Appendix
Mr Jenkinson, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, has kindly supplied me with the following interesting extracts, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the Parish Library of St James’ at Bury St Edmunds (M 27 + B 357)302, which gives instructions to scribes and illuminators of manuscripts as to the various tools they are to use.
“Scriptor habeat rasorium siue nouaculam ad radendum sordes pergameni vel membrane. Habeat etiam pumicem mordacem et planulam ad pactandum (?) et equandum superficiem pergameni. Plumbum habeat et linulam quibus liniet pergamenum, margine circumquaque tam ex parte tergi quam ex parte carnis existente libera......
Scriptor autem in cathedra resideat ansis utrimque eleuatis pluteum siue ait’em (?) sustinentibus, scabello apte pedibus posito.
Scriptor habeat epicaustorium.i.asserem centone copertum. Arcanum habeat quo pennam formet ut habilis sit et ydonea ad scribendum...... Habeat dentem canis (?) sive apri ad polliandum pergamenum...... Et spectaculum habeat ne ob errorem moram disspendiosam (?). Habeat prunas in epicausterio ut cicius in tempore nebuloso vel aquoso desicari possit...... Et habeat etiam mineum ad formandas literas puniceas, vel rubeas, vel feniceas et capitales. Habeat etiam fuscum pulverem; et azuram a Salamone repertam303.”
Translation.
“The scribe should have a sharp scraper or knife to rub down the roughnesses of his parchment or vellum. He should also have a piece of ‘biting’ pumice-stone and a flat tool to smooth down and make even the surface of his parchment.
He should have a lead pencil and a ruler with which to rule lines on the parchment, leaving a margin free (from lines) on both sides of the parchment, on the back of the leaf as well as on the flesh side....
The scribe should sit in an arm chair, with arms raised on each side to support a desk or?; a footstool should be conveniently placed under his feet. The scribe should have an epicaustorium304 covered with leather; he should have an arcanum (pen-knife?) with which to shape his pen, so that it may be well formed and suitable for writing....
He should have the tooth of a dog (?) or of a wild boar for the polishing of his parchment.... And he should have spectacles lest troublesome delay be caused through blunders. He should have hot coals in a brazier so that [his ink] may dry quickly [even] in cloudy or rainy weather.... He should also have mineum (minium) for the painting of red, crimson or purple letters and initials. He should also have a dark powder (pigment), and the azure which was invented by Solomon.”
The following excellent description of the chief kinds of Service-books which were used during the later mediæval period was originally written in 1881 by Henry Bradshaw, the Cambridge University Librarian, for The Chronicles of All Saints’ Church, Derby, by the Rev. J. C. Cox and Mr W. H. St John Hope. It is by the kind permission of Mr Cox and Mr Hope that I am able to reprint Mr Bradshaw’s valuable note, which, with admirable clearness and conciseness, explains the character of each of the principal classes of Service-books used in English Churches and the manner in which these books became differentiated and multiplied down to the time of the Reformation.
Note by Henry Bradshaw
The Hours.
The Hours.In the old Church of England, the Services were either—
1. For the different hours (Mattins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline), said in the Choir,
2. For Processions, in the Church or Churchyard,
3. For the Mass, said at the Altar, or
4. For occasions, such as Marriage, Visitation of the Sick, Burial, &c., said as occasion required.
Of these four all have their counterparts, more or less, in the English Service of modern times, as follows:
1. The Hour-Services, of which the principal were Mattins and Vespers, correspond to our Morning and Evening Prayer.
Processions.
Processions.2. The Procession Services correspond to our Hymns or Anthems sung before the Litany which precedes the Communion Service in the morning, and after the third Collect in the evening, only no longer sung in the course of procession to the Churchyard Cross or a subordinate Altar in the Church; the only relic (in common use) of the actual Procession being that used on such occasions as the Consecration of a Church, &c.
3. The Mass answers to our Communion Service.
Occasional Services.
Occasional Services.4. The Occasional Services are either those used by a Priest, such as Baptism, Marriage, Visitation and Communion of the Sick, Burial of the Dead, &c., or those reserved for a Bishop, as Confirmation, Ordination, Consecration of Churches, &c.
All these Services but the last mentioned are contained in our “Prayer-book” with all their details, except the lessons at Mattins and Evensong, which are read from the Bible, and the Hymns and Anthems, which are, since the sixteenth century, at the discretion of the authorities. This concentration or compression of the Services into one book is the natural result of time, and the further we go back the more numerous are the books which our old inventories show. To take the four classes of Services and Service-books mentioned above:
The Breviary.
The Breviary.1. The Hour-Services were latterly contained, so far as the text was concerned, in the Breviarium, or Portiforium, as it was called by preference in England305. The musical portions of this book were contained in the Antiphonarium. But the Breviary itself was the result of a gradual amalgamation of many different books:
The Breviary.
The Breviary.(a) The Antiphonarium, properly so called, containing the Anthems (Antiphonae) to the Psalms, the Responds (Responsoria) to the Lessons (Lectiones), and the other odds and ends of Verses and Responds (Versiculi et Responsoria) throughout the Service;
(b) The Psalterium, containing the Psalms arranged as used at the different Hours, together with the Litany as used on occasions;
(c) The Hymnarium, or collection of Hymns used in the different Hour-Services;
(d) The legenda, containing the long Lessons used at Mattins, as well from the Bible, from the Sermologus, and from the Homiliarius, used respectively at the first, second, and third Nocturns at Mattins on Sundays and some other days, as also from the Passionale, containing the acts of Saints read on their festivals; and
(e) The Collectarium, containing the Capitula, or short Lessons used at all the Hour-services except Mattins, and the Collectæ or Orationes used at the same.
Procession Services.
