARRYING ANCIENT ENGLISH RECORDS
--METHOD OF FINDING PARTICULAR DOCUMENTS--
THE INDIVIDUALS WHO HANDLED THE BOOKS OF THOSE
EPOCHS--CITATIONS FROM KNIGHT'S "LIFE OF
CAXTON"--REMARKS BY WARTON--EXPENSE ACCOUNT OF
SIR JOHN HOWARD--METHODS OF THE TRANSCRIBERS
AND LIMNERS OF THOSE TIMES--MODERN METHODS
OF PREPARING PARCHMENT AND VELLUM--CITATION
FROM THE PENNY CYCLOPaeDIA--PASSAGE FROM A
SERMON OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF TOURS--ANECDOTE
ABOUT THE COUNT OF NEVERS.
THE great abundance of papyrus in Egypt, the
chief source of its supply, the genius and magnificence
of the rulers of that country, and the army of
learned men who resorted thither, caused it to become
the principal home of those immense libraries of antiquity
already mentioned as having perished by fire
and tumults included in periods between B. C. 48 and
A. D. 640.
The Pergamus library which was deposited by
Cleopatra, B. C. 32, in the city of Alexandria, is said
to have been composed almost wholly of parchment
written volumes. The reason or cause of such employment,
of parchment in preference to papyrus is
attributed to jealousies existing between Eumenes,
King of Pergamus, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, the
ruler of Egypt, contemporaries of each other.
This Ptolemy, B. C. 202, issued an edict prohibiting
the exportation of papyrus from Egypt, and hoped
thereby to rid himself of foreign rivals in the formation
of libraries; also that he might never be subject
to the inconvenience of wanting paper for the multitude
of scribes whom he kept constantly employed,
both to write original manuscripts as well as to multiply
them by duplication.
Before this period the exportation of papyrus had
been a very considerable article of Egyptian commerce,
but thereafter it became much curtailed, and
about A. D. 950 had ceased altogether.
Eumenes, it appears, was not to be deterred from
his favorite study and pastime, so lie contrived a peculiar
mode of dressing skins, which seems to have
answered very fully the requirements of fluid-ink
writing methods and thus avoiding the necessity of
employing paints, the only material which would
"bind" to undressed parchment (skins).
That the refined and luxurious Romans, after the
introduction of parchment, vellum, and paper, insisted
on an improvement in quality and appearance is certain.
This appears from various passages in their best authors.
Ovid, writing to Rome from his place of exile,
complains bitterly that his letter must be sent plain,
simple, and without the customary embellishments.
We can safely date the first step towards the modern
form of books to the introduction of dressed skins
(parchment and vellum), as surfaces to receive ink
writing. These materials could be formed into leaves,
instead of metal, wood, ivory, or wax tablets, a use to
which papyrus could not be put on account of its brittleness.
Thus originated the libri quadrali, or square
books, which eventually superseded the ancient volumina
(rolls).
Parchment and vellum gradually superseded all
other substances in Europe as a general material
for writing upon, after the third or fourth century.
The employment of papyrus, however, in ecclesiastical
centers continued even as late as the eleventh
century.
A kind of bark paper was manufactured in Europe
previous to the introduction of linen ("cotton,"
"Bombycina") paper from the East. The ancient Chinese
made various kinds of paper and had a method of producing
pieces sometimes forty feet in length. The
Chinese record, called "Sou kien tchi pou," states
that a kind of paper was made from hemp, and another
authority (Du Halde) observes, "that old pieces
of woven hemp were first made into paper in that
country about A. D. 95, by a great mandarin of the
palace." Linen rags were afterwards employed by
the Chinese.
The introduction of "linen" paper into Europe
did not materially affect or interfere with the use of
parchment or vellum until after the invention of
printing in the fifteenth century.
The class of substances to which parchment and
vellum belong has already received some consideration
but is a subject well worth some further discussion.
Allusions are found in some of the classical writers
to inscriptions written on the skins of goats and
sheep; it has, indeed, been asserted by some scholars
that the Books of Moses were written on such skins.
Dr. Buchanan many years ago discovered, in the
record chest of some Hebrews at Malabar, a manuscript
copy of the greater part of the Pentateuch,
written in Hebrew on goat's skins. The goat skins
were thirty-seven in number, dyed red, and were
sewn together, so as to form a roll forty-eight feet in
length by twenty-two inches in width. At what date
this was written cannot be now determined, but it is
supposed to be extremely ancient.
The Hebrews began, early after the invention of
parchment, to write their scriptures on this material,
of which the rolls of the law used in their synagogues
are still composed.
