The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

LINEN AND COTTON PAPER. 405
extract from an account written in 1301 on linen paper. In
this specimen the mark is a circle surmounted by a sprig, at the
end of which is a star. The paper is thick, fnm, and well
grained ; and its water-lines and water-marks {ycrgures et
poutuseaiLv) may readily be distmguished.
The date was carried considerably higher by Schwandner,
Principal Keeper of the Imperial Library at Vienna, who found
among the charters of the Monastery of Goss in Upper Stiria
one in a state of decay, only seven inches long and three wide.
So highly did he estimate the value of this curious relic as to
publish in 1788 a full account of his discovery in a thin quarto
volume, which bears the following title, " Chartmn lintemn
antiqiiissimam, omnia hactemis j)rodiicla spccimi7ia cctate
suCl superantem, ex cimelils Bihliothecce. AugustcB Yindoho-
nensis cxponit Jo. Ge. Schwandner^'' i5*c- The document is a
mandate of Frederick II. Emperor of the Romans, entrusting
to the Archbishop of Saltzburg and the Duke of Austria the
determination of a dispute between the Duke of Carinthia and
the Monastery of Goss respecting the property of the latter in
Carinthia. Schwandner proves the dale of it to be 1243. He
does not say whether it has any lines or water-mark, but is quite
satisfied from its flexibiUty and other qualities, that it is hnen.
Although on the first discovery of this document some doubt
was expressed as to its genuineness, it appears to have risen in
estimation with succeeding writers ; and we apprehend it is
rather from inadvertence than from any deficiency in the evi-
dence, that it is not noticed at all by Schonemann, Ebert,
Delandine, or by Home. Due attention is, however, bestowed
upon it by August Friedrich Pfeiffer Tiber Bilchcr-Hand-
schriften, Erlangen 1810, p. 39, 40.
With regard to the circumstances which led to the invention
of the pai^er noio in coinmon use, or the country in which it
took place, we find m the writers on the subject from Polydore
Virgil to the present day nothing but conjectures or confessions
of ignorance. Wehrs supposes, and others follow him, that in
making paper linen rags were either by accident or through
design at first mixed with cotton rags, so as to produce a paper,
which was partly Unen and partly cotton, and that this led by