WTF is Vellum?

What is Vellum?

Vellum is a type of parchment made from calfskin. Known for its fine quality, it was the luxe writing surface of choice from the 4^th century CE to the late Middle Ages. Vellum was also widely used in bookbinding, primarily for covers of manuscripts and early printed books.

Brief History of Vellum

The word vellum originates from the Latin word vitulinum, meaning “from calf” and vélin, Old French for “calfskin.”¹ While vellum is indeed made from calfskin, the term may also refer to goatskin. Regardless, it’s the best quality of parchment.

To learn about the history of parchment and how craftsmen made it from untanned animal skins of all varieties, see my post WTF is Parchment?

Uterine Vellum

If it bothers you that vellum is the skin of calves (young itty-bitty cows), buckle up because it’s about to get worse. Let me introduce you to uterine vellum, which refers to the skin of unborn or stillborn calves, sheep, or goat.

Perhaps the most well-known case of uterine vellum is 13^th–14^th century pocket Bibles. In medieval times, folks used the Latin term abortivum to refer to this exceptionally thin parchment, implying fetal or aborted animals were the source.² Someone get PETA on the line.

Now, there’s some controversy surrounding this type of vellum, as many scholars think it’s made of smaller thin-skinned animals, such as squirrels or rabbits. They argue that there weren’t enough aborted fetuses available to make all these pocket Bibles, which numbered at least 20,000. The Bibles first appeared in Paris, but England, Italy, and Spain also produced them in large quantities. So, we’re talking about an operation that seems highly unsustainable if it only used unborn or stillborn animals.

Pocket Bible, UPENN MS. Codex 1065, c.1240–1250, English, parchment, 356 leaves, 7 x 4.6 inches. Provided by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Study Testing Uterine Vellum

In 2015, the Department of Archaeology at the University of York in the UK did a study to determine what uterine vellum actually is. They tested 72 pocket Bibles from France, England, and Spain, all from the 13^th century.

The study found that 68% were calf, 26% were goat, and 6% were sheep. No rabbits or squirrels in the mix. They concluded that the wafer-thin parchment was likely the result of craftsmen having mad skills in the production process. They probably used techniques that split the skins of young animals. But the study could not rule out true uterine vellum—fetuses—completely.³

In fact, in 1426, a Florentine stationer had cavrecti [capretti] non nati (unborn baby goats) in his inventory.⁴ So, it’s highly probable that some of these paper-thin manuscripts are made of genuine uterine vellum.

Examples of Vellum Manuscripts & Printed Books

As a smooth and durable writing surface, parchment supplanted good ole papyrus by the 4^th century CE. As the finest option available, scribes used vellum for both scrolls and codices. Let’s see some examples by taking a tour through the wonderful world of vellum!

Codex Amiatinus

The Codex Amiatinus is the oldest surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible. WTF is the Latin Vulgate, you ask? It’s the translation of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to Latin by St. Jerome in the 4^th century CE.

Ceolfrid (642–716 CE), a Benedictine monk and abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow in the Kingdom of Northumbria, England, commissioned the codex. It’s an example of an illuminated manuscript with Byzantine influences. Seven scribes created this huge book of 1,030 vellum folios. Today, the Codex Amiatinus is in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy.

One of the codex’s major illuminations is a portrait of Ezra, the Old Testament prophet, writing a manuscript in codex format. A bookcase with the Bible in 9 volumes is behind him. This image is one of the oldest depictions of book bindings and a bookcase in the Western world.⁵

Lindisfarne Gospels

The Lindisfarne Gospels are a glorious example of a vellum illuminated manuscript. Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne (698–721 CE), was doing the most because he both wrote and decorated the Gospels in honor of St. Cuthbert in 715–720 CE. We know the creator was Eadfrith because Alfred the Scribe identified him in a colophon (note) in the 10^th century.

The manuscript hails from the Lindisfarne monastery in the Kingdom of Northumbria, England. It’s an example of Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art. Insular art combined Irish, Roman, and English elements into a singular style in medieval Ireland and Britain. The Lindisfarne Gospels have 259 leaves (518 pages) of vellum, which is roughly the skins of 150 calves.

Gutenberg Bible

While the previous examples were manuscripts (handwritten texts), there are early printed books, known as incunabula, made of vellum. A prime example is Gutenberg’s Bible.

Circa 1454–1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed the 42-line Bible, named for two columns of Latin text per page, with each column consisting of 42 lines. Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable type kicked off a technology revolution in Europe, forever changing book production.

Gutenberg and other early printers made sure their printed books mimicked illuminated manuscripts with hand-colored capital letters, decorations, and rubrications (coloring text in red ink). They also used vellum, although sparingly, because it was fucking expensive. In total, Gutenberg printed about 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, with 145 on paper and 35 on vellum.

Acts of the UK Parliament

Vellum, like other types of parchment, lost out to paper in the late Middle Ages as the dominant writing surface. It still clung around, though, in the form of book bindings, luxurious manuscripts, diplomas, and legal documents.

A great example of the continuous use of vellum is the Acts of the British Parliament. From medieval times to 1849, the UK Parliament recorded its public Acts on parchment scrolls made of goatskin. In 1849, they upgraded to vellum. In 2015, they finally switched from vellum to archival paper due to costs.

To learn more about book history, check out the following posts:

• WTF is Papyrus?
• WTF is Parchment?
• WTF is a Palimpsest?
• WTF is a Codex?
• WTF is a Book of Hours?
• WTF is a Psalter?
• WTF are Illuminated Manuscripts?
• WTF are Incunabula?

Footnotes

1. Cave, The History of the Book, 268. ↩︎
2. Fiddyment, et. al, “Animal Origin,” 15066. ↩︎
3. Fiddyment, et. al, “Animal Origin,” 15068, 15070. ↩︎
4. Watson, Illuminated Manuscripts, 69. ↩︎
5. Library of Congress. “Codex Amiatinus.” ↩︎

Bibliography & Further Reading

*The following links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no cost to you.

Carter, John, and Nicholas Barker. ABC for Book Collectors. 8th ed. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2006.

Cave, Roderick, and Sara Ayad. The History of The Book in 100 Books. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books U.S., Inc., 2014.

Fiddyment, Sarah, Bruce Holsinger, Chiara Ruzzier, Alexander Devine, Annelise Binois, Umberto Albarella, Roman Fischer, Emma Nichols, Antoinette Curtis, Edward Cheese, Matthew D. Teasdale, Caroline Checkley-Scott, Stephen J. Milner, Kathryn M. Rudy, Eric J. Johnson, Jiří Vnouček, Mary Garrison, Simon McGrory, Daniel G. Bradley, and Matthew J. Collins. “Animal Origin of 13th-century Uterine Vellum Revealed Using Noninvasive Peptide Fingerprinting.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 49 (2015): 15066-71.

Howard, Nicole. The Book: The Life Story of a Technology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Jackson, Eleanor. The Lindisfarne Gospels: Art, History & Inspiration. The British Library Guide. London: The British Library, 2022.

Library of Congress. “Codex Amiatinus.” Library of Congress. Accessed May 26, 2025.

Lyons, Martyn. Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011.

UK Parliament. “From Parchment to Print.” UK Parliament. Accessed May 22, 2025.

UK Parliament House of Commons. Vellum: Printing Record Copies of Public Acts. By Richard Kelly. August 15, 2018. Accessed May 22, 2025.

Watson, Rowan. Illuminated Manuscripts and Their Makers. London: V&A Publications, 2003.