virgin parchment, which from its nature was suited to the delicacies of calligraphy and illumination. Moreover, we see from a statute of the University of Paris, dated 1291, that the parchment trade had attained at that period to considerable development; so, as a protection against the frauds and deceptions which might result from the great competition of traders in it, and to insure a good article being furnished to students and artists, a special privilege was granted to the university, which, in the person of its rector, had not only the right of inspection, but also the refusal of all parchment bought in Paris, no matter whence it had come. Besides which, at the fair of Lendit, which was held every year at Saint-Denis, on the domains of the abbey (Fig. 329), and at the fair of Saint-Lazare, the rector likewise caused the parchment brought to them to be examined, and the merchants of Paris could not purchase any till the king’s agents, those of the Bishop of Paris, and the masters and scholars of the university, had provided themselves with what they required (Fig. 330). Let us add that the rector was paid a duty on all parchment sold, and the result of this tax was the only source of income attached to the rectorship in the seventeenth century. Although white parchment seems to be the best suited for writing, the Middle Ages, following the example of antiquity, gave to the material various tints, especially purple and yellow. The purple was chiefly intended to receive characters of gold or silver. The Emperor Maximinius, the younger, inherited from his mother the works of Homer inscribed in gold on purple vellum; and parchment tinted in this way was, during the first centuries, one of the prerogatives reserved for princes and the great dignitaries of the Church. It is remarkable that the barbarism of the seventh and eighth centuries did not diminish the favour in which these luxurious manuscripts were held. Little by little, however, the custom (of writing the entire work in gold or colours) dwindled away. Scribes began by colouring a few pages only in each volume, then some margins or frontispieces; and lastly this decoration was restricted to the heads of chapters, or to words to which great prominence was to be given, or to capital letters. The _rubricatores_ (literally, writers in red), workmen who performed this operation, came in time to be mere painters of letters or _rubrics_ (so called because they were originally painted red), of whose assistance, however, the first printers availed themselves to _rubric_ or colour the initials of missals, Bibles, and law books.