Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1885 — The Earliest Parchment. [ARTICLE]

The Earliest Parchment.

In the early middle ages a man would take a simple rough sheepskin and with his own hands convert it into a missal, illuminated and “noted” for music. “Graduate unum, promanu formavit, purgavit, punxit, sulcavit, pria scripsit, illuminavit, musiceque notavit syllabatim.” Among other interesting particulars brought before the reader we learn that the process of the Inquisition against the Knights Templars was engrossed on a roll more than seventy feet long—a charge inevitably as fatal, though by no means as brief, as that brought by the Spartan Judges against the poor Platmans after the fearful two years’ siege. With the introduction of parchment begins the* systematic history of miniature. The use of linen paper, however, is spoken of as early as 1125, the most ancient fragment extant being that on which the Sire de Joinville wrote a letter to King Louis X. in 1315. Pens, pencils, inks—in short, everything belonging to the art of the scribe and the miniaturist—‘are minutely treated of and particulars given, from reliable sources, of the cost which the decoratinn of an illuminated book would reach when such books were executed for wealthy patrons.— The Academy.