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• 1 2020-08-01T18:35:06+00:00 The Making of the Book 36 plain 2024-04-24T23:18:55+00:00 Our manuscript is known as Rauner Codex MS 003203. “Rauner” is for the Rauner Special Collections Library of Dartmouth College, in which the manuscript is housed. “Codex” describes its form: it is a book with pages that the reader turns, as opposed to a scroll, which the reader unrolls. And “MS” is an abbreviation for manuscript, literally something “written by hand,” as opposed to a text that has been set in type.
  
  While some codices were being written (and printed) on paper at the time Rauner 003203 was produced, Rauner 003203 is written on parchment, or vellum, which is made from the skin of an animal. The words parchment and vellum are generally used interchangeably, though strictly speaking, vellum refers specifically to parchment made from calf skin (vitellus means “calf” in Latin). Parchment was chiefly made from calf skin, sheep skin, or goat skin.
  
  A parchment-maker, or parchmenter, first selects the skins of slaughtered animals. For the finest parchment, he will avoid skins with obvious flaws, such as scars from wounds or parasites; some of these flaws are evident in our manuscript.
  
  
  
  
  The next step is to soak the skins in a bath of cold water, or lime and water; both the beginning of rot and the action of the lime break down the attachment of hair follicles to the epidermis; the lime also helps to remove fat and grease from the flesh side of the skin. (Turner pp. 58-59) After this stage, which may take several days or even weeks, each skin is taken out of the bath and draped over a flat wooden beam, and the parchmenter scrapes the hair side of the skin, removing both the hair and perhaps the outermost surface of the skin. Then the skin is flipped over and the parchmenter removes the fat and flesh from the flesh side of the skin. Then the skin is again immersed in water for a few days.
  
  When the skin is removed from this second bath, it is stretched on a frame. The parchmenter must stitch up any small cuts made during the flaying or the scraping, so that they do not stretch into holes during the tensioning process; the development of holes is particularly likely on those parts of the skins which are thinner and stretchier, such as the belly and axillary regions. (Turner, p. 58)
  
  
  
  
  To reach an even thinness and a closer match between hair and flesh sides; the parchmenter keeps it wet on the frame and continues to scrape it. After the parchment is finally allowed to dry under tension, the parchmenter scrapes it yet more with a lunate (curved) knife until the desired thinness is reached. Although the parchment is usually thinned from the flesh side, the upper layer of skin may be removed from the hair side as well, to remove its shine and make a better writing surface, especially in the case of vellum. (Turner p. 61; Vnoucek p. 87) During this process, the thread of stitched holes and tears may be removed by the parchmenter, or the parchmenter may avoid these holes while he scrapes the parchment. (Vnoucek, p. 86-87) When the thinning is complete, the parchment is taken off the frame, laid out flat, and pumiced to remove any irregularities. (Vnoucek, p. 89)
  
  Even after scraping and pumicing, the hair side will be yellower than the flesh side, and will tend to curl in on itself because the hair side is less elastic. The flesh side will be whiter, and curl outwards. (for more details on the making of parchment, see DeHamel pp. 25-36)
  
  
  
  To make a codex, each sheet of parchment was usually folded in half to make a bifolium; several bifolia might be nested one within the other, and sewn along the crease in the middle to make a quire, or gathering. A gathering also might be made from a single sheet by folding the single sheet in half along the vertical axis, with the hair side on the outside (making a bifolium), then in half again along the horizontal axis (thus making four folios, or a quarto) and perhaps in half again along the vertical axis (thus making eight folios, or an octavo). After the final crease was sewn, the pages of a quarto or octavo could be split so that the gathering could be opened. But whether a gathering was made by nesting bifolia or by folding a single sheet of parchment multiple times to make a quarto or octavo, gatherings were constructed so that the outside surfaces exposed the hair side, and all the facing pages within were either both flesh side or both hair side (as happens naturally when one makes a quarto or octavo by folding a single sheet).
  
  Our manuscript is different. Because of its large size, the folios are actually single sheets of parchment, each from a single sheep; these single sheets overlap and are glued together in the crease through which the quire is sewn. This overlap is evident both where the sheets have remained glued together and where they have come apart, both when looking at the gutter and at the ends of the quires, near the endbands. The first four folios in our codex are actually two independent bifolia. The rest of the codex consists of 6-folio quires, each made up of three bifolia constructed from separate large sheets of vellum. Two of these quires are missing folios; for details, see below.
  
