  The Codex Rossanensis is a 6th century Bizantine illuminated manuscript
written on purple parchment and conserved at the Museo Diocesano in Rossano
Calabro, Italy. It is one of the oldest surviving illuminated manuscripts of
the New Testament. The challenge of the analysis of the Codex Rossanensis lies
in the lack of analytical information on the pictorial media used in the Early
Middle Ages. Even though old-medieval illuminated manuscripts have been deeply
studied from the historical standpoint, they have been rarely described in
their material composition. This paper presents the results obtained during the
measurements campaign (June 2012 - November 2013). The spectroscopic analyses
performed by Raman, micro-FTIR and XRF allowed for the complete
characterization of the pictorial palette, the inks, the support and the
material used in a previous restoration treatment. To the author knowledge the
article shows the first experimental evidence of the usage of the elderberry
lake in a 6th century illuminated manuscript.
