Manuscript: leaf from a copy of a commentary on Aristotle, De Anima ?Paris, c. 1300.

An unusually early example of a manuscript made of paper rather than parchment (animal skin).  The original book was probably made commercially for use at the University of Paris; the highly-abbreviated gothic rotunda script is typical, as is the flourished initial.  The text of Aristotle is written, in slightly larger script underlined in red, in blocks followed by commentary.  Students found it hard to afford books, so university texts such as these were usually heavily abbreviated to keep the number of leaves to a minimum.

This fragment had been used as a flyleaf in a 16th-century printed book.  Such was the fate of many manuscripts between the 1520s and early 1600s, though after that they began to be valued again.