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: