Overview of Era
Manuscripts
Manuscript literally means "written with the hand," and in the western tradition, manuscripts are hand-written on parchment or vellum, which is untanned animal skin. When discussing manuscripts from this era, the iconic medieval manuscript from Western Europe and the British Isles written in Latin and associated with the spread of Christianity most commonly comes to mind, although there are many examples of early manuscripts from the Middle East and Asia, such as the gold-lettered manuscripts on black burnished paper from Tibet (see blog post link below). The conception of the medieval manuscript is also bound up with the image of male scribes in monasteries, although recent evidence has been discovered to show there were female scribes as well.
The most important aspects of manuscripts as defined here are the use of parchment and the use of specific materials and tools to write on the parchment. Parchment and vellum are made by soaking an animal skin in an alkaline bath usually with the mineral lime, then the skin is stretched, scraped, and dried. Vellum is made from calf skin while parchment is commonly made from goat or sheep skin. Scribes wrote with quills made from duck or geese feathers that were likewise soaked and placed in heated sand to firm them up; the feathers were removed and a nib for writing cut into the tip. Black ink was made from a mixture involving oak galls, and a variety of colored inks were made from other minerals such as lapis lazuli for blue and cinnabar for orange. Illumination was done with gold leaf most often, although some illumination was also done with silver and platinum.
Read all about medieval manuscript production in the Western tradition courtesy of the British Library:
- How to make a medieval manuscriptOverview of all aspects of medieval manuscript production: quills, oak gall ink, parchment and vellum, preparing the page, pigments, paint, gilding, and binding.
Watch a 4 minute video from the BBC about a modern parchment maker that uses the same techniques as medieval people did:
View a Twitter thread about one medieval manuscript scholar's project making black ink just as medieval scribes did:
Read about Tibetan manuscript production and woodblock printing in the Eastern tradition:
- Arthur's Attic Blog Post: Tibetan Manuscripts
SCU Archives & Special Collections blog post about Tibetan Manuscripts as described by one librarian who traveled to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamshala, India. Manuscript methods, wood block printing methods, and paper production methods are all discussed in context of a travelogue.
SCU Library Resources
The following items are available to consult in the Archives & Special Collections reading room on the 3rd floor of the library. Email SpecialCollections@scu.edu to arrange an appointment.
- Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat von Codex Vaticanus Lat. 3225 : aus dem Besitz der Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana byCall Number: Z114 .V3 v.40Publication Date: 1980This is a facsimile of the Vatican Virgil, a manuscript which contains no spacing or punctuation, which clearly illustrates the transition from oral societies to written societies; to comprehend the text without punctuation assumes you are already familiar with it due to the oral tradition of memorization and recitation. This work also contains some remains of illustrations, which tells us this is a luxury item decorated by a good artist for hire.
- CLEMENTINAE FROM CORPUS JURIS CANONICI. OXFORD, ENGLAND, 14TH CENTURY.The script used for this legal text is Gothic Textura Quadrata and as a legal text, it is not fancy or illuminated. The core text is surrounded by marginalia in a different hand and yet a third hand glosses the marginalia. Fun fact, this single parchment leaf was used as a pasted-down end paper in another binding, and then recovered at some point.
- Lexicon abbreviaturarum : dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane usate nelle carte e codici specialmente del Medio-Evo, riprodotte con oltre 14000 segni incisi, con l'aggiunta di uno studio sulla brachigrafia medioevale, un prontuario di sigle epig byCall Number: Z111 .C24 1979Publication Date: 1979This dictionary is handy for looking up the abbreviations used in medieval manuscripts. As you can image, hand-writing texts made from parchment was time, labor, and cost intensive, so many types of abbreviations were utilized by scribes.
- Fascimile of Luttrell PsalterCall Number: Flat ND3357.L8 L8 2006Publication Date: 2006This high-quality facsimile of the Luttrell Psalter puts one of the most famous psalters in the world at the tip of your fingers.
A "Psalter" is a single volume of the Biblical book of Psalms. This one was commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and made in England. This man must have been very rich and well placed to afford such a luxuriously decorated manuscript. Not only is it decorated with expensive Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan, the mineral necessary for the blue pigment, the text itself takes up little space on its page, which further flaunts the wealth of the owner. The best part is how wacky the decorations are--it contains some of the weirdest evidence of medieval creativity comprehensible: monkeys, driving horses, little monsters, a bear being attacked by a cat/dog, griffins, a sick person being cried over, and bizarre images of violence to specific parts of the human body.
This work is full digitized on the British Library's website (linked below). - BOOK OF HOURS LEAF FROM 2ND HALF OF 15TH CENTURY (ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT)This is a single leaf of parchment from an illuminated Book of Hours. Books of Hours contained prayers to be prayed at specified hours of the day. Intended for the secular community as a riff on the rituals of monks and nuns, Books of Hours were small so they could easily fit in one's hand and be portable and some had a hook for hanging off one's belt as a way to show off one's wealth. This example contains illuminations made from real gold and lapiz lazuli and the text itself takes a small portion of the leaf, likewise showing off the wealth of the owner, that he or she could afford to have so much parchment not carrying text. Dating to about 1450, this one was made at the height of the illuminated manuscript, when scribal work was transitioning to secular artisans due to the high demand for it thanks to increased literacy.
Resources not at SCU
- Digitized Luttrell Psalter
Digitized and fully available on the British Library's Digital Collections - The Luttrell Psalter at the British LibraryAnalysis of the manuscript, and a link to its catalog record.