Procession Services.2. The Procession Services were contained in the Processionale or Processionarium. It will be remembered that the Rubric in our “Prayer-Book” concerning the Anthem (“In Quires and places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem”) is indicative rather than imperative, and that it was first added in 1662. It states a fact; and, no doubt, when processions were abolished, with the altars to which they were made, Cathedral Choirs would have found themselves in considerable danger of being swept away also, had they not made a stand, and been content to sing the Processional Anthem without moving from their position in the Choir. This alone sufficed to carry on the tradition; and looked upon in this way the modern Anthem Book of our Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, and the Hymn Book of our parish Churches, are the only legitimate successors of the old Processionale. It must be borne in mind, also, that the Morning and Evening Anthems in our “Prayer-Book” do not correspond to one another so closely as might at first sight appear to be the case. The Morning Anthem comes immediately before the Litany which precedes the Communion Service, and corresponds to the Processional Anthem or Respond sung at the churchyard procession before Mass. The Evening Anthem, on the other hand, follows the third Collect, and corresponds to the Processional Anthem or Respond sung “eundo et redeundo,” in going to, and returning from, some subordinate altar in the church at the close of Vespers.
The Mass.
The Mass.3. The Mass, which we call the Communion Service, was contained in the Missale, so far as the text was concerned. The Epistles and Gospels, being read at separate lecterns, would often be written in separate books, called Epistolaria and Evangeliaria. The musical portions of the Altar Service were latterly all contained in the Graduale or Grayle, so called from one of the principal elements being the Responsorium Graduale or Respond to the Lectio Epistolae. In earlier times, these musical portions of the Missal Service were commonly contained in two separate books, the Graduale and the Troparium. The Graduale, being in fact the Antiphonarium of the Altar Service (as indeed it was called in the earliest times), contained all the passages of Scripture, varying according to the season and day, which served as Introits (Antiphonae et Psalmi ad Introitum) before the Collects, as Gradual Responds or Graduals to the Epistle, as Alleluia versicles before the Gospel, as Offertoria at the time of the first oblation, and as Communiones at the time of the reception of the consecrated elements. The Troparium contained the Tropi, or preliminary tags to the Introits; the Kyries; the Gloria in excelsis; the Sequences or Prosae ad Sequentiam before the Gospel; the Credo in unum; the Sanctus and Benedictus; and the Agnus Dei; all, in early times, liable to have insertions or farsuræ of their own, according to the season or day, which, however, were almost wholly swept away (except those of the Kyrie) by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Even in Lyndewode’s time (A.D. 1433), the Troparium was explained to be a book containing merely the Sequences before the Gospel at Mass, so completely had the other elements then disappeared or become incorporated in the Graduale. This definition of the Troparium is the more necessary, because so many old church inventories yet remain, which contain books, even at the time of writing the inventory long since disused, so that the lists would be unintelligible without some such explanation.
Occasional Services.
Occasional Services.4. The Occasional Services, so far as they concerned a priest, were of course more numerous in old days than now, and included the ceremonies for Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, &c., besides what were formerly known as the Sacramental Services. The book which contained these was in England called the Manuale, while on the Continent the name Rituale is more common. No church could well be without one of these. The purely episcopal offices were contained in the Liber pontificalis or Pontifical, for which an ordinary church would have no need.
The Ordinale.
The Ordinale.5. Besides these books of actual Services there was another, absolutely necessary for the right understanding and definite use of those already mentioned. This was the Ordinale, or book containing the general rules relating to the Ordo divini servitii. It is the Ordinarius or Breviarius of many Continental churches. Its method was to go through the year and show what was to be done; what days were to take precedence of others; and how, under such circumstances, the details of the conflicting Services were to be dealt with. The basis of such a book would be either the well-known Sarum Consuetudinarium, called after St. Osmund, but really drawn up in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the Lincoln Consuetudinarium belonging to the middle of the same century, or other such book. By the end of the fifteenth century Clement Maydeston’s Directorium Sacerdotum, or Priests’ Guide, had superseded all such books, and came itself to be called the Sarum Ordinale, until, about 1508, the shorter Ordinal, under the name of Pica Sarum, “the rules called the Pie,” having been cut up and re-distributed according to the seasons, came to be incorporated in the text of all the editions of the Sarum Breviary.
H. B.
Cambridge,
March 17, 1881.
Mr Micklethwaite has kindly pointed out to me the following passage from the Cistercian Consuetudines (Guignard, Documents inédits, Dijon, 1878, p. 174), cap. LXXII, “Nullus ingrediatur coquinam excepto cantore et scriptoribus ad planandam tabulam, ad liquefaciendum incaustum, ad exsiccandum pergamenum....” That is, the kitchen fire might be used for melting the wax on the tablets, so that a fresh list of names could be written (see above, p. 8), for liquefying frozen ink, and for drying the vellum skins ready for writing on.
SOME PUBLICATIONS OF
The Cambridge University Press.
The Engraved Gems of Classical Times, with a Catalogue of the Gems in the Fitzwilliam Museum, by J. Henry Middleton, M.A., Slade Professor of Fine Art, and Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Royal 8vo. Buckram, 12s. 6d.
The Lewis Collection of Gems and Rings in the possession of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with an Introductory Essay on Ancient Gems by J. Henry Middleton, M.A. Royal 8vo. Buckram, 6s.
Essays on the Art of Pheidias. By C. Waldstein, Litt. D., Reader in Classical Archæology in the University of Cambridge. Royal 8vo. 16 Plates. Buckram, 30s.
A Catalogue of Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, by Prof. Adolf Michaelis. Translated by C. A. M. Fennell, Litt. D. Royal 8vo. Roxburgh (Morocco back), £2. 2s.
The Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer, by W. M. Conway. With Transcripts from the British Museum MSS., and Notes by Lina Eckenstein. Royal 8vo. Buckram, 21s. (The Edition is limited to 500 copies.)
London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
AVE MARIA LANE.
Notes
1 See pages 97 and 113.
2 See Jour. Hell. Stud. Vol. III. p. 112.
3 It was not till quite a late period that the word βίβλος was used to mean another form of book than the roll. The word σανὶς is also used for a tablet; see p. 30.
4 A fine set of five tablets is preserved in the coin room in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale; see Revue Archéol. VIII. p. 461.
5 A well-preserved example of Roman pugillares formed of two leaves of ivory, now in the Capitoline museum in Rome, is illustrated by Baumeister, Denkmäler, I. p. 355.
6 Lucian, who lived in the second century A.D., mentions (Vita Luc. II.) that when he was a boy he was in the habit of scraping the wax off his writing-tablets and using it to model little figures of men and animals. Probably he was not the only Roman school-boy who amused himself in this way.
7 Charcoal or crayon-holders of bronze with a spring clip and sliding ring, exactly like those now used, have been found in Pompeii. These and other writing materials are illustrated by Baumeister, Denkmäler, Vol. III. p. 1585.
