paper by the empress Irene at the end of the nth or beginning
of the 12th century, in her rules for the nuns of Constantinople.
It does not appear, however, to have been very extensively used
in Greece before the middle of the 13th century, for, with one
doubtful exception, there are no extant Greek MSS. on paper
which bear date prior to that period.
The manufacture of paper in Europe was first established by the Moors in Spain in the middle of the 12th century, the headquarters of the industry being Xativa, Valencia and Toledo. But on the fall of the Moorish power the manufacture, passing into the hands of the less skilled Christians, declined in the quality of its production. In Italy also the art of paper-making was no doubt established through the Arab occupation of Sicily. But the paper which was made both there and in Spain, was in the first instance of the Oriental quality. In the laws of Alphonso of 1263 it is referred to as cloth parchment, a term which well describes its stout substance. The first mention of rag-paper occurs in the tract of Peter, abbot of Cluny (A.D. 1122–1150), adversus Judaeos, cap. 5, where, among the various kinds of books, he refers to such as are written on material made “ex rasuris veterum pannorum.”
A few words may here be said respecting MSS. written in European countries on Oriental paper or paper made in the Oriental fashion. Several which have been quoted as early instances have proved, on further examination, to be nothing but vellum. The ancient fragments of the Gospel of St Mark, preserved at Venice, which were stated by Maffei to be of paper, by Montfaucon of papyrus, and by the Benedictines of bark, are in fact written on skin. The oldest recorded document on paper was a deed of King Roger of Sicily, of the year 1102; ana there are others of Sicilian kings, of the 12th century. A Visigothic paper MS. of the 12th century from Silos near Burgos is now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. A notarial register on paper, at Geneva, dates from 1154. The oldest known imperial deed on the same material is a charter of Frederick II. to the nuns of Goess in Styria, of the year 1228, now at Vienna. In 1231, however, the same emperor forbade further use of paper for public documents, which were in future to be inscribed on vellum. Transcripts of imperial acts of Frederick II. about a.d. 1241 are at Naples. In Venice the Liber plegiorum, the entries in which begin with the year 1223, is made of rough paper; and similarly the registers of the Council of Ten, beginning in 1325, and the register of the emperor Henry VII. (1308–1313) preserved at Turin, are also written on a like substance. In the British Museum there is an older example in a MS. (Arundel 268) which contains some astronomical treatises written on an excellent paper in an Italian hand of the first half of the 13th century. The autograph MS. of Albert de Beham, 1238–1255, at Munich, is on paper. In the Public Record Office there is a letter on paper from Raymond, son of Raymond, duke of Narbonne and count of Toulouse, to Henry III. of England, written within the years 1216–1222. The letters addressed from Castile to Edward I., in 1270 and following years (Pauli in Bericht, Berl. Akad., 1854), are instances of Spanish-made paper; and other specimens in existence prove that in this latter country a rough kind of charta bombycina was manufactured to a comparatively late date.
In Italy the first place which appears to have become a great centre of the paper-making industry was Fabriano in the marquisate of Ancona, where mills were first set up in 1276, and which rose into importance on the decline of the manufacture in Spain. The earliest known water-marks in paper from this factory are of the years 1293 and 1294. The jurist Bartolo, in his treatise De insigniis et armis, refers to the excellent paper made therein the middle of the 14th century, an encomium which will be supported by those who have had occasion to examine the extant MSS. on Italian paper of that period. In 1340 a factory was established at Padua; another arose later at Treviso; and others followed in the territories of Florence, Bologna, Parma, Milan, Venice and other districts. From the factories of northern Italy the wants of southern Germany were supplied as late as the 15th century. As an instance the case of Görlitz has been cited, which drew its paper from Milan and Venice for the half century between 1376 and 1426. But in Germany also factories were rapidly founded. The earliest are said to have been set up between Cologne and Mainz, and in Mainz itself about 1320. At Nuremberg Ulman Stromer established a mill in 1390, with the aid of Italian workmen. Other places of early manufacture were Ratisbon and Augsburg. Western Germany, as well as the Netherlands and England, is said to have obtained paper at first from France and Burgundy through the markets of Bruges, Antwerp and Cologne. France owed the establishment of her first paper-mills to Spain, whence we are told the art of paper-making was introduced, as early as the year 1189, into the district of Herault. At a later period, in 1406, among the accounts of the church of Troyes, paper-mills appear as molins a toile. The development of the trade in France must have been very rapid. And with the progress of manufacture in France that of the Netherlands also grew.
In the second half of the 14th century the use of paper for all literary purposes had become well established in all western Europe; and in the course of the 15th century it gradually superseded vellum. In MSS. of this latter period it is not unusual to find a mixture of vellum and paper, a vellum sheet forming the outer, or the outer and inner, leaves of a quire while the rest are of paper.
With regard to the early use of paper in England, there is evidence that at the beginning of the 14th century it was a not uncommon material, particularly for registers and accounts. Under the year 1310, the records of Merton College, Oxford, show that paper was purchased “pro registro,” which Professor Rogers (Hist. Agricul. and Prices, i. 644) is of opinion was probably paper of the same character as that of the Bordeaux customs register in the Public Record Office, which date from the first year of Edward II. The college register referred to, which was probably used for entering the books that the fellows borrowed from the library, has perished. There is, however, in the British Museum a paper MS. (Add. 31,223), written in England, of even earlier date than the one recorded in the Merton archives. This is a register of the hustings court of Lyme Regis, the entries in which begin in the year 1309. The paper, of a rough manufacture, is similar to the kind which was used in Spain. It may have been imported direct from that country or from Bordeaux; and a seaport town on the south coast of England is exactly the place where such early relics might be looked for. Professor Rogers also mentions an early specimen of paper in the archives of Merton College, on which is written a bill of the year 1332; and some leaves of water-marked paper of 1333 exist in the Harleian collection. Only a few years later in date is the first of the registers of the King's Hall at Cambridge, a series of which, on paper, is preserved in the library of Trinity College. Of the middle of the 14th century also are many municipal books and records. The knowledge, however, which we have of the history of paper-making in England is extremely scanty. The first maker whose name is known is John Tate, who is said to have set up a mill in Hertford early in the i6th century; and Sir John Spilman, Queen Elizabeth’s jeweller, erected a paper-mill at Dartford, and in 1589 obtained a licence for ten years to make all sorts of white writing-paper and to gather, for the purpose, all manner of linen rags, scrolls or scraps of parchment, old fishing nets, &c. (Dunkin, Hist. of Dartford, 305; Harl. MS. 2206, f. 124 b). But it is incredible that no paper was made in the country before the time of the Tudors. The comparatively cheap rates at which it was sold in the 15th century in inland towns seem to afford ground for assuming that there was at that time a native industry in this commodity.
As far as the prices have been observed at which different kinds of paper were sold in England, it has been found that in 1355–1356 the price of a quire of small folio paper was 5d., both in Oxford and London. In the 15th century the average price seems to have ranged from 3d. to 4d. for the quire, and from 3s. 4d. to 4s. for the ream. At the beginning of the 16th century the price fell to 2d. or 3d. the quire, and to 3s. or 3s. 6d. the ream; but in the second half of the century, owing to the debasement
