Scribes and Poor-Quality Parchment

A literate, dexterous, dogged writer and copyist.

"The scribe to whom a poor-quality parchment had been given was in for a very disagreeable task, and in the margins of surviving monastic manuscripts there are occasional outbursts of distress: 'The parchment is hairy' . . . 'Thin ink, bad parchment, difficult text' . . . 'Thank God, it will soon be dark.' 'Let the copyist be permitted to put an end to his labor,' a weary monk wrote beneath his name, the date, and the place where he worked; 'Now I've written the whole thing," wrote another. 'For Christ's sake give me a drink.'"

The Swerve, How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt (2011).