The Scribe

The job of a scribe was to copy exactly the text of an existing manuscript or an exemplar. The scribe worked in a special room called a scriptorium that was set aside for the writing of manuscripts. Scribes were copyists, not writers who composed works of literature, and they trained for many years to develop graceful and uniform handwriting.

Before copying the text the scribe used a stylus, a pointed instrument, to prick tiny holes through the vellum that were guides for ruling. Blank sections were left for paintings, margins and capital letters. Using a quill pen made from goose feathers and black iron gall ink made from oak apples, the scribe copied the text from the exemplar.

Red ink was also used to copy text and the red letters are called rubrics. The word rubric comes from the Latin rubrica meaning red and it was used for titles, initial letters, chapter headings, comments, interpretations, and quotations in the body of the text and in the margins. Rubrics gave directions in manuscripts used in churches, and were also placed on religious calendars to indicate special religious observances called Red Letter Days.

Pages were measured for ruling, and the extremities of each line were pricked with a stylus or awl right through the stack of unwritten parchment. The scribe had simply to join up these prickings to reproduce the ruling pattern exactly on subsequent pages.

Shown right: a manuscript page with the prickings and rulings clearly visible. Click on the image to see an enlargement. (Nun's Prayer Book: Historiated Initial D with the Ecstasy of Mary Magdalen. Germany Cologne, c. 1450. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS Codex 141, fol. 1.)

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The Parchmenter | The Stationer or Bookseller I | The Apothecary | The Scribe | Scripts | The Artist/Illuminator | The Stationer or Bookseller II | Bibliography