Question: What's the most interesting thing you found by studying books with the lasers?

Kate Nicholson answered on 7 Mar 2014:

Tough question! Excuse the long answer, but it takes a bit of explaining.
When looking at one spot in Symeon’s History of the church that is Durham, we found it was a white pigment (white lead) with tiny specks of red (vermilion) and blue (lapis). These tiny little specks were too small to see with the eye but with the laser down the microscope very easy to spot. Not very interesting you might think – but this was produced at the time when Durham was a Benedictine monastery, by Symeon who was a monk there. The rules of the monastery were such that’ a scribe should not produce a drop more pigment that necessary for the days work, nor should he mix it in a pot used for any other colour, else he would serve a month penance’ (dish washing duty or the likes). This spot of pigment showed us that Symeon had broken that rule and mixed his white pigment in a pot used for other colours, as there was no other way they could have become mixed in with that white pigment. 1000 years later and we spot a monk breaking the rules!