8 An Athenian inscription (C. I. A. I. 32) mentions accounts and other documents written on πινάκια καὶ γραμματεῖα.
9 See, for example, a relief on the sarcophagus of a scriba librarius or library curator which is illustrated by Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. Ant. I. p. 708. The scribe is represented seated by his book-case armarium, on the shelves of which both volumina and codices are shown.
10 The ancient method of manufacturing papyrus paper is described below, see page 22.
11 Some very interesting fragments of the Antiope of Euripides have been brought to England by Mr Flinders Petrie, and have been edited by Dr Mahaffy in a collection entitled The Flinders Petrie Papyri, Dublin, 1892.
12 The book-market in Athens was called τὰ βιβλία, i.e. οὗ τὰ βιβλία ὤνια; see Pollux IX. 47. Lucian, in his treatise Adversus Indoctum, gives an interesting account of the Greek book-buyers and book-sellers in his time; see § 1 and § 4.
13 The end of the Argiletum is shown in the plan of the Forum Romanum in Middleton, Ancient Rome, 1892, Vol. I.
14 One reason of this was that even the most popular authors did not receive large sums for the copyright of their works.
15 A good deal of what is said in this section with regard to the technique of classical manuscripts will apply also to manuscripts of the mediaeval period. Many of the processes had been inherited in an unbroken tradition from ancient times, and others were revived in the Middle Ages through a study of various classical writers on pigments and the like, especially Pliny and Vitruvius.
16 The words parchment and vellum are used vaguely to imply many different kinds of skins. Strictly speaking vellum implies calf-skin, but the word is commonly used to denote the finer and smoother qualities of skin; the name parchment being given to the coarse varieties; see Peignot, L’histoire du parchemin, Paris, 1812.
17 In some cases the paper was sized, before the final smoothing; but as a rule sufficient size was supplied by the flour used to paste the layers together.
18 Some of the enormous ranges of store-houses for goods imported into Rome and landed on the Tiber quay were specially devoted to the use of paper warehouses, horrea chartaria; extensive remains of these have recently been discovered near Monte Testaccio; see Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome, 1892, Vol. II. pp. 260-262.
19 Now in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
20 A silver pen was found by Dr Waldstein in 1891 in the tomb of the Aristotle family at Chalcis.
21 There is, of course, no etymological connection between the words miniature and minute; the latter being derived from the Latin minutus, minus.
22 Further details with regard to these pigments are given below, see pages 239 to 249.
23 Reproductions of these miniatures were published by Cardinal Mai, Picturae antiquissimae bellum Iliacum repraesentantes, Milan, 1819. Far more accurate copies of some of the miniatures, but without colour, are given by Palaeo. Soc., Plates 39, 40, 50 and 51.
24 Some fairly accurate reproductions of these miniatures were published by Bartoli, Antiquissimi Virgiliani Codicis fragmenta Bibl. Vat., Roma, 1741 and 1782. Examples from this and two other ancient but un-illuminated codices of Virgil in the Vatican library are given by the Palaeo. Soc., Plates 113 to 117.
25 The chief of these paintings were cut off the walls of the villa, and are now placed in the Museo delle Terme in Rome. The painting shown in fig. 3 is still in situ; that given in fig. 4 is now in the Museum at Naples.
26 See above, fig. 2.
27 The term Byzantine as applied to art is commonly used to denote the style which was developed in the Eastern empire soon after Constantine had transferred the seat of government from Old to “New Rome,” or Constantinople as it was also called instead of Byzantium, which was the ancient name.
28 Several manuscripts of this class are described by H. Bordier, Manuscrits Grecs de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1883.
29 A great public library was founded by Constantine in New Rome and partially stocked by manuscripts transferred from the old Capital. This library was rapidly enlarged by his sons and successors, and it was rebuilt on a grander scale by the Emperor Zeno after the building had been injured by fire about the year 488 A.D.
30 For a valuable account of Byzantine manuscripts, see Kondakoff, Histoire de l’Art Byzantin, Paris, 1886-1891.
31 The title Porphyro-genitus, “Born in the purple,” referred to the fact that Byzantine Empresses brought forth their children in a magnificent room lined with slabs of polished porphyry.
32 A translation of this curious treatise was published by Didron and Durand, in their Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne; Paris, 1845.
33 All manuscripts described in this book, from the Byzantine school onwards, may be understood to be in the codex form and written on vellum, unless they are otherwise described.
35 Copies of some of the miniatures in the Vatican Cosmas are given by N. Kondakoff, Histoire de l’Art Byzantin, Paris, 1886, Vol. I. pp. 142 to 152.
36 St Mark’s in Venice and the churches of Ravenna and Constantinople are full of examples of this design.
37 This Sasanian art was an inheritance from ancient Babylon and Assyria, and was the progenitor of what in later times has been called Arab art, though the quite inartistic Arabs appear to have derived it from the Persians whom they conquered and forcibly converted to the Moslem Faith.
38 The mere gold of even the finest Byzantine manuscripts is never as sumptuous or as highly burnished as that in manuscripts of the fourteenth century, owing to its being usually applied as a fluid pigment, or at least not over the best kind of highly raised ground or mordant, which is described below at p. 234.
39 In early times and indeed throughout the whole mediaeval period very few objects of any kind were placed upon the High Altar even in the most magnificently furnished churches. In addition to the chalice and paten, and the Textus, the only ornaments usually allowed were a small crucifix and two candlesticks. The modern system of crowding the mensa of the altar with many candles and flowers did not come in till after the Reformation.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Pax was usually a separate thing, of more convenient size and weight than the heavy, gold-covered Textus.
42 The “Gospeller” was the officiating Deacon; the Sub-deacon being called the “Epistoller.”
43 The remarkable artistic advance which was made by Giotto is to be seen not only in his improved and more realistic drawing, but also in his freedom from the long-established abuse of green in his flesh painting, for which he substituted a warmer and healthier tint.
44 Of the original mosaics on the west façade of Saint Mark’s only one remains of the original highly decorative twelfth century mosaics. The rest, shown in Gentile Bellini’s picture of Saint Mark’s, have all been replaced by later mosaics. Inside the church, happily, the old mosaics still, in most places, exist; see p. 61.
