The Parchment of the Codex Amiatinus in the Context of Manuscript Production in Northumbria Around the End of the Seventh Century: Identification of the Animal Species and Methods of Manufacture of the Parchment as Clues to the Old Narrative?

Abstract

Compiled around the turn of the eighth century, in the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery in Northumbria, the Codex Amiatinus is the oldest complete Vulgate translation that remains extant in one volume. Today, this manuscript remains awe-inspiring, not only because of its size, but also because of the number of animal skins that were necessary for its production. The Codex Amiatinus is now located in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. It is the only one of the three codices, together known as Ceolfrid’s bibles, to survive. My research combines visual analyses of parchment with knowledge obtained from experimental parchment-making. While scholars have thus far thought that all three of Ceolfrid’s bibles were composed on calf skin, I argue that the Codex Amiatinus’s text block is composed only of goat and sheep skins, while the surviving folia from the other two bibles are made from calf parchment. My study of the parchment of the Codex Amiatinus and the fragments of Ceolfrid’s other bibles raises several questions about the production of these manuscripts: is it possible that the scriptorium of the twin monasteries in Wearmouth-Jarrow was able to produce parchment from local skins in a specific Italian style? Or was the Codex Amiatinus’s parchment imported from Italy?

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