A manuscript is a text written by hand. In Latin, ‘manu’ means ‘by hand’ and ‘scriptus’ means ‘written’. Early manuscripts were made by monks, and monasteries were places of learning.

A famous book made at the Jarrow monastery was the Codex Amiatinus. It is the oldest surviving complete copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible.

The first abbot of Jarrow, Benedict Biscop, went to Rome with the prior, Ceolfrith (Chay-ol-frith). A prior is a monk who leads a monastery, one step below an abbot. Bede wrote that they came back with books ‘of all kinds’. The library of the twin monasteries of Wearmouth-Jarrow was seen as one of the most important outside Rome.

Making a manuscript is tricky and has lots of steps. By about 1100 AD, making manuscripts was becoming more commercial. People with specific skills would do one job. You might have a vellum maker, a scribe, an illuminator, and a book binder. The early manuscripts made at Jarrow were made entirely by the monks. Scribes at the monastery would use animals skins leftover from the monastery kitchen, reminding us that nothing went to waste in Anglo-Saxon times.

Instead of paper, scribes wrote on vellum, which is made from animal skin. Vellum is still used for important documents, such as
Acts of Parliament, because it lasts a long time. It took a lot of animal skins to make a manuscript. Did you know that it took about 130 skins to make the Lindisfarne Gospels?

Scribes wrote with quills, which were made using feathers from large birds such as a goose or swan. There is evidence to suggest
that some scribes preferred quills made from a specific bird. Scribes kept a knife handy to sharpen the quill and scrape away
mistakes. This is where we get the word penknife.

After the written words were completed, some artistic decoration could be added. This is often called illumination.

The Anglo-Saxon world was full of colour. Anglo-Saxon texts are known for their artistry and the decorated letters often found at the start of new sections. This is called illumination, as the colour brings light to the page.

Inks were made of natural materials like plants, shells, metals and minerals. Some of these came from far away. Orpiment, which made yellow, may have come from as far as western Asia. Common colours in early Northumbrian texts include a red made from lead; a green called verdigris (verd-i-gree) made from copper; and yellow from orpiment. They made blue from the woad plant and purple from lichen.

Scribes knew a lot about these pigments. They even experimented with them. The Lindisfarne Gospels had many shades of purple, red and blue. These were made from plant extracts. They found that the extract from the turnsole plant can change colours. It is red when exposed to vapours from acids like vinegar, and blue or purple when exposed to alkalis like ammonia from urine.

The style in which scribes wrote is called calligraphy. Calligraphy is still practiced today.

Different scripts, or fonts, were passed from master to student. This created local styles. Some monasteries even had their own scripts. After the Normans came in 1066, some scribes in Kent began using a script from the Norman abbey of Bec. They may have copied scribes that had been taught there. This was called ‘prickly’ script because of its pointy shapes.

The Codex Amiatinus and many texts from Wearmouth-Jarrow are written in the Italian uncial script. This script was adapted by Irish and Northumbrian scribes to create the Insular half-uncial script. The Lindisfarne Gospels is written in the half-uncial script. This is because Lindisfarne Priory was founded by St Aidan from Iona. St Aidan and the monastery at Iona had links to Irish communities.

Scribes would sometimes leave funny notes in the margins or at the end of manuscripts. These are called marginalia. Examples include:

• “Oh, my hand!”
• “Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink”
• “It is very cold”
• “A curse on thee, O pen!”