45 See page 202 for an account of Giulio Clovio.
46 Mr M. R. James has pointed out to me an interesting example of similar designs being used by illuminators of manuscripts and by mosaic-workers. The designs of the miniatures in a fifth or sixth century manuscript of Genesis in the British Museum (Otho, B, vi) are in many cases identical with those of the twelfth and thirteenth century mosaics in Saint Mark’s at Venice; see Tikkanen, Genesisbilder, Berlin.
47 Alcuin, when Dean of York, was sent by Offa, king of Mercia, about 782, as an envoy to Charles the Great. A large number of manuscripts were written under his guidance and influence, not only in Tours, but also at Soissons, Metz, Fulda, and in other Benedictine monasteries.
48 It is priced in Mr Quaritch’s catalogue of 1890 at £2500. This manuscript was probably written at Tours in the school of Alcuin of York; see Wattenbach, Die mit Gold auf Purpur geschriebenen Evangelienhandschriften der Hamilton’schen Bibliothek, Berlin, 1889.
49 See for example the beautiful patterns of the woven hangings behind the enthroned figure of Christ shown on fig. 12; cf. also page 84.
50 Theophilus, Schedula diversarum Artium, I. 34; this work is frequently quoted in Chapter XV.
51 See Janitschek, Die künstlerische Ausstattung des Ada-Evangeliars und die Karolingische Buchmalerei; fol. Leipzig, 1889.
52 See Weidmann, Geschichte der Bibliothek von St Gallen, 8vo, St Gall, 1841.
53 See J. R. Rahn, Das Psalterium Aureum von St Gallen, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Karolingischen Miniaturmalerei, folio, St Gall, 1878.
54 An excellent edition with 72 facsimiles of Villard de Honecourt’s Album or sketch-book was produced by Professor Willis, London, 1859; it is superior to the French edition issued by J. B. Lassus, Paris, 1858.
55 See L. Delisle, L’Evangéliaire d’Arras et la calligraphie Franco-Saxonne du IXme siècle, 8vo, Paris, 1888.
56 Earlier that is than the conversion of the Saxon conquerors; to some extent a Romano-British Church had been established in Britain during the period of Roman domination, but this native Church appears to have been almost wholly eradicated by the Saxon Conquest.
57 Celtic manuscripts of all periods are well illustrated by Westwood, Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts, London, 1868; see also Westwood, Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria, 1843-5, and the companion volume, Illuminated Illustrations of the Bible, 1846.
58 Tara was the ancient inland capital of Ireland before Dublin was founded by the Viking pirates.
59 The Irish monasteries of this date appear, frequently at least, to have consisted of a group of a dozen or more separate wooden huts or stone “bee-hive” cells, with one small central chapel of rectangular plan; the whole being enclosed within a wooden fence or a stone circuit wall, in which there was only one door of approach; see Arch. Jour. XV. p. 1 seq.
60 For example, in an early Cashel Kalendar the monk Dagaeus, who died in 586, is recorded to have been both a goldsmith (aurifex) and an illuminator of manuscripts. Westwood, Miniatures in Irish Manuscripts, gives a number of excellent coloured reproductions of illuminations of this school and also of the Anglo-Celtic school of Northumbria.
61 It was formerly believed that this manuscript had once belonged to Saint Columba, who lived from 521 to 597, but it is shown by the internal evidence of its style to be a century later than Saint Columba’s time.
62 See Westwood, Irish Manuscripts, Plate 9.
63 See fig. 13 on page 67.
64 When the grave of Saint Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral was opened in 1827, it was found that the Saint’s body had been wrapped in rich Siculo-Arab silk of the eleventh century at the time when his body was moved, in 1104 A.D. See Raine, St Cuthbert, Durham, 1828, p. 183 seq.
65 Library of Trinity College, Dublin, manuscripts A, iv. 5.
66 See Jamieson, History of the Ancient Culdees of Iona; Edinburgh, 1811.
67 Saint Cuthbert was a monk of Irish descent, at first a member of the Celtic monastery of Melrose, and afterwards sixth Bishop of Lindisfarne from 685 to 688. In later times his gold, gem-studded shrine in Durham Cathedral was one of the most magnificent and costly in the world; see Rites and Monuments of Durham, Surtees Soc., 1842, pp. 3 and 4.
68 The works of Symeon Dunelmensis were published by the Surtees Society in 1868.
69 Now in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s library at Lambeth.
70 The Book of Deer was first brought to light by Mr Henry Bradshaw, and has been published by the Spalding Club, Ed. John Stuart, Edinburgh, 1869. The Monastery at Deer in Aberdeenshire was founded by Saint Columba as a branch house from Iona.
71 The so-called Itala version is the older Latin translation of the Bible, which existed previous to the recension of Saint Jerome.
72 A very interesting Psalter of similar style and date is preserved in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge; its ornaments are of the unmixed Celtic style, broad in treatment without any of the marvellous minuteness of the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow.
73 See Westwood, Irish Manuscripts, Pl. 16.
74 This is one of many examples of Books being called after some earlier Saint who was connected with the monastery where the manuscript was written; for example the Gospels of Saint Augustine in the Corpus library at Cambridge, the Gospels of Saint Cuthbert, and the Gospels of Saint Columba, are all later than the dates of the Saints they are called after.
75 See Weidmann, Geschichte der Bibliothek von St Gallen; St Gall, 1841.
76 This manuscript was formerly believed to have been once in the possession of Saint Augustine, but it is clearly a good deal later in date than his time.
77 Eventually there were three Norse kingdoms in Ireland, the capitals of which were Dublin, Waterford and Limerick; and the three chief ports of Ireland, Dublin, Cork and Belfast were all founded by the Viking invaders; see C. F. Keary’s valuable work, The Vikings in Western Christendom, London, 1891, pp. 165 to 185.
78 The blessing in the Greek Church is given by raising three fingers; in the Western Church two fingers and the thumb are used.
79 See Westwood, Miniatures of Irish Manuscripts, London, 1868, Pl. I. and II.
80 The points of difference between the Roman and Celtic Churches were very trivial, the chief being the date for the celebration of Easter and the shape of the monastic tonsure.
81 See note 2 on page 97.
82 This very decorative class of ornament not only survived till the thirteenth century but was again revived in Italy at the close of the fifteenth century; see below, page 193.
