Looking at the Antiphonal Bifolium from the Utah State Special Collections and Archives, we see that on the parchment there are several colors of ink, mainly black and red.  Although there are other colors present, they are faded. During the late medieval and Renaissance periods, red ink was often used to rubricate.

The origin of the word rubrification is the term rubrico, which is Latin for, “to color red.”  Rubrification is much more than just red ink, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word rubricate: “to add elaboration, typically red capital letters or other decorations to a manuscript.”^[1] Red inks were used to draw the reader’s eye to that specific point, passage, or to the beginning of a sentence on the page and also to aid in memorization of the passages.

In the USU Antiphonal, the use of red ink is to give artistic flair to add emphasis to the beginning of a sentence, and also the numbering of the specific verses from Lamentations in Hebrew. The ink used for the black script and notes in this volume is probably iron gall ink.

There were two types of ink used during early modern era: carbon based inks and iron gall inks. Carbon based inks were made from either charcoal or lampblack which itself is a type of charcoal made from the soot of burned animal fats, oils, tars, or resins. This soot was then mixed with organic gums to thicken the ink, making it adhere to the parchment more readily. Quill pens also needed the viscosity of the gum in the ink to write properly.

Iron gall ink, on the other hand, was made from mixing tannic acids from ground up oak galls, iron vitriol, water, vinegar or wine, and organic gums to thicken the mixture.^[2] Oak galls, also known as gallnuts, can be found on the branches of oak. Oak galls are swellings that form over gall wasps nests in young tree branches. The oak gallnut contains large amounts of tannic and gallic acids, which are a necessary part of the chemical reaction that creates the iron gall ink. The result of the chemical reaction between the tannic acids and the ferrous sulphate creates a black ink. The ink once created needed to have a fine balance of acidity. If the ink was too acidic, then the ink would eat through the paper. Ink being too acidically weak, it faded quickly to a brown illegible stain.^[3] This process accelerates when exposed to humid conditions and can even create holes in paper or parchment.^[4] Scribes were usually responsible for gathering ingredients and mixing them together to create his or her own inks to complete books, manuscripts, and any other handwritten form of communication.