T h e  V i r t u a l  A b b e y : A  M e d i e v a l  T o u r
Abbey Entrance | Herb Garden | Scriptorium | Wine Cellar

Anthropomorphic Initial	Hard Point	Pen
Antiphonal	Herbal	Pigment
Bestiary	Historiated Initial	Pounce
Boards	Hymnal	Pricking
Books of Hours	Illuminator	Psalter
Breviary	Initial	Purple Pages
Carolingian	Ink	Rubricator
Colophon	Insular	Ruling
Diaper	Knife	Saints' Lives
Divine Office	Lead Point	Scribe
Drollery	Marginalia	Script
Evangelistic Portraits	Miniature	Scriptorium
Exemplar	Mise-en-Page	Underdrawing
Foliate Initial	Oak Gall	Vellum
Gesso	Outline Drawing	Vernacular
Gilding	Palimpset	Zoomorphic
Gloss	Parchment

Pen - Isadore, the 6th century Bishop of Seville wrote in his Intrumenta scribe calumus et penna, "the instruments of the scribe are the reed and quill." Both instruments were first cured to harden, then cut in a 45-degree angle to produce a nib which was split slightly lengthwise to channel the ink down from the shaft and onto the page. Quills were made from the first five flight feathers (the pinions, seconds and thirds) of a goose, swan, raven or crow. Also see Knife.

Pigment - the coloring agent in paint. It was usually ground and mixed by monastic scribes or their apprentices using mineral or vegetable matter as the preferred media. Starting with a base of glair - a mixture of egg whites and water (sometimes supplemented with gum arabic or honey), pigment was extracted in a variety of methods depending on the color used. Red may have been obtained from cinnabar, or red lead, minium or sandaraca, prepared by heating white lead for several days. Indigo and white lead yielded blue, as did the juice from blue flowers or mulberries. Brown was extracted from burnt wood, and purple from plant or shell-fish dyes. An arsenic compound, orpiment, produced yellow.

Pounce - any variant of white ash, powdered bone or chalk that was rubbed on parchment to raise the nap and provide a good 'tooth' for the quill. Pounce also helped to whiten and degrease the writing surface.

Pricking - the guidelines used by scribes to accurately rule the parchment before setting down text; accomplished by 'walking' a pair of dividers (compass) down the page or, later, by a starwheel or parchment runner. A Lead Point and set square were then used to line up the resulting prick marks to ensure the lines were straight and true.

Psalter - a book of Psalms used for both private devotion and in The Divine Office. A common embellishment was a Miniature or Historiated Initial of King David, author of many of the Psalms.

Purple Pages - parchment dyed or painted purple overlaid with gold, silver or white lettering or as a background to illumination. Usually seen in the monastic manuscripts of the Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon periods and later.

Rubrication - the application of rubrics or red lettering to distinguish titles and chapter headings. Sometimes considered a trade specialty, although the rubricator could also be the Scribe. Most often, rubrics were laid down after the main text was completed. From the Lt. rubrium or red.

Ruling - the horizontal lines that guided the scribes hand. Spacing was accomplished by Pricking and the use of a set square. In early scriptoria manuscripts were usually lightly scored by a Hard Point, later by Lead Point and sometimes, by the 1200's, in Ink.

next ->