83 It is mentioned above, see page 62, how Alcuin of York in the reign of Charles the Great created the Anglo-Carolingian style of illumination by introducing in the eighth century into the kingdom of the Franks manuscripts and manuscript illuminators from the monasteries of Northumbria.
84 Canon G. F. Browne tells me that it is very doubtful whether Wilfrid ever received the pall from Rome. It may therefore be more correct to speak of him as Bishop rather than Archbishop of York.
85 The word “Anglo-Saxon” is a convenient one to use, and is supported by various ancient authorities; for example in a manuscript Benedictional (in the library of Corpus College, Cambridge) England is called “Regnum Anglo-Saxonum,” and the English king is entitled “Rex Anglorum vel Saxonum.”
86 This splendid manuscript is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire; a good description of it, with engravings of all its miniatures, is published in Archæologia, Vol. XXIV. 1832, pp. 1 to 117, and a coloured copy of one of the miniatures is given by Westwood, Irish Manuscripts, Plate 45.
The library of Trinity College, Cambridge, possesses a book of the Gospels which in style is very similar to the Benedictional of Aethelwold.
87 The Gospels of Lothaire are in Paris, Bibl. Nat. Lat. 266.
88 This is one of the latest examples of the use of vellum dyed with the murex purple; the purple grounds occasionally used in fifteenth century manuscripts are usually produced by laying on a coat of opaque purple pigment.
89 Now preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.
90 The celebrated “Utrecht Psalter” is the best known example of a fine manuscript of this date with outline drawings of the revived classical style. Some northern influence is shown in the interlaced ornaments of the large initials. Facsimiles of some pages have been published by W. G. Birch, London, 1876.
91 This beautiful roll is now in the British Museum, Harl., Roll Y, 6; two of the miniatures are photographically illustrated by Birch and Jenner, Early Drawings and Illuminations, London, 1879, p. 142.
92 This Psalter, which is now in the public library at Utrecht, may possibly be one of the very manuscripts which Canute brought from abroad. It was certainly in England for many centuries before it passed into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, from whose library it must have been stolen, else it would have passed into the library of the British Museum along with the rest of the great Cotton collection of manuscripts.
The Utrecht Psalter has been thought to be the work of an Anglo-Saxon artist, but, most probably, it is the work of a French scribe, though the miniatures are mainly of the debased classical style of Rome, and the character of the writing is even more distinctly classical, differing very little in fact from that of the fourth century Virgil of the Vatican written several centuries earlier.
93 Good examples of this curious style of miniature are to be seen in a manuscript in the British Museum, Cotton, Tib. C. VI.
94 Indeed it was not very long before the tables were turned and Normandy was reconquered by an English army under a king, who, though of Norman blood, was distinctly an English king. The victory of Henry I. over Robert, Duke of Normandy, at Tenchebray in 1105, went far to wipe out any feeling on the part of the English that they were a nation under the rule of a conqueror.
95 Chronicles of Robert of Gloucester, Hearne’s edition, 1724 (reprinted in 1810), Vol. I. p. 363.
96 An interesting example of this revived study from the life is afforded by the Sketch-book of Villard de Honecourt, which is mentioned above at page 72.
97 See below, page 193, on the revival of this class of ornament in Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century.
98 This beautiful manuscript is now in the possession of Mr Quaritch, who prices it at £800 in his catalogue of December, 1891. It appears once to have belonged to Sir Roger Huntingfield, who died about 1337 A.D.
99 It is noticeable that even the earliest miniatures of Saint Thomas’ death represent him in Mass vestments, officiating at the High Altar, whereas he was really killed late in the afternoon, and on the north side of the church.
100 See Vetusta Monumenta, Vol. VI. pp. 1 to 37, and Plates 26 to 39; illustrations are given here of “the Painted Chamber” and its decorations before the fire of 1834, and a number of interesting extracts are quoted from the accounts now preserved in the Record Office.
101 The Gestes of Antioch probably means the capture of Antioch in 1098 under the Crusader leaders Tancred and Godfrey of Bouillon. In the same way the “Jerusalem” and “Jericho chambers” in the house of the Abbot of Westminster were so called from the paintings on their walls. The curious “archaism” of these paintings, with figures of knights in the armour of the eleventh century, is explained below; see page 128.
102 See, for example, that wonderful frontal, covered with miniature paintings, from the High Altar of Westminster Abbey, which is now preserved in the south ambulatory of the Sanctuary.
103 Various attempts have been made to show that Torell was an Italian, and that the painted retable at Westminster was the work of a foreign artist, but there is not the slightest foundation for either of these theories.
104 As examples of this I may mention the famous “Lateran Cope” in Rome, the “Piccolomini Cope” at Pienza, and two others of similar date and style in the Museums of Florence and Bologna. On many occasions we find that the Popes of this period, on sending the Pall to a newly elected English Archbishop, suggested that they would like in return embroidered vestments of English work, opus Anglicanum. It should be observed that in almost all published works on the subject the above mentioned copes are wrongly described as being of Italian workmanship.
105 Both before and after this period manuscripts of the Vulgate were comparatively rare, but between 1250 and about 1330 many thousands of manuscript Bibles must have been produced, all closely similar in style, design, choice of subject and character of writing. There is no other large class of manuscripts in which such remarkable uniformity of style is to be seen.
106 As an example of the wonderful thinness of this uterine vellum, I may mention a Bible of about 1260 in my own possession which consists of 646 leaves, and yet measures barely an inch and a half in thickness. In spite of its extreme thinness this vellum is sufficiently opaque to prevent the writing on one side from showing through to the other.
107 For example a Bible of this class in the Cambridge University library, dating from about 1280, has from thirteen to seventeen lines to an inch!
108 This method of painting the shadows in pure colour, and using the same pigment mixed with white for the rest, was employed on a large scale by many of the Sienese painters in the fourteenth century, and by the Florentine Fra Angelico in the fifteenth. Fra Angelico’s earliest works were manuscript illuminations, executed about the year 1407 in the Dominican Convent at Fiesole.
109 The Bodleian library (Douce, 366) possesses a specially beautiful manuscript Psalter, which belonged to Robert of Ormsby, a monk of Norwich Abbey.