Scriptural, like many other classes of MSS. originating
previous to the eighth century and ink written
either on parchment or vellum, or both, are in
capital letters without spaces between words and
exceedingly rare. The more important and valuable of
them which apply to the New Testament are respectively
known as the Sinaitic, the Vatican and the
Alexandrian, many of whose various translations and
readings are incorporated by Tischendorf in his
Leipzig edition of the English New Testament. The
stories relating to the discovery and obtaining of
these relics of the first centuries of our era are
startling ones. The reputation and standing, however,
of the discoverers, and the investigations
subsequently made by known scholars of their time,
serves to invest them with a certain degree of truthfulness.
The most interesting is the story about the
Sinaitic codex, the oldest of any extant and which is
best told by Madan:
"The story of the discovery of this famous
manuscript of the Bible in Greek, the oldest existing
of all the New Testament codexes, and in
several points the most interesting, reads like a
romance. Constantine Tischendorf, the well-
known editor of the Greek Testament, started on
his first mission litteraire in April, 1844, and in
the next month found himself at the Convent of
St. Catherine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. There,
in the middle of the hall, as he crossed it, he saw
a basket full of old parchment leaves on their way
to the burning, and was told that two baskets had
already gone! Looking at the leaves more closely,
he perceived that they were parts of the Old Testament
in Greek, written in an extremely old handwriting.
He was allowed to take away forty-three
leaves; but the interest of the monks was aroused,
and they both stopped the burning, and also refused
to part with any more of the precious fragments.
Tischendorf departed, deposited the forty-
three leaves in the Leipsig Library, and edited
them under the title of the Codex Friderico-Au-
gustanus, in compliment to the King of Saxony, in
1846. But he wisely kept the secret of their provenance,
and no one followed in his track until he
himself went on a second quest to the monastery in
1853. In that year he could find no traces whatever
of the remains of the MSS. except a few fragments
of Genesis, and returned unsuccessful and disheartened.
At last, he once more took a journey
to the monastery, under the patronage of the
Russian Emperor, who was popular throughout the
East as the protector of the Oriental Churches.
Nothing could he find, however; and he had
ordered his Bedouins to get ready for departure,
when, happening to have taken a walk with the
steward of the house, and to be invited into his
room, in the course of conversation the steward
said: 'I, too, have read a Septuagint,' and produced
out of a wrapper of red cloth, 'a bulky
kind of volume,' which turned out to be the whole
of the New Testament, with the Greek text of the
Epistle of Barnabas, much of which was hitherto
unknown, and the greater part of the Old Testament,
all parts of the very MSS. which had so long
been sought! In a careless tone Tischendorf
asked if he might have it in his room for further
inspection, and that night (February 4-5, 1859)
it 'seemed impiety to sleep.' By the next morning
the Epistle of Barnabas was copied out, and a
course of action was settled. Might he carry the
volume to Cairo to transcribe? Yes, if the Prior's
leave was obtained; but, unluckily the Prior had
already started to Cairo on his way to Constantinople.
By the activity of Tischendorf he was
caught up at Cairo, gave the requisite permission,
and a Bedonin was sent to the convent, and returned
with the book in nine days. On the 24th
of February, Tischendorf began to transcribe it;
and when it was done, conceived the happy idea of
asking for the volume as a gift to the Emperor of
Russia. Probably this was the only possible plea
which would have gained the main object in view,
and even as it was there was great delay; but at
last, on the 28th of September, the gift was formally
made, and the MSS. soon after deposited in
St. Petersburg, where it now lies. The date of
this MSS. is supposed to be not later than A. D.
400, and has been the subject of minute inquiry in
consequence of the curious statement of Simonides
in 1862, that he had himself written it on Mount
Athos in 1839-40."
Constantine Simonides was a Greek who was born
in 1824 and is believed to have been the most versatile
forger of the nineteenth century. From 1843
until 1856 he was in evidence all over Europe offering
for sale fraudulent MSS. purporting to be of
ancient origin.
In 1861 Madan says:
"He boldly asserted that he himself had written
the whole of the Codex Sinaiticus which Tischendorf
had bought in 1856 from the monastery of St.
Catherine on Mount Sinai. The statement was, of
course, received with the utmost incredulity; but
Simionides asserted, not only that he had written it,
but that, in view of the probable skepticism of the
scholars, he had placed certain private signs on
particular leaves of the codex. When pressed to
specify these marks he gave a list of the leaves on
which were to be found his initials or other monogram.
The test was a fair one, and the MSS.,
which was at St. Petersburg, was carefully inspected.
Every leaf designated by Simonides was
found to be imperfect at the part where the mark
was to have been found. Deliberate mutilation by
an enemy, said his friends. But many thought that
the wily Greek had acquired through private friends
a note of some imperfect leaves in the MSS., and
had made unscrupulous use of the information."
