THE SECRETAS PRECEDE ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY--EFFORTTO IMPROVE GALL INKS--VARIATIONS IN INK COLORS--THE USE OF RED INK IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES--COLOR COMPARISONS BETWEEN INKWRITINGS OF ITALY, GERMANY, FRANCE, ENGLAND ANDSPAIN--HOW TO DETERMINE THE ANTIQUITY OF MSS.--PRACTICES WHICH OBTAINED IN MONASTIC LIBRARIESOF VARIOUS COUNTRIES---KINDS OF INK EMPLOYED IN LITURGICAL WRITINGS--THE PUBLIC SCRIBES AND THEIR EMPLOYMENTS--EFFORTS TO COUNTERFEITOLD SCRIPT IN EARLY PRINTED BOOKS--WHEN THEY WERE ABANDONED.
IT is well known that alchemy preceded chemistry and hence the Secreta came first. When the formula for making a real "gall" ink had ceased to be a secret, chemistry was then but little understood. It is not a matter for wonder, therefore, to learn that "gall" ink of the first half of the twelfth century was low in grade and poor in quality. It was a muddy fluid easily precipitated and it deteriorated quickly. Acentury or more of experimenting was needed to modify or overcome defects, as well as to gain information about the chemical value of the different tannins, the relative proportions of each constituent and the correct methods in its admixture.
There is no written account of this ink being manufactured as an industry until over three hundred years later. Hence, as it appears so frequently of varying degrees of color on documents of the intervening centuries, we are compelled to assume that it was compounded by individuals who had neither chemical knowledge, nor who had made a study or a business of ink-making. Notwithstanding which, its progress seems to have been comparatively rapid and like the same ink of the present day was to be obtained of any quality or kind, whether unadulterated or containing some added color.
Intense black or a black tinged with red-brown characterizes the color of the inks found on the very earliest MSS. Their lasting color phenomena, due to the employment of lampblack and kindred substances even after a lapse of so many ages, is at this late day of no particular moment as they but prove the virtues of the different types of "Indian" inks.
A different set of facts are evident in the inks of mediaeval times which are found to greatly vary according to their ages and locality. But few black inks of the ninth and tenth centuries remain to us.
In the MSS. of those centuries a red ink was the prevailing one even to the extent of entire volumes being written with it. In Italy and many other portions of Southern Europe specimens now extant, when compared with those belonging to Germany and other more northern countries, are seen to be blacker and this is also true when those of France and England are compared, the blacker inks belonging to France.
With the gradual disappearance of the so-called "Dark Ages," the ink found on Spanish written MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are notedly of intense blackness while those of some of the other countries appear of a rather faded gray color, and in the sixteenth century, this gray color effect prevailed all over the Christian world.
To revert again to the ink phenomena of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which are of Italian origin. In no section of that country or of Europe during those centuries do ink creations possess, in so marked a degree, the variety of color qualities that are seen on those of the city of Florence. Indeed it may be truly said that during those periods more ink written MSS. were produced in that place than all the rest of Europe. These productions of MSS. were not confined to simple ink writings. The heads of religious orders and rulers of the country liked to have artists near them to illuminate their missals and sacred books, besides the decorating of walls in their churches and palaces.
Through this art of illuminating and the painting of miniatures in MSS. books, "oil" painting took root and the day for mere symbols and hieroglyphics was over.
In that city of scholars and wealth it was a fashion and later the custom to acquire Greek, Latin and Oriental MSS. and copy them for circulation and sale.
The prices offered were sufficient to stimulate the search and zeal for them. We learn that in the year 1400 "on the square of the Duoma a spacciatore was established whose business was to sell manuscripts often full of mistakes and blunders." Nicholas V, before he became Pope, was nicknamed "Tommaso the Copyist." He is said to have presented to the Vatican library as a gift five thousand volumes of his own creation.
The information of these increasing demands for ancient documents of any kind spread over Europe and portions of Asia, bringing into Florence a great quantity of them, as well as many scholars and copyists.
Shiploads of the works of the Byzantine historians arrived from the Golden Horn, and the city became a vast manufactory for duplicating or forging ancient MSS. Parchment and vellum were too costly to employ very much, so most of them were of paper.
Vespaciano, one of the many engaged in this business and who lived in 1464, found it necessary in order to reduce the cost of production, to become a paper merchant.
In writing to a friend he says:
