The next stage in the work was the writing of the plain black text. In early times it appears to have been usual, or at least not uncommon, for the same hand to write the text and add the painted illuminations, but when the production of illuminated manuscripts came mostly into secular hands, the trades of the scribe and the illuminator were usually practised by different people; and in late times a further division still took place, and the miniaturist frequently became separated from the decorative illuminator. _Guiding letters._ Thus we find that in many manuscripts the scribe has introduced in the blank spaces minute guiding letters[290] to tell the illuminator what each initial was to be, and, especially in fifteenth century Italian manuscripts, instructions are added for the miniaturist, telling him what the subject of each picture was to be. These instructions were commonly written on the edge of the page so that they were cut off by the binder, but in many cases they still exist, not obliterated by the subsequent painting. But to return to the progress of the page, when the scribe had finished the plain text, leaving the necessary blank spaces for the illuminated capitals and miniatures, the work of decoration then began. _Decoration._ As a rule the decorative foliage and the like was finished before the separate miniatures, if there were any, were begun. First the illuminator lightly sketched in outline the design of the ornament, using a lead point. Next, wherever burnished gold was to be introduced, the thick mordant-ground was laid on; the gold leaf was then applied and finished with tooling and burnishing. _Gold leaf._ The reason why the gold was applied before any of the painting was begun was this; the long rubbing with the burnisher acted not only on the gold leaf, but also naturally rubbed the vellum a little way all round it. This would have smudged the painting round the gold if it had been applied first. Moreover, the burnisher was liable to carry small particles of gold on to the surrounding vellum, which would have given a ragged look to the design, if the adjacent surfaces had not been subsequently covered with pigment. In cases where there is an isolated gold boss there is usually a slight disfigurement from the burnisher rubbing the vellum all round the gold. In these cases the outline of the gold was made clean and definite by the addition of a strong black outline, as is mentioned above. _The painting._ When the whole of the burnished gold was finished, the painting was then executed. If any fluid gold pigment were used, that was usually added last of all. _Transferred patterns._ In some cases, in the later and cheaper French and Flemish manuscripts, the ornaments in the borders were not specially designed and sketched in for the manuscripts but previously used outline patterns were transferred on to the vellum by a bone _stilus_ and ordinary transfer paper, made by rubbing red chalk all over its surface.