A curious kind of document, which links the classical
times with the middle ages, in respect to the we
of parchment, is afforded by the "palimpsests," or
manuscripts from which old writing had been erased
in order to make way for new. A well-prepared leaf
of parchment was so costly an article in the middle
ages, that the transcribers who were employed by the
monastic establishments in writing often availed themselves
of some old manuscript, from which they scraped
off the writing; such a doubly-used piece of parchment
was called a "palimpsest." This practice seems
to have been followed long before, but not to so great
an extent as about the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
at which time there were persons regularly
employed as "parchment-restorers." The transcribers
had a regular kind of knife, with which they scratched
out the old writing, and they rubbed the surface
with powdered pumice stone, to prepare it for receiving
the new ink. So common was this practice that
when one of the emperors of Germany established
the office of imperial notary, it was one of the articles
or conditions attached to the holding of the office that
the notary should not use "scraped vellum" in drawing
deeds. Sometimes the original writing, by a
careful treatment of the parchment, has been so far
restored as to be visible, and it is found to be parallel,
diagonal, and sometimes at right angles to the writing
afterwards introduced. In many cases the ancient
writing restored beneath is found to be infinitely
more valuable than the monkish legends written afterwards.
Cicero's De Republica was discovered by Angelo
Mai in the Vatican library written under a commentary
of St. Augustine on the Psalms; and the Institutions
of Gains, in the library of the chapter of Verona,
were deciphered in like manner under the works of
St. Jerome.
Papyrus, parchment, and vellum were sometimes
used together in the MSS. books. Thompson, author
of "Greek and Latin Palaeography," observes:
"Examples, made up in book form, sometimes
with a few vellum leaves incorporated to give stability,
are found in different libraries of Europe.
They are: The Homilies of St. Avitus, of the 6th
century, at Paris; Sermons and Epistles of St. Augustine,
of the 6th or 7th century, at Paris and
Genoa; works of Hilary, of the 6th century, at
Vienna; fragments of the Digests, of the 6th
century, at Pommersfeld; the Antiquities of Josephus,
of the 7th century, at Milan; an Isidore,
of the 7th century, at St. Gall. At Munich, also,
is the register of the Church of Ravenna, written
on this material in the 10th century."
The rolls and records connected with the early
parliamentary and legal proceedings in England furnish
interesting examples of the use of parchment in writing.
The "Records," so often alluded to in such
matters, are statements or details, written upon rolls
of parchment, of the proceedings in those higher
courts of law which are distinguished as "Courts of
Record." It has been stated that "our stores of public
records are justly reckoned to excel in age, beauty,
correctness, and authority whatever the choicest archives
abroad can boast of the like sort."
The records are generally made of several skins or
sheets of parchment or vellum, each sheet being about
three feet long and often nine to fourteen inches in
width. They are either all fastened together at one
end, so as to form a kind of book, or are stitched end
to end, so as to constitute an extended roll. These
two methods appear each to have had its particular
advantages, according to the way in which, and the
time at which, the manuscript was filled up. Some
of the records of the former of these two kinds contain
so many skins of parchment that they form a
huge roll equal in size to a large bass drum, and
requiring the strength of two men to lift them. Some
of these on the continuous plan are also said to be of
immense size; one, of modern date, is nine hundred
feet in length and employs a man three hours to unroll
it. The invaluable old record, known by the
name of "Doomsday Book," is shaped like a book,
and is much more convenient to open than most of
the others. Various other legal documents, to an immense
amount, are "filed," or fastened together by
a string passing through them.
It seems a very strange contradiction, but it is positively
asserted as a fact, that the parchment employed
for these records was of very fine quality down to the
time of Elizabeth, but that it gradually deteriorated
afterwards, insomuch that the latest are the worst.
Some of these records and rolls are written in Latin,
some in Norman French, and some in English.
The modes of depositing and carrying the ancient
records were curious, and there seems to have been no
very definite arrangement in this respect. Great numbers
were kept in pouches or bags made of leather,
canvas, cordovan, or buckram; they were tied like
modern reticules. When such pouches have escaped
damp they have preserved the parchment records for
centuries perfectly clean and uninjured. Another kind
of receptacle for records was a small turned box, called
a "skippet," and another was the "hanaper," or hamper,
a basket made of twigs or wicker-work. Chests,
coffers, and cases of various shapes and sizes formed
other receptacles for the records. The mode of finding
the particular document required was not by a
system of paging and an index, as in a modern book,
because the arrangement of the written sheets did not
admit of this, but there were letters, signs, and inscriptions,
or labels for this purpose; they constitute
an odd assemblage, comprising ships, scales, balances,
castles, plants, animals, etc.; in most instances the
signs or symbols bear some analogy, or supposed analogy,
with the subject of the record, such as an oak
on a record relating to the forest laws, a head in a cowl
on one relating to a monastery, scales on one relating
to coining, etc.
