The Transition from Ancient to Medieval
The initial form of written material was the scroll, or roll, written on a sheet of papyrus that were glued, onto another. Papyrus leaves were made by a process of cross-layering and beating the wet papyrus reeds, as the Ptolemaic fragment shows. The scroll format was of limited use in terms of portability, as well as use in processions and displays. Long works and epics in scroll form required many scrolls gathered together in a basket, all of which could be fit into a single book. The more modern form of bound book, or codex, also contained great amounts of information, but was easier to transport. The codex further served early Christian purposes as a devotional tool itself. Brilliant images of Christ and other scenes from the bible could easily be transported in a Western-style book and displayed to congregations of worshippers. The rise of the codex accompanied the spread of Christianity during the first centuries A.D., and the process of bookmaking was continuously refined throughout the Middle Ages.

Parchment
Medieval parchment makers used a variety of different animals to create parchment. The hides were prepared through a series of soakings and scrapings to remove the hair, and pumiced to smooth the surface for work. Next, a parchment maker stretched the clean hide in a wooden frame, tying small strings to the edges of the pelt, so that it was taut but did not tear as it dried and shrunk.
After the parchment sheets had been scraped to the proper thickness and cut into rectangular double-pages, they were bound into the basic units of the medieval book, the gathering. A gathering usually consisted of eight leaves, or four sheets of parchment folded in half, and a scribe or illuminator would work on a single gathering at a time. Medieval gatherings faced each other, hair side to hair side, and flesh to flesh, with the first and last pages being the hair side.

Binding and Gatherings
Before the process of writing could begin, the scribe would rule the gatherings, leaving a pattern of lines, so that writing would be neat and even. Ruling was often done with a ruler and a stylus or the back of a knife, leaving lines through sheer pressure alone. Most manuscripts from the twelfth century onwards often had rulings done in lead, leaving marks much like a modern day pencil. To achieve uniformity and accelerate the process of ruling, a scribe would often poke through the left and right margins of a gathering systematically with an awl, so that they could be easily lined by connecting the points.

Writing Essentials
The three key materials necessary to medieval scribing were the pen, knife and ink. Pens were usually quills, preferably from swans or geese, or hollow reeds. The scribe fashioned and maintained his own pens, often having to cut the pen numerous times to sustain a sharp angle for writing. Invaluable in this process was the knife. Scribes wrote with their right hand, and kept their knives in their left as they worked. The blade was used not only to sharpen the quills when necessary, but as an eraser. Medieval ink would set permanently and quickly, so quick blade-work allowed the scribe to scrape away any errors before they set permanently.

Inks
Two major types of ink were used in the production of medieval manuscripts: carbon ink and metal-gall ink. Medieval ink-makers produced carbon ink from charcoal and a gum, and it seems to have been in common usage until the twelfth century. The making of metal-gall ink involved more work, but scribes preferred the substance because it soaked into parchment easily and did not have the gritty qualities of carbon ink. The manufacturer would crush up several oak galls - small round knots that form on a branch from an insect egg laid just beneath the surface of the wood - then leave them in rainwater, in the sun or near a fire, for several days. Sometimes wine or vinegar was substituted for rainwater, or the liquid boiled to speed up the process. This liquid was then mixed with a substance called copperas (or ferrous sulfate), which occurred naturally in Spain. Inks of either variety were stored in inkpots or horns, and many scribal desks had metal hoops along the side to store the vessels for the ink.

Gilding and Burnishing
After the scribe completed the writing, illumination of the manuscript could begin. First, the surfaces for creating these designs and images had to be sufficiently prepared. Gold accents had to be added before the artist applied other colors, and there were three major methods of adding gold to a manuscript. The application of gold leaf, one popular medium, relied upon the se of a sticky gesso as a foundational material. Medieval gesso began as a crumbly mixture of plaster of paris and white lead, which had a little bit of sugar, to draw moisture, and red clay for coloring. When the illuminator was ready to decorate the text, he combined this powdered mixture with egg glair (the substance that forms in the bottom of a bowl of whipped egg whites) and apply it to the image with a quill pen, rather than a brush. The gesso dried overnight and, the following day, the illuminator would breathe heavily onto the gesso to dampen it slightly, making it tacky, before arranging the sheets of gold with a soft brush. The artisan pressed lightly onto the leaf with a piece of silk, to set it into the gesso. He would then burnish it with a tool made from a stone such as agate or hematite, or the tooth of a carnivorous animal. The artisan rubbed the design vigorously to polish it, creating a glittering decoration that would never tarnish or fade.

Illuminating
Throughout the text the scribe would leave carefully preplanned spaces for the miscellaneous illuminated letters and miniatures. Initial letters of words that introduced new or especially important sections of a text varied in size and coloring from others in order to help focus the reader’s attention. They could be decorative, with a simple visual motif; inhabited, in which the letter contained or was intertwined with a single figure; or historiated, which told a mini-narrative, sometimes relating to the text, and sometimes not. These approaches to decorating initials developed over time and it was only in the thirteenth century that historiated initials began to be widely adopted.
Medieval paints were created from a variety of substances, both organic and inorganic. The costs for these paints varied radically depending upon the substances in question. Colors such as red and green could be made from common, local minerals, but true ultramarine blue could only be derived from lapis lazuli, and was the costliest pigment used in medieval manuscripts.

The Transition from Manuscript to Print
The invention of the moveable-type printing press, circa 1455, doomed the days of the scribe, but illuminators hung onto their profession even after this invention revolutionized book production. Yet many bibliophiles still wanted their texts to resemble manuscripts and hired artisans to add miniatures and decorated initials to the text. The first printing house in Rome had its own illuminators, who would work on their more luxurious commissions. The transition between manuscript and printed books was neither smooth nor perfect. Smaller runs of books continued to be produced by hand, rather than set in movable type and, even after the use of woodcuts completely replaced made-by-hand miniatures, many of theses illustrative cuts were hand-colored by artisans.