ON PARCHMENT

A richly detailed and illustrated history of parchment.

A foundational work of Irish literature is the Táin, which records a war between two contending kingdoms sparked by a cattle-rustling raid. It is perhaps ironic that, in Irish legend, the Táin was first written on the skin of a “miraculous cow” once owned by St. Ciarán, a singular instance of “the identification and celebration of a particular animal whose hide becomes the pages of a specific book.” Never mind, writes Holsinger, that the cow was said to have died a natural death in old age while good parchment comes from the skin of younger cattle. (The youngest cattle yield a related material, vellum, whose name is related to veal.) Holsinger examines the long history of the use of animal skins to record literary, historical, and religious moments, citing, for example, the Greek historian Herodotus’ descriptions of the parchment scrolls he encountered while exploring Egypt—though Herodotus himself wrote on papyrus, “the predominant medium of elite writing in the ancient world.” St. Paul, too, wrote on papyrus, but he collected parchment scrolls that he asked the disciple Timothy to bring to him. By Holsinger’s account, St. Augustine of Hippo was being more than metaphorical when he “imagines the heavens as a great membrane book, a firmamentum cloaked by the same pelles (skins) that clothe men after the Fall.” Throughout the text, the author enlists a vast array of sources, ranging from the work of the ancient Egyptians to the modern creations by the American artist Kate Nessler, who draws scenes from nature on vellum and parchment. The processes involved may be off-putting to those who care about animal welfare, but Holsinger also examines efforts to source parchment ethically, avoiding what one activist calls “the inhumane treatment of animals upon whose backs we are literally writing and the sacred texts inscribed on these very skins.”

An engaging exploration of book history.