L’usage du parchemin dans les manuscrits produits au Mont Saint-Michel de 980 à 1100

The first two phases of the Material Study of the Ancient Manuscripts of Mont Saint-Michel project (projet Étude matérielle des manuscrits anciens du Mont Saint-Michel, 2018-2024) made possible to analyze the materials – parchments, inks and coloring materials – used in the composition of nearly seventy manuscripts produced by the scriptorium of Mont Saint-Michel between 980 and 1100. The practices of the copyists and artists active during this period were thus characterized and their evolutions were followed over approximately 120 years. This article focuses more specifically on the case of the animal species used to make the parchment supports. The choice by copyists and artists of quality parchments (mostly calfskin; exceptionally goatskin) to receive the richest decorations of the manuscripts produced between 1040 and 1080 betrays a workshop practice that was then well established: it corresponds very exactly to the first artistic peak of the Mont Saint-Michel scriptorium, where Romanesque art was strongly influenced by the Anglo-Saxon style of Winchester. This use of calfskin provides valuable informations to reconstruct the textual and iconographic gaps due to the loss of leaves at the head of codicological units, which is most often explained by the looting of decorations by collectors of medieval illuminations.