THE COEXISTENCE OF WRITING MEDIA IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. THE STORY OF A LEGACY

China offered humanity a cheap and highly durable material that, after six hundred years of adaptation through the Silk Road, would reach Europe via the Iberian Peninsula in the hands of the Arabs. Hispano-Arabic paper, as the paper produced in the peninsula was called in the Middle Ages, would soon replace the papyrus and parchment, with which it had coexisted in the beginning. The historical context of each kingdom, as well as the devastation caused by the Black Death and the opening of trade with Italy after the expansion of the Crown of Aragon, would determine the origins and techniques used in the manufacturing of Hispanic paper. Three types of paper coexisted in the peninsula: Hispano-Arabic paper, a new type of paper imported from Italy and a third type with mixed characteristics. The codices and the various documents preserved reflect not only the artistic trend of the place where they were produced, but also the technique of paper production, which was subject to the tradition inherited from the Hispano-Arab papermakers and improved from the thirteenth century onwards by the craftsmen of Fabriano, with great value as witnesses of a historical context.