"To make ink, cut for yourself wood of the thorn-trees in April or May, before they produce flowers or leaves, and collecting them in small bundles, allow them to lie in the shade for two, three, or four weeks, until they are somewhat dry. Then have wooden mallets, with which you beat these thorns upon another piece of hard wood, until you peel off the bark everywhere, put which immediately into a barrelful of water. When you have filled two, or three, or four, or five barrels with bark and water, allow them so to stand for eight days, until the waters imbibe all the sap of the bark.
Afterwards put this water into a very clean pan, or into a cauldron, and fire being placed under it, boil it; from time to time, also, throw into the pan some of this bark, so that whatever sap may remain in it may be boiled out. When you have cooked it a little, throw it out, and again put in more; which done, boil down the remaining water unto a third part, and then pouring it out of this pan, put it into one smaller, and cook it until it grows black and begins to thicken; add one third part of pure wine, and putting it into two or three new pots, cook it until you see a sort of skin show itself on the surface; then taking these pots from the fire, place them in the sun until the black ink purifies itself from the red dregs. Afterwards take small bags of parchment carefully sewn, and bladders, and pouring in the pure ink, suspend them in the sun until all is quite dry; And when dry, take from it as much as you wish, and temper it with wine over the fire, and, adding a little vitriol, write.
But, if it should happen through negligence that your ink be not black enough, take a fragment of the thickness of a finger and putting it into the fire, allow it to glow, and throw it directly into the ink."After reciting many receipts which pertain to other arts, this good old monk concludes:
"When you shall have re-read this often, and have committed it to your tenacious memory, you shall thus recompense me for this care of instruction, that, as often as you shall successfully have made use of my work, you pray for me for the pity of omnipotent God, who knows that I have written these things which are here arranged, neither through love of human approbation, nor through desire of temporal reward, nor have I stolen anything precious or rare through envious jealousy, nor have I kept back anything reserved for myself alone; but, in augmentation of the honour and glory of His name, I have consulted the progress and hastened to aid the necessities of many men."The "thorn" trees which Theophilus mentions are asserted by some writers (with whom I do not agree) to be those commonly known as the "Norway spruce," a species of pine of lofty proportions sometimes rising to the height of 150 feet with a trunk from four to five feet in diameter. It lives to a great age believed to exceed in many instances 450 years.
The leaves (needles, thorns) are short but stand thickly upon the branches and are of a dusky green color shining on the upper surface; the fruit is nearly cylindrical in form and of a purple color covered with scales ragged at the edges. It is a native of Europe and Northern Asia. It furnishes the material known as Burgundy pitch which is obtained by removing the juice which is secreted in the bark of the tree; it is purified by a melting process and straining either through a cloth or a layer of straw. It gives forth a peculiar odor not unpleasant, resembling turpentine.
The Burgundy pitch or rosin is soluble in hot alcohol (spirits of wine).
An ink prepared after the method laid down by this monk, assuming that he referred to the spruce-pine, while troublesome to write with, would be almost as lasting as "Indian" ink and would be most difficult to erase from parchment into which it would be absorbed due to its alcoholic qualities.
"The ink," remarks Montfaucon, "which we see in the most ancient Greek manuscripts, has evidently lost much of its pristine blackness; yet neither has it become altogether yellow or faint, but is rather tawny or deep red, and often not far from a vermillion."While there are some monuments of this kind of ink in fair condition of the fourth and succeeding centuries, they aggregate but a very small proportion of the vast number of principally Indian ink specimens which remain to us of those epochs. As exemplars, however, of a forgotten class of inks belonging to a still more remote antiquity, careful research adduces certain proof of their existence more than nine hundred years before the Christian era commenced.
Reference has earlier been made to the ancient Myrobolam ink, which was characteristically the same in color phenomena as those which Montfaucon mentions.
These "tawny" colored inks I estimate were products obtained from the "thorn" trees spoken of by the monk Theophilus. The thorn trees were of two species. The pomegranate, anciently called the "Punic apple," because it was largely employed by the Carthagenians for the purposes of dyeing and tanning; and the acacia, known in Egyptian times as the lotus. The former was held in such high esteem that the Arabians and Egyptians made it an emblem to designate one of their dieties and termed it raman.
The products of these thorn, trees were collectively used together as ink, most of the tannin being obtained from the pomegranate, and the gum from the acacia.