At a time when books were prepared by hand instead
of by printing, and when each copy became
very valuable, books were treated with a degree of
respect which can be hardly understood at the present
day. The clergy and the monks were almost exclusively
the readers of those days, and they held the
other classes of society in such contempt, in all that
regarded literature and learning, that Bishop de Burg,
who wrote about five centuries ago, expresses an opinion
that "Laymen, to whom it matters not whether
they look at a book turned wrong side upwards or
spread before them in natural order, are altogether
unworthy of any communion with books."
It is stated by Mr. Knight, in his "Life of Caxton:"
"We have abundant evidence, whatever be the
scarcity of books as compared with the growth of
scholarship, that the ecclesiastics laboured most
diligently to multiply books for their own establishments.
In every great abbey there was a room
called the Scriptorium, where boys and novices were
constantly employed in multiplying the service-
books of the choir, and the less valuable books
for the library; whilst the monks themselves laboured
in their cells upon bibles and missals. Equal
pains were taken in providing books for those who
received a liberal education in collegiate establishments."
Warton says:
"At the foundation of Winchester College, one
or more transcribers were hired and employed by
the founder to make books for the library. They
transcribed and took their food within the college,
as appears by computation of expenses on their
account now remaining. But there are many indications
that even kings and nobles had not the advantage
of scholars by profession, and, possessing
few books of their own, had sometimes to borrow
of their more favoured subjects."
We learn from another source that the great not
only procured books by purchase, but employed transcribers
to make them for their libraries. The manuscript
expense account of Sir John Howard, afterwards
Duke of Norfolk, shows in 1467, Thomas Lympnor,
that is Thomas the Limner of Bury, was paid the sum
of fifty shillings and two pence for a book which he
had transcribed and ornamented, including the vellum
and binding. The limner's bill is made up of a number
of items, "for whole vignettes, and half-vignettes,
and capital letters, and flourishing and plain writing."
These transcribers and limners worked principally
upon parchment and vellum, for the use of paper was
by no means extensive until the invention of the art
of printing. Some of the old manuscripts contain
drawings representing a copier or transcriber at work,
where the monk is represented as provided with a
singular and tolerably complete set of apparatus to
aid him in his work. The desk for containing the
sheet or skin on which he is writing, the clasp to keep
this sheet flat, the inkstand, the pen, and the knife,
the manuscript from which the copy is being made,
the desk for containing that manuscript, and the
weight for keeping it in its place,--all are shown, with
a clearness which, despite of bad perspective, renders
them quite intelligible.
Of the two substances, parchment and vellum, before
the invention of paper, another word or two may be
said. Parchment is made from the skin of sheep or
lambs; vellum, from that of very young calves (sometimes
unborn ones), but the process of preparing is
pretty much the same in both cases. When the hair
or wool has been removed, the skin is steeped in lime
water, and then stretched on a square frame in a light
manner. While so stretched, it is scraped on the
flesh side with a blunt iron, wetted with a moist rag,
covered with pounded chalk, and rubbed well with
pumice stone. After a time, these operations are
repeated, but without the use of chalk; the skin is
then turned, and scraped on the hair side once only;
the flesh side is then scraped once more, and again
rubbed over with chalk, which is brushed off with a
piece of lambskin retaining the wool. All this is
done by the skinner, who allows the skin to dry on a
frame, and then cuts it out and sends it to the parchment
maker, who repeats the operation with a sharper
tool, using a sack stuffed with flocks (wool or hair) to
lay the skin upon, instead of stretching it on a frame.
Respecting the quality, value, and preparation of
parchment in past ages, it is stated in the "Penny
Cyclopaedia" that parchment from the seventh to the
tenth century was "white and good, and at the
earliest of these periods it appears to have nearly
superseded papyrus, which was brittle and more
perishable. A very few books of the seventh century
have leaves of parchment and papyrus mixed, that
the former costly material might strengthen and support
the friable paper. About the eleventh century
it grew worse, and a dirty colored parchment is
evidence of a want of antiquity. This may possibly
arise from the circumstances that writers of this time
prepared their own parchment, and they were probably
not so skilled as manufacturers. A curious
passage from a sermon of Hildebert, Archbishop of
Tours, who was born in 1054, is a voucher for this
fact. The sermon is on the "Book of Life," which
he recommends his hearers to obtain:
'Do you know what a writer does? He first
cleanses his parchment from the grease, and takes
off the principal part of the dirt; then he entirely
rubs off the hair and fibres with pumice stone; if
he did not do so, the letters written upon it would
not be good, nor would they last long. He then
rules lines that the writing may be straight. All
these things you ought to do, if you wish to possess
the book which I have been displaying to you.'
At this time parchment was a very costly material.
We find it mentioned that Gui, Count of Nevers,
having sent a valuable present of plate to the Chartreux
of Paris, the unostentatious monks returned it
with a request that he would send them parchment
instead."