  Many of the folios, particularly on the hair side, have a dark ridge running down the center where we can see the sheep's spine; this thicker, less elastic skin is quite different from the thinner, stretchier, skin of the flanks and axilla visible at the right and left edges of these folios. The folios where this dark ridge is most evident also exhibit evidence of having been quite heavily scraped and delaminated.
  
  
  
  Carefully-written manuscripts such as ours would have guidelines, scored on the parchment with a knife (drypoint), written in ink or, as in our manuscript, drawn with a lead plummet. (DeHamel, p. 56) Our text is marked with double vertical lines that extend from the top to the bottom of the page to mark off the left and right margins; the horizontal guidelines for the text of the chants extend beyond these vertical lines, but not to the edge of the page.
  
  A common way to speed the process of ruling the folios in a gathering was to measure out the rulings on the first leaf, and then to make a hole right through the entire gathering where the vertical and horizontal lines met. These prickings would then allow each leaf in the gathering to be ruled quickly and consistently. (DeHamel p. 57) These prickings are evident in many folios of our manuscript, where the horizontal guidelines intersect the inner and outer vertical guidelines.
  
  
  
  
  
  Although there is evidence that some manuscripts were ruled and written before they were sewn into gatherings (DeHamel pp. 48-50), the prickings on our manuscript are evidence that Rauner 003203 was organized into gatherings before the process of ruling and writing began. The guidelines can also help us differentiate repairs that were made during the parchment-making process from those that were made later during the book’s use.
  
  
  
  Guidelines, presumably sketched as the text was being written, mark out the spaces for the large capitals at the beginnings of chants and for the red-and-blue initials that appear at the beginning of responsories and before some antiphons (including those at the beginning of each nocturn).
  
  
  
  
  The text in our manuscript was written with a quill pen that would have been dipped into an ink-pot and would have needed frequent sharpening with a knife; in fact, medieval images of scribes show them at work with their quill in one hand, and a pen-knife in the other. (DeHamel pp. 61-69) Black ink was most frequently made from carbon, with gum to make it adhere, or with iron gall, a mixture of oak apples (galls) and ferrous sulphate, with gum arabic as a thickener. Red ink would have been made from vermilion (mercuric sulphide), egg white (glair), and gum arabic. (DeHamel pp. 69-72) The scribe would have sat at a sloping desk. Before beginning work, he would perhaps have finished off the surface of the parchment by rubbing it with pumice, and smoothing it with chalk. (DeHamel, pp. 78-79)
  
  Our scribes would have written the text first, and perhaps were also responsible for the large capitals that are written in pen with black ink and gray highlights. The places for blue-and-red initials and inhabited initials would have been marked out; the scribes may have sketched these initials out as well, and left notes for the illuminator; subsequent damage to our manuscript reveals some of these markings, which were originally concealed by paint.
  
  
  
  After the text was written, the red five-line staff was added, and then the musical notation. Finally, the red-and-blue initials and inhabited initials were added. Close examination of portions of the manuscript containing these elements reveals the order in which they were written (Hughes, p. 117; DeHamel pp. 101-111, with images of unfinished manuscripts that make the process clear).
  
  
  
  
  
  The final step in producing a book was the binding. When the scribes and illuminators had finished their work, the book was still in gatherings, perhaps not yet sewn through their central folds. Before binding, the pages would have been cleaned up (for example, there are signs of the erasure of some of the guidelines in Rauner 003203).
  
  
  To make the text block, the individual gatherings would be sewn onto cords running horizontal to the spine of the book. These cords would have been attached vertically to a frame; one by one, in order, each gathering would be laid down with its spine against the cords, and sewn to each cord through its central fold, or gutter. When the process was complete, all the gatherings would have been stacked and sewn to the cords.
  
  Then, the book would have been taken off the frame, and endbands sewn to the head and tail edges of the spine, to firm it up. (DeHamel, p. 134) Although our manuscript, like most medieval manuscripts made for use, has been rebound more than once over the years, it still illustrates the process:
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  Now the text block was ready to be attached to its cover. The cords were threaded through holes in the boards, and attached to the boards with nails or pegs. Then the boards and spine might be covered with leather, and fitted with metal bosses and other furniture, with clasps to hold the book shut and prevent the parchment from curling. (DeHamel pp. 137-141)