110 In all periods the Benedictines were the chief monastic scribes and miniaturists; the Mother House at Monte Cassino was one of the chief centres in Italy for the production of manuscripts, and wherever the Benedictines settled they brought with them the art of manuscript illumination; see page 211.
111 This is specially noticeable in the development of the architectural styles; not only general forms, but details of mouldings and the like seem to spring up all over England almost simultaneously.
112 See below, fig. 25, page 133.
113 The first pages of the two last-mentioned Psalters are illustrated by Shaw, The Art of Illumination, London, 1870, pp. 17 to 23.
114 An example of the most marvellous beauty and perfection was presented by Lady Sadleir to Trinity College library in Cambridge.
115 The Victoria Psalter is however frequently described in booksellers’ catalogues, not only in polite, but in enthusiastic language. As an example I may quote the following,
THE BEAUTIFUL VICTORIA PSALTER:
PSALMS of David illuminated by OWEN JONES, beautifully printed in large type, on thin cardboards, on 104 pages, each of which is surrounded by SUMPTUOUS BORDERS in GOLD and COLOURS, with the CAPITALS ILLUMINATED, and some of the pages consisting of large and most beautifully illuminated texts, columbier 4to. elegantly bound in morocco, the sides elaborately carved, leathern joints, and gilt edges (A VERY HANDSOME VOLUME), £4. 10s.
n. d.
116 These same characteristics of face are very noticeable in the beautiful carved ivory diptychs and statuettes of the Virgin and Child made during the fourteenth century in France and England.
117 A lectionary contained the Gospels and Epistles arranged for use at the celebration of Mass.
118 Especially for the Canon of the Mass. The famous Mentz Psalter of 1459 is printed in characters of this size and style; see below, page 149.
119 The pine-apple was not known in Europe before the discovery of America, and this very decorative form, which occurs so largely on the fine woven velvets of Florence and Northern Italy, was probably suggested by the artichoke plant, largely assisted by the decorative invention of the designer.
120 In the Brera Catalogue this very beautiful painting is wrongly ascribed to Fra Carnovale, a pupil of Piero della Francesca.
121 This very important English manuscript was bought by Mr Quaritch and priced at £1600 in his catalogue, No. 291, 1873. It was written in or soon after 1420 when Lydgate completed writing his work; it may possibly have been written and illuminated by the author himself.
122 Caxton appears to have begun to use woodcut initials in the year 1484 or 1485, but most Continental printers continued to use hand-painted capitals many years later than that.
123 This scene and the name of Saint Thomas, wherever it occurs, are frequently obliterated in English manuscripts. This was done by the special order of Henry VIII., who, after his quarrel with the Pope, appears to have regarded Thomas à Becket as a sort of personal enemy.
124 See page 187 for a fine Italian example of this subject. It is interesting to note that the popular legend of Saint George and the dragon is simply a mediaeval version of the old classical myth of Perseus and Andromeda. In the more genuine Oriental lives of Saint George this episode is not introduced.
125 It should be remembered that Norman-French continued to be the Court language of England till late in the fifteenth century, and for certain legal purposes even later. Its use still survives in the Law-Courts of Quebec and Montreal.
126 Dante, Purg. XI. 80; see above, p. 31.
127 In the magnificent English embroideries of the thirteenth century, such as the Lateran and Pienza copes, mentioned at page 112, we see birds of exactly similar style and kinds introduced among the scroll-work of the grounds and borders.
128 The phrase ivy pattern is a convenient one to use, as it expresses a very common and well-defined type of ornament, but the leaf is too conventionally treated to be recognized as that of the ivy or any other plant: and the pattern is varied with blossoms of different forms and colours.
129 See Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, Vol. II. p. 1, and note to p. 121.
130 The manner in which this splendid effect is produced is described below, see page 234.
131 Shown, for example, in fig. 25, page 134.
132 The border from the Grimani Breviary shown on page 168, is an example, though a very beautiful one, of this decadence of taste.
133 Now in Paris, Bibl. Nat. Lat. 17, 294. John, Duke of Bedford, was a son of Henry IV.; he married in 1423 Anne, daughter of the Duke of Burgundy. Very fine portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford occur in the Bedford Missal mentioned below.
134 The Italians call it chiaro-scuro or “light and shade” painting; its use in manuscripts may have been suggested by the grisaille stained glass windows which were introduced by the Cistercian monks, whose Rule prohibited the use of brightly coloured figure subjects either in their windows, on their walls, or in their books.
135 It was sold for £650 at the Perkins sale in June, 1873.
136 Christina was one of the most famous authors of her time; she produced thirteen different works; one of which, The Fayts of Armes and Chivalry, was translated and printed by Caxton about a century after it was written, in 1489.
137 A fine manuscript of Christina’s Romance is mentioned above, see page 138.
138 These chivalrous romances were no less popular in England; Dan Lydgate’s Boke of the siege of Troy, adapted and translated from Guido de’ Colonna’s romance, was one of the most popular English books in the fifteenth century; see page 123.
139 See Muntz, Les Peintres d’Avignon, 1342-1352, Tours, 1885; and Les peintures de Simone Martini à Avignon, Paris, 1885. Many of these paintings still exist in a good state of preservation, especially those on the vault of the small private chapel of the Popes.
140 This subject is discussed at greater length in Chapter XIII.
141 See page 206 on the favourable conditions under which the monastic illuminators did their work.
142 Books of Hours were the prayer-books of the laity, as the breviary, portiforium, or “portoos” was the prayer-book of the priest.
143 See below, page 230, for an explanation of the difference between “mat” gold applied as a fluid pigment with a brush, and burnished gold leaf laid over a raised “mordant” or enamel-like ground.
144 In point of technique these beautiful miniatures are exactly like very delicate wood-cuts, though in most cases they appear to have been cut (in relief) on blocks of soft metal, treated just as if it had been wood.
145 Perhaps the earliest was one issued in 1486 by Antoine Verard.
146 In these earliest Parisian printed Horae the backgrounds of the borders are left plain white; unlike the later ones, in which the borders have dotted or criblée backgrounds.
