LECTURE: The Language of Parchment: Learning the History of Manuscripts with the Help of Visual Assessment of the Parchment, by Jiří Vnouček (restauratore), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Sala Barberini, martedì 28 gennaio 2014, ore 16.00.
The Royal Library, Department of Preservation, Copenhagen Studies of the physical appearance of the parchment which has been used for writing manuscripts can provide an interesting supplement to the existing forms of manuscript research and help to create a more complex image of the information recorded in medieval books.
Parchment has its own language. To understand its message it is possible to carry out systematic research on the characteristics of different types of parchment and the different signs left on its surface from the process of manufacture or later damage. To be able to recognize differences in the parchments in manuscripts it is also important to understand the different methods of its preparation at different periods in history. Practical experiments with the manufacture of parchment can help to verify some of the theories or hypotheses. Reconstruction of the methods of production of the parchment can also reveal the origin of some of the imperfections which can later be recognized in historical manuscripts.
Methods and tools employed for the visual examination are kept quite simple, so that any researcher in manuscript studies would be able to perform them. Different types of lighting must be used in order to recognize remarkable details giving us information about the types of animals, their sizes and the anatomy of the skins which were used in the manuscripts. Special graphical and photographical methods were used to record different traces from tools originating from the production of the parchment. Interesting results are appearing when parchments which were used for the production of manuscripts in the same scriptorium are compared