The Making (and
re-making) of a Medieval Manuscript

The Augustine Gospels are amongst the earliest surviving manuscripts, and they are the oldest illustrated Latin Gospels in the world.

Until the German inventor Johannes Gutenberg created his printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, most books were manuscripts, literally manuscriptum, 'written by hand'. Before the thirteenth century, most manuscripts were ecclesiastical in nature, produced in monastic settings by skilled scribes.

Before the advent of paper making, documents in Europe were written on the thin, polished skin of animals, a process that was arduous and time-consuming. Animal skins were scraped to remove hair, cured, limed and stretched. It took many animal skins to produce a manuscript and each skin had to be cut strategically to maximise the available surface area to produce as many leaves as possible.

After the skin was selected and cut to size, the page was prepared and laid out for the writing lines. A sharp pinprick mark was made using the tip of a knife or the points of dividers to show where lines should be ruled on the page. This was done in either dry point (without an ink line) or in graphite, lead or ink. The writing was usually completed first on unfolded pages because it is easier to write on the pages when they are flat, then gathered together in sections, leaving spaces for the decoration.

Texts were written with quills made from the feathers of geese, swans or other birds. The Latin for feather is penna, giving the modern writing tool the name of ‘pen’. The first five flight feathers on the outer edges of the wing made the best quills because of the longer length of the barrel from which the nib is cut. Because of the way the feathers curve, those from the left wing of the bird are more suitable for right-handers, and those from the right wing for left-handers. The end of the quill was cut with a penknife to make a nib-shape. Knives were also used to scrape out mistakes made on the page and re-cut the nibs.

Soot, iron salts, or tannic acid from oak galls were mixed with gum and water to make ink (individual recipes varied from monastery to monastery). Oak galls were crushed with a weight such as a hammer. Then the gall was mixed with copperas (iron sulphate), covered with liquid (commonly water or other liquids like vinegar) and left in the sun for several days. During this time, tannic acid leached out, creating a purplish or brownish liquid when mixed with iron sulphate. Gum Arabic was added to this, thickening the ink and ensuring that it adhered to the writing surface.

Paint pigments came from minerals, such as minium (red lead, from which the term ‘miniature’ derives), lapis lazuli (ultramarine), orpiment (yellow) and verdigris (green). Pigments could also be made from plants such as woad (producing indigo) or from animals such as sea molluscs (purple) and squid (dark brown/black).

As the pages of medieval books were closed for most of the time, the pigments used to decorate medieval books kept their vibrancy and colour. Pigments were mixed with glair (egg white beaten to remove the stringiness, and the liquid under the froth then used) or yolk, both making egg tempera; egg provides the adhesion. Gum Arabic was also used to ensure the paint attached to the surface of the page.

Gold leaf was applied over gesso, which raises the gold from the surface. It was then burnished to a shine with a polished stone such as agate or an animal tooth and the metal still glows in manuscripts centuries after it was first applied.

Folded sheets of parchment or vellum were grouped into booklets or ‘gatherings’. These were placed in order and sewn onto leather cords running horizontally across the spine of the book. These cords were then attached to the wooden boards of the book cover. The leather- or textile-covered boards of the finished book were sometimes further decorated with ivory insets or embroidery. Precious stones and metals decorated the bindings of the grandest of books, but few of these ‘treasure’ bindings survive.