Mar 28, 2021 10:00:00

Why was parchment used in medieval and early modern legal documents?

Until the invention of flat-shaped paper with entwined plant fibers, such as parchment made from sheep skin and vellum made from cow skin, various types of animal skin were used for transcription. It was. A research team led by Sean Doherty, a researcher of archeology at the University of Exeter, discovered that most of the legal documents produced from the Middle Ages to the early modern period used parchment, and the sheep skin was described in the legal documents. I am considering why it was suitable for.

Scratching the surface: the use of sheepskin parchment to deter textual erasure in early modern legal deeds | Heritage Science | Full Text
https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6

Lawyers used sheepskin as anti-fraud device for hundreds of years to stop fraudsters pulling the woo

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-lawyers-sheepskin-anti-fraud-device-hundreds.html

The research team collected a total of 645 legal documents written between 1582 and 1940, cut out some of them, and analyzed the components using matrix-assisted laser desorption / ionization (MALDI). As a result, it was found that out of 645 legal documents, 622 (96.4%) were made from parchment and 23 (3.6%) were made from sheep or goat skin.

The researchers point out that the reason why parchment was used in most legal documents was 'high fat content in sheep skin.' The lipid content of animal skin, which is often used as a raw material, is cow (2 to 3%), goat (3 to 10%), and sheep (30 to 50%), respectively, and sheep skin has the highest lipid content. Includes.

The manufacturing process of parchment and vellum includes the process of removing the lipids contained in the skin with lime. Therefore, parchment containing a large amount of lipid has more 'gaps between layers' than paper made from other animal skins, and is easily scratched when rubbed.

If you scrape off the content written on the parchment, it will be scratched, so it will be easier to understand that you have scraped off the written content. For example, in the following document, the color of the rewritten part changes, making it easier to see where it was rewritten.

In addition, the economic treatise ' Dialogus de Scaccario ' written in the 12th century states that 'if you erase the contents written on parchment, scratches will always remain.' Jonathan Finch, a member of the research team, said, 'Parchment had the function of making it easier to understand that the content was rewritten. Therefore, parchment is used to prevent unauthorized alteration of legal documents. It was done. '