第99章

"A. D. 704. The Arabians are supposed to have acquired the knowledge of making paper of cotton, by their conquests in Tartary.

"A. D. 706. Casiri, a Spanish author, attributes the invention of cotton paper to Joseph Amru, in this year, at Mecca; but it is well known that the Chinese and Persians were acquainted with its manufacture before this period.

"A. D. 900. The bulls of the popes in the eighth and ninth centuries were written upon cotton paper.

"A. D. 900. Montfaucon, who on account of his diligence and the extent of his researches is great authority, wrote a dissertation to prove that charta bombycine, cotton paper, was discovered in the empire of the east toward the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century.

"A. D. 1007. The plenarium, or inventory, of the treasure of the church of Sandersheim, is written upon paper of cotton, bearing this date.

"A. D. 1049. The oldest manuscript in England written upon cotton paper, is in the Bodleian collection of the British Museum, having this date.

"A. D. 1050. The most ancient manuscript on cotton paper, that has been discovered in the Royal Library at Paris having a date, bears record of this year.

"A. D. 1085. The Christian successors of Moorish paper-makers at Toledo in Spain, worked the paper-mills to better advantage than their predecessors.

Instead of manufacturing paper of raw cotton, which is easily recognized by its yellowness and brittleness, they made it of rags, in moulds through which the water ran off; for this reason it was called parchment cloth.

"A. D. 1100. The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, in Arabia, the manuscript of which bears this date, has been pronounced the oldest specimen of linen paper that has come to light.

"A. D. 1100. Arabic manuscripts were at this time written on satin paper, and embellished with a quantity of ornamental work, painted in such gay and resplendent colors that the reader might behold his face reflected as if from a mirror.

"A. D. 1100. There was a diploma of Roger, king of Sicily, dated 1145, in which be says that he had renewed on parchment a charter that had been written on cotton paper in 1100.

"A. D. 1102. The king of Sicily appears to have accorded a diploma to an ancient family of paper-makers who had established a manufactory in that island, where cotton was indigenous, and this has been thought to point to the origin of cotton paper, quite erroneously.

"A. D. 1120. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Clum, who flourished about this time, declared that paper from linen rags was in use in his day.

"A. D. 1150. Edrisi, who wrote at this time, tells us that the paper made at Xativa, an ancient city of Valencia, was excellent, and was exported to countries east and west.

"A. D. 1151. An Arabian author certifies that very fine white cotton paper was manufactured in Spain, and Cacim aben Hegi assures us that the best was made at Xativa. The Spaniards being acquainted with water-mills, improved upon the Moorish method of grinding the raw cotton and rags; and by stamping the latter in the mill, they produced a better pulp than from raw cotton, by which various sorts of paper were manufactured, nearly equal to those made from linen rags.

"A. D. 1153. Petrus Mauritius (the Abbi de Cluni), who died in this year, has the following passage on paper in his Treatise against the Jews;'The books we read every day are made of sheep, goat, or calf skin; or of rags (ex rasauris veterum pannorum),' supposed to allude to modern paper.

"A. D. 1178. A treaty of peace between the kings of Aragon and Castile is the oldest specimen of linen paper used in Spain with a date. It is supposed that the Moors, on their settlement in Spain, where cotton was scarce, made paper of hemp and flax. The inventor of linen-rag paper, whoever he was, is entitled to the gratitude of posterity.

"A. D. 1200. Casiri positively affirms that there are manuscripts in the Escurial palace near Madrid, upon both cotton and hemp paper, written prior to this time."Abdollatiph, an Arabian physician, who visited Egypt in 1200, says that the linen mummy-cloths were habitually used to make wrapping paper for the shopkeepers.

A document with the seals preserved dated A. D. 1239 and signed by Adolphus, count of Schaumburg is written on linen paper. It is preserved in the university of Rinteln, Germany, and establishes the fact that linen paper was already in use in Germany.

Specimens of flax paper and still extant are quite numerous, a very few of them having dates included in the eighth and ninth centuries.

The charta Damascena, so-called from the fact of its manufacture in the city of Damascus, was in use in the eighth century. Many Arabian MSS. on such a paper exist dating from the ninth century.

The charta bombycina (bombyx, a silk and cotton paper) was much employed during mediaeval periods.

The microscope, however, has demonstrated conclusively many things formerly in doubt and relating particularly to the matter of the character of fibre used in paper-making. One of the most important is the now established fact that there is no difference between the fibres of the old cotton and linen papers, as made from rags so named.

To ascertain the precise period and the particular nation of Europe, when and among whom the use of our common paper fabricated from linen rags first originated, was a very earnest object of research with the learned Meerman, author of a now exceedingly rare work on this subject and published in 1767.