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The cleaned and prepared skins would be folded and cut to create folios, which had a front (recto) and back (verso).

Vellum is literally the skin of a cow and parchment that of a sheep, but the two terms have come to be used interchangeably.

Most medieval manuscripts are written on either vellum or parchment. Many of the earliest books were written on papyrus, but animal skin provided a more durable surface. The change provided a differently shaped field for text and illumination, and it also allowed readers to make faster progress through the book. During late Antiquity the scroll was replaced by the codex, the form of the modern book, with its gatherings of pages bound together into a volume whose pages were turned individually. In the classical world manuscripts took the form of scrolls that were unwound as the reader progressed in a linear fashion from beginning to end. The colors used in medieval illumination were, for the most part, mineral pigments. Such images are called “miniatures,” named after the reddish pigment derived from minium that was used to frame the images of late Antiquity and early Christian manuscripts. Depictions of the labors of the months could show the reader what happened on the days listed in a calendar, while images of Christ, Mary, and the saints in prayer books or Books of Hours (late medieval books used for private devotion) provided a focus for the written prayers these manuscripts contained. Narrative illumination could do the same, but it also often used to provide additional information or commentary on the written words of the text. For example, illuminated letters provided a guide to important passages or sections of a book. The word drives from the Latin illuminare (“to light up”), and medieval illumination should be understood as providing a gloss, or visual commentary, on the way the book was intended to be used and/or understood. Illuminated manuscripts are books that have been decorated in ways that help bring to light the book’s contents. Manuscripts are books that have been produced by hand.