147 They include many different uses, especially that of Paris, Rome, Rouen and Sarum.
148 Both Verard and Pigouchet produced Horae for the publisher Simon Vostre.
149 It is incorrect to speak of editions of these Books of Hours; hardly any two copies appear to have been quite the same; fresh arrangements and combinations of a large stock of engraved blocks were made for the printing of almost every copy, and thus the long list given by Brunet is very incomplete; see the last volume of Brunet’s Manuel du libraire, Paris, 1865.
150 Sold in June, 1873, for £181, with the rest of the Perkins library.
151 A copy of this glory of the printer’s art in Mr Quaritch’s possession is priced in his catalogue of 1891 at £5250; only eight copies are known to exist.
152 In 1449 Schoeffer was a young illuminator of manuscripts residing in Paris.
153 Mentelin was enrolled as an illuminator in the Painters’ Guild at Strasburg in 1447; and Colard Mansion, Caxton’s master in the art of typography, belonged, as a scribe and illuminator, to the Guild of St John and St Luke at Bruges. In 1471 he was elected Warden or Doyen of his Guild.
154 In some cases goldsmiths and engravers of coin-dies became printers owing to their knowledge of the technical process necessary for cutting the punches for type. The great French printer Nicolas Jenson, who produced the most magnificent printed books in Venice, was, until the year 1462, Master of the Mint at Tours. And Bernardo Neri, the printer of the Florentine Editio Princeps of Homer, was originally a goldsmith, and had assisted Ghiberti in his work on the famous bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery.
155 The glorious copy on vellum of the Mazarine Bible in the British Museum has illuminated borders and initial miniatures of the finest style and execution. This earliest of printed books is commonly called after the copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin which contains the illuminator’s note that his work was finished in 1456. Sir John Thorold’s copy on paper was sold in 1884 for £3900.
156 Italian books frequently had clasps at the top and bottom as well as two at the side.
157 The first or almost the first book printed by Aldus was the Hero and Leander of Musaeus of 1494 in small 4to. The Virgil of 1501 was followed rapidly by a Juvenal and a Martial, issued in the same year.
158 Chinese wood engravings of considerably earlier date do exist.
159 See page 1373; this remarkable manuscript was then (in 1873) priced at £650.
160 Early wood-cuts were not cut on the cross ends of the grain, but on the “plank side” of a wooden board.
161 The Cantica Canticorum of about 1435 has most lovely designs, and the Apocalypse, the Ars Moriendi, the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, and the Biblia Pauperum all have wood-cut illustrations of great vigour and spirit, produced between about 1420 and 1450.
162 Even before 1400 initial letters in manuscripts had been occasionally printed from wooden stamps covered with red or blue pigment.
163 Much of the German bronze-work of this period is extremely fine and skilful in execution, such as the fonts and doors of churches at Hildesheim, Augsburg and other places. The bronze font at Liége, cast about 1112 by a sculptor of the German school, is a work of most wonderful grace and beauty.
164 Till the thirteenth century the art of the Netherlands and Flanders was German in character; after that Flanders was, artistically, as well as politically, partly Teutonic and partly French.
165 See above, page 110, for an English example of wall paintings being copied from manuscript miniatures.
166 The National Gallery in London possesses a magnificent panel by Gérard David, a kneeling Canon with three standing figures of Saints, and an exquisitely painted landscape background. This is one wing of an altar triptych which was painted for St Donatian at Bruges. It is numbered 1045 in the Catalogue. Paintings by Gérard David’s wife are mentioned below, see page 218.
167 The whole of this gorgeous manuscript was published in fairly good “facsimile” by Curmer, Le livre d’Heures de la Reine Anne de Bretagne, 2 Vols. Imp. 410., Paris, 1861; see also Laborde, Ducs de Bourgogne, Vol. 1. p. xxiv.
168 A very interesting account of the Flemish illuminators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is given by Weale, Le Beffroi, Vol. iv. 1873, in which he publishes the accounts of the Guild of St John and St Luke between the years 1454 and 1500.
169 Gérard David of Bruges was a notable example of skill in both branches of art; see above, page 165. Gérard’s wife also practised both these arts, and produced manuscript illuminations and panel paintings of almost equal beauty to those of her husband; see below, page 218.
170 Maximilian’s Prayer-book has been described (with copies of the borders) by Stoeger, Vignettes d’Albert Dürer; Munich, 1850.
171 These minutely rendered ecclesiastical scenes occur frequently in other classes of Teutonic illumination.
172 The Fitzwilliam Library possesses a beautiful example of this class of pen illumination in a large folio volume of the Summa of Aquinas printed by Mentelin about 1465 or 1466.
Mentelin in his youth was an illuminator of manuscripts in Paris at the same time that he was a student in the University; see page 150.
173 Such work as the Pisan Baptistery pulpit of Niccola Pisano, executed in about 1260, was an almost isolated phenomenon, and it was not till about half a century later that Giotto and his pupils produced paintings of equal merit to those of France and England during the second half of the thirteenth century.
174 See Mon. Germ. Hist. XII. p. 348 seq.; and Agincourt, Hist. d’Art, Pl. 66.
175 Partly owing to the necessarily decorative beauty of the glass tesserae, Byzantine mosaics, even of a degraded period, are usually fine and rich in effect.
176 See Vasari, Vite dei pittori, Edition of 1568, Parte I. p. 229 seq.; and ib. Milanesi’s edition, 1878, Vol. II. pp. 17 to 29.
177 This enshrined hand, and another, said to be that of a later miniatore of the same Monastery, Don Lorenzo, still exist in the Sacristy of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
178 These magnificent miniatures were sold with the rest of the Hailstone Collection in 1891; one of them, in the possession of the present writer, is a magnificent initial O, measuring eight by nine inches, enclosing a very beautiful seated figure of Saint Stephen in a violet dalmatic with richly decorated gold apparels.
179 See Vasari, Milanesi Ed. Vol. II. p. 15. Vasari also mentions a monk of the same monastery named Don Jacopo, a contemporary of Don Silvestro, who illuminated twenty large choir-books of extraordinary beauty.
180 He appears to have abstained from purchasing these choir-books because they were of the special Camaldolese Use, and could not therefore be used in the Vatican Basilica.
181 Fra Angelico’s works were executed throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. Vasari mentions some magnificent manuscripts illuminated by him for the Cathedral of Florence, but they are not now known to exist.
