Herodotus says that the Ionians called books diphthera (διφθἑρα, a prepared hide), because, at a time when the biblos (βἱβλος, the inner bark of the papyrus) was scarce, they wrote on skins of goats or of sheep. Diodorus Siculus affirms that the ancient Persians wrote their annals on skins, and we must suppose that Pliny’s assertion refers only to some improvements the King of Pergamus had made in the art of preparing a material that could supply the place of papyrus, which Ptolemy Epiphanius would no longer allow to leave Egypt. The absolute deficiency of papyrus raised into activity the fabrication of parchment, and soon so large a quantity was seen to flow into Pergamus that this town was considered as the cradle of the new trade, already so flourishing. There were then books of two kinds, the one in rolls composed of many leaves sewed together, on one side of which only was there writing; the others, square-shaped, were written upon both sides. The grammarian Crates, ambassador of Eumenius at Rome, passed as the inventor of vellum.
Ordinary parchment is the skin of a goat, sheep, or lamb, prepared in lime, dressed, scraped, and rendered smooth by pumice-stone. Its principal qualities are whiteness, thinness, and stiffness; but the work of the currier must have been formerly very imperfect, for Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours in the eleventh century, tells us that the writer, before beginning his occupation, “was in the habit of clearing away from the parchment, with the aid of a razor, the remains of fat and other gross impurities, and then with pumice-stone to make the hair and tendons disappear:” this almost amounts to affirming that the scribes bought the hide undressed, and, by an elaborate preparation, made them fit for proper use. Virgin parchment, which in its grain and colour resembles vellum, was made of the skins of those lambs and goats which had been clipped. Vellum, more polished, whiter, more transparent, is made, as its name indicates, of the hide of the calf.[52]
It is probable that with the Romans, papyrus, considering the facility they had of procuring it for themselves, was more frequently used than parchment, which, at first, was rare and costly. But parchment, more durable and of greater resistance than papyrus, was reserved for the transcription of the most important works. Cicero, who had many books on parchment in his magnificent library, said that he had seen the “Iliad” copied on a scroll of pergamena which went into a nut-shell. Many of Martial’s epigrams prove to us that in the time of this poet books of such kind were still more numerous. Unfortunately, there remains to us no writing on parchment dating from this distant period. The Virgil in the Vatican, and the Terence at Florence, are of the fourth and fifth century of our era. Admitting that time destroys all, and also that the work of the rude tribes on many occasions assisted this natural cause of destruction, we must not forget that at certain periods, to supply the place of new parchment when it was scarce, a plan had been devised of making the parchment rolls which had already been used for manuscripts serve again
Fig. 328.—Miniature of the Ninth Century, representing an Evangelist who is transcribing with the Calamus, on Parchment, the Sacred Text, of which he is receiving the revelation.
(Bibl. de Bourgogne, Brussels.)
for a similar purpose, either by scraping and rubbing them with pumice-stone, or by boiling them in water or soaking in lime. There is no doubt but the scarceness and the dearness of parchment was the cause of the loss of very many excellent works. Muratori cites, for example, a manuscript of the Ambrosian Library, of which the writing, dating from eight or nine centuries back, had been substituted for another of more than a thousand years old; and Maffei informs us that the employment of ancient parchment scraped and washed became so general, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, throughout Germany, that the Emperors put a stop to this dangerous abuse by issuing an order to the notaries to use nothing but parchment “quite new.”
Fig. 329.—View of the Ancient Abbey of St. Denis and its Dependencies.