The roll has a particular significance in the history of the book in England. Most early medieval governments kept their records in the form of codices, in the fashion established very early in the Church's history. The Latin word for roll, rotulus, little wheel, came into use only in the 12th century. Rolls has been in use constantly, since the easiest way to store a sheet of parchment was to roll it up. The format of English rolls differentiated it from earlier rolls, however, since they were written in columns perpendicular to the length of the roll, while in England the text began at the top of the sheet and continued to its bottom. Rolls were the easiest way to carry parchment and were also convenient for record-keeping for such texts as obituaries, which were added to at the bottom end (rolls were lengthened by stitching new sheets to those already in use).
However, the roll also had ideological significance. The parchment roll was the chief format for Jewish law. In medieval England a Jew took an oath "on his [or her] roll," while a Christian took oaths on the book (on the Bible). The Bible, it is often remarked, was probably written as a book (a codex) precisely to distinguish it from rolls. Christ in judgment held a book, while the God of the Old Testament held a roll. This association, one would think, might have kept the roll from becoming a popular form in England. But nevertheless rolls came into wide use there, while elsewhere books were used for the same records. In From Memory to Written Record (106-12), the source for information used here, M. T. Clanchy suggests that the roll's advantages were not necessarily greater than those of the book, but that, thanks to the nature of the bureaucracy, once rolls were used they continued in use simply because they were traditional.
You should read this section in Clanchy and compare his thoughts on the roll to those in other sources on the medieval book. What kinds of texts besides records were written on rolls? Clanchy notes that some chronicles and histories were written on rolls. He also suggests that rolls were "protobooks," holding fragments, stories, and facts that later found their way into codices.
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