Note p — Chapter IX · [a]
Reading edition
Parchment was so scarce that none could be procured about 1120 for an illuminated copy of the Bible. Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Dissert. II. I suppose the deficiency was of skins beautiful enough for this purpose; it cannot be meant that there was no parchment for legal instruments.
Manuscripts written on papyrus, as may be supposed from the fragility of the material, as well as the difficulty of procuring it, are of extreme rarity. That in the British Museum, being a charter to a church at Ravenna in 572, is in every respect the most curious: and indeed both Mabillon and Muratori seem never to have seen anything written on papyrus, though they trace its occasional use down to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, 1. ii.; Muratori, Antichità Italiane, Dissert. xliii. p. 602. But the authors of the Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique speak of several manuscripts on this material as extant in France and Italy. t. i. p. 493.
As to the general scarcity and high price of books in the middle ages, Robertson (Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note x.), and Warton in the above-cited dissertation, not to quote authors less accessible, have collected some of the leading facts; to whom I refer the reader.