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

Saints' Lives - biographies of Christian role models canonized by the church and a widely popular genre from the early Middle Ages on.

Scribe - a monk in a monastic Scriptorium who physically wrote text in a manuscript and was sometimes responsible for illumination and rubrication. Depending on time and place, distinctions in class varied as librarii, or apprentices, sometimes trained under the tutelage of antiquarii or senior scribes. Under this arrangement, the bibliothecarius, or librarian, might assume administrative duties.

Script - a term used for the constantly changing style of handwriting used in manuscripts that generally establishes a time period or location in which a manuscript was written; distinguished by majuscule (uppercase) and minuscule (lowercase) lettering; cursive (rapidly written) or formata (formal) and arguably falling into the following eras: Uncials 400-600; Insular minuscules 500-1000; Anglo-Saxon 600-1100; Carolingian minuscule 800-1200 Early Gothic ca. 1150; Late Gothic ca. 1400.

Scriptorium - the place within the monastery where manuscripts were written. A typical Benedictine scriptorium included a large central table and writing desks placed along the walls. Another arrangement may have consisted of small individual writing rooms, or scriptoriolum and in some instances the cloister alcoves were screened off into writing chambers, or carrells.

Underdrawing - the initial drawing laid down before ink or paint was applied. Completed in Hard Point in early scriptoria, and later in Lead Point.

Vellum - See Parchment.

Vernacular - the regional language, as opposed to the customary Latin used in a great many monastic manuscripts, first seen in Ireland and Britain as early as the 6th century.

Zoomorphic Initial - a decorated initial formed wholly or in part from real or imaginary animals, as below: