pergamena

Parchment derives from Medieval Latin pergamena (or pergamentum), meaning 'writing material from Pergamon,' a city in western Asia Minor (modern Bergama, Turkey). The ancient story of parchment's invention, preserved by Pliny the Elder in the first century CE, claims that the Pergamene king Eumenes II (ruled 197–159 BCE) developed refined animal-skin writing material when Egypt embargoed papyrus exports to prevent Pergamon's library from rivaling Alexandria's. The story is almost certainly a myth: treated animal skins had been used as writing surfaces in Egypt and the Near East for centuries before Eumenes II. What Pergamon may have done is refine the preparation process or popularize a superior form. The etymology, at least, is clear: the city's Latin name, Pergamum, gave the material its name regardless of who invented it.

The preparation of true parchment was distinct from simple leather-making. The skin of a sheep, goat, or calf was soaked in lime to loosen the hair, then stretched taut on a wooden frame while still wet, scraped on both sides to remove all traces of hair and fat, and left to dry under tension. The tension during drying caused the skin's fibers to reorganize, producing a surface that was not leather (which is tanned to be supple) but something harder, smoother, and more receptive to ink: translucent when scraped thin, brilliant white when prepared well. Vellum — from Old French veel ('calf') — was the finest grade, made from calfskin or sometimes the skin of stillborn lambs or kids. A single Bible required the hides of approximately 170 calves. The medieval book was an agricultural product as much as a cultural one.

Parchment's great advantage over papyrus was durability. It did not rot in damp climates, could be scraped clean and reused (producing the palimpsest, from Greek 'scraped again'), and was strong enough to be folded without cracking — a property that enabled the codex, the bound-page book format that replaced the scroll. The codex, which we would recognize as a book, was adopted by early Christians who found it more practical than scrolls for reference and transport. Parchment made the codex possible; the codex made Christianity's textual culture portable. The animal skin that replaced the Nile reed also changed the shape of the book itself.

The word parchment traveled from Medieval Latin into Old French as parchemin, and into English in the thirteenth century. By then it named not just the material but any document written on it — a legal charter, a certificate, a letter of authority. When paper replaced parchment for most purposes in the fifteenth century, important documents continued to be written on parchment as a mark of their gravity. British parliamentary acts were written on parchment until 1849; many legal documents still are. The animal skin survived as a medium of formal authority long after it was economically obsolete, precisely because its durability made it legible as permanence. A parchment document said: this matters, this will last, the skin of an animal has been prepared with great care so that these words will endure.