". . . They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. . . ."

We approached what had been Adelmo's working place, where the pages of a
richly illuminated psalter still lay. They were folios of the finest
vellum - that queen among parchments - and the last was still fixed to the
desk. Just scraped with pumice stone and softened with chalk, it had been
smoothed with the plane, and, from the tiny holes made on the sides with a
fine stylus, all the lines that were to have guided the artist's hand had
been traced. The first half had already been covered with writing, and the
monk had begun to sketch the illustrations in the margins.

I saw a monk leafing through an ancient volume whose pages had become stuck together because of the humidity. He moistened his thumb and forefinger with his tongue to leaf through his book, and at every touch of his saliva those pages lost vigour; opening them meant folding them, exposing them to the harsh action of air and dust, which would erode the subtle wrinkles of the parchment, and would produce mildew where the saliva had softened but also weakened the corner of the page.

"The parchment did not seem like parchment - it seemed like cloth, but very fine." "Charta lintea, or linen paper... It is said to be very costly, and delicate. That's why it is rarely used. The Arabs make it, don't they?" "It is also made here in Italy, at Fabriano.... Many are afraid linen paper will not survive through the centuries like parchment."