He afterwards became keeper of manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and professor of palaeography at the Ecole des Chartes.
In the first class must be mentioned the College de France, founded 1530, giying courseje of highest study of all sorts, the Museum of Natural History, the Ecole des Chartes (palaeography and archives), the School of Modern Oriental Languages, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (scientific research), &c. All these institutions are in Paris.
These are very numerous, and different in different scripts or styles of writing (see Palaeography).
The very large number of classical and other Greek papyri, of the Ptolemaic and later periods, which have been recovered in Egypt, are noticed in the article on Palaeography.
The early practice of writing the initial lines or even the entire text of a volume in gold or coloured inks, and of staining with purple and of gilding the vellum, while it undoubtedly enhanced the decorative aspect, does not properly fall within the scope of this article; it concerns the material rather than the artistic element of the MS. (See Manuscripts, Palaeography.) It will be seen, then, that in the earliest examples of book decorations we find the germs of the two lines on which that decoration was destined to develop in the illuminated MSS.