182 This is very doubtful. Fra Angelico’s brother Fra Benedetto da Fiesole was a scribe rather than a miniaturist, and probably only wrote the fine large text; the illuminations were probably added by a pupil of Fra Angelico, named Zanobi Strozzi, who died in 1468.
183 As an example of this I may mention Fra Angelico’s system of painting the shadows of drapery in pure colour, using the same colour mixed with white for the rest of the folds. To some extent this method was used by the Sienese school of painting, which in other respects resembles in style the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts; see above, p. 114.
184 Taking it all round, in painting, sculpture, the medallist’s art and other branches of the fine arts, no country and no period except Athens in the time of Pericles can ever have quite equalled the artistic glories of Florence under Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo de’ Medici.
185 Pontificals contain such Services as only Bishops or Archbishops could celebrate, and therefore comparatively few would be required.
186 A beautiful manuscript of about 1460 in the Fitzwilliam Museum has its first page surrounded with a border of this class of design, the interest of which is much increased by the minutely written signature, “Jacopo da Fabriano,” introduced among the leavy ornaments of the margin.
187 This kind of design, with a blank space for the owner’s arms, is used for many of the beautiful wood-cut borders in the early printed books of Florence and Venice.
188 Decorative accessories of this sculpturesque kind are largely used in the paintings of Andrea Mantegna of Padua.
189 And to some extent for manuscripts of religious works as well. This archaic form of letter was also used by Sweynheim and Pannartz and other prototypographers at Subiaco and in Rome; hence it got the name of Roman as opposed to Gothic letter.
190 One of the finest examples of this style of illumination is in a volume of the Italian translation of Pliny’s Natural History, printed on vellum by Nicolas Jenson in Venice in 1476; now in the Bodleian at Oxford.
191 See Wattenbach, Schriftwesen, Ed. 2, pp. 411 and 469; and Romer, Les Manuscrits de la Bibl. Corvinienne, in l’Art, Vol. X. 1877.
192 See Vasari’s life of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, Ed. Milanesi, Vol. II. p. 522 seq.
193 The National Gallery in London possesses (No. 748 in the Catalogue) a good example of Girolamo’s work, a Madonna altar-piece, signed Hieronymus a libris f. No. 1134 in the same collection is an example of a panel picture by Liberale da Verona. The Bodleian contains an exquisite Book of Hours illuminated by Girolamo dai Libri for the Duke of Urbino.
194 The Antiphonals which Liberale illuminated at Monte Oliveto are now preserved in the Chapter library at Chiusi. Those which he painted at Siena are now in the Cathedral library. Records of money paid to Liberale for these choir-books are published by Milanesi, Documenti per la Storia dell’ Arte Sanese, Vol. II. pp. 384-386; and Milanesi’s edition of Vasari, Vol. V. pp. 326-334.
195 Examples of Attavante’s and Liberale’s miniatures are illustrated by Eug. Müntz, La Renaissance en Italie et en France, Paris, 1885, p. 188 seq.
196 See page 200, and compare pages 163 and 175 for examples of similar influence due to the manuscript illuminators of Germany and Italy.
197 For examples of this see above, page 175.
198 Each of these painters (in some pictures) also signs himself Alamanus, meaning not necessarily that they were Germans, but possibly natives of Lombardy, who were often called Alamani by their Italian neighbours.
199 Especially in his magnificently decorative altar-piece of the Adoration of the Magi in the Florentine Academy, dated 1423.
200 Clovio is the Italianized form of a harsh Croatian name; the artist adopted the name Giulio as a compliment to his friend and teacher Giulio Romano, Raphael’s favourite pupil.
J. W. Bradley, Life of Giulio Clovio, London, 1891, gives an interesting account of him and of his times; see also Vasari, Ed. Milanesi, Vol. VII. p. 557.
201 The ex-king of Naples’ library possesses a Book of Hours, on the illuminations of which (Vasari tells us) Giulio Clovio spent nine years. It certainly is a marvel of human patience and misdirected skill; the text was written by a famous scribe named Monterchi, who was specially renowned for the beauty of his writing.
202 An interesting little volume on this subject has been published by Eug. Müntz, La Bibliothèque du Vatican, Paris, 1886; it deals chiefly with the growth of the library during the sixteenth century.
203 Fra Sebastiano was called “del Piombo” from his office as superintendant of the pendant lead seals, piombi or bullae, which were attached to Papal Briefs and other documents, one class of which were called Bulls from their lead bullae.
204 See Montault, Livres de chœur des églises de Rome, Arras, 1874, p. 9.
205 The Fitzwilliam Museum possesses two noble vellum choir-books of this class dated 1604 and 1605. Though the miniatures are poor, the writing of the text and the music might well pass for the work of a fifteenth century scribe.
206 A valuable but by no means exhaustive list of manuscript illuminators is given by J. W. Bradley, Dictionary of Miniaturists, Illuminators and Caligraphers, London, 1887. The names of Italian miniaturists are specially numerous, partly because Italian manuscripts are more frequently signed by their illuminators than the manuscripts of other countries. See also Bernasconi, Studj sopra la storia della pittura Italiana dei secoli xiv e xv, Verona, 1864.
207 J. R. Green, in his Short History of the English People, chap. III., gives an interesting sketch of the development of literature and the art of the scribe in the great Monasteries of England, especially from the eleventh to the fourteenth century.
208 The carvings on the misericords (or turn-up seats) of choir-stalls were frequently a vent for the pent-up humour and even spite of many a monastic carver.
209 The Poems of Walter Map were edited by Thos. Wright for the Camden Society, 1841.
210 Walter Map subsequently obtained various degrees of preferment, and in 1197 became Archdeacon of Oxford.
211 Theophilus, Schedula diversarum Artium, I. 30-33, writes as if every illuminator had to beat out or grind his own gold.
212 In this respect, as is noted above at page 33, the manuscripts of classical date appear to have been inferior to those of the mediaeval period.
213 Monte Cassino the first and chief of the Benedictine monasteries, founded by Saint Benedict himself, was for many centuries one of the chief centres in Italy for the writing and illumination of manuscripts.
214 According to the severe Cistercian Rule richly illuminated manuscripts were not allowed to be written or even used in Houses of that Order, which in England from the end of the twelfth century came next in size and importance to the monasteries of the parent Benedictine Order.
215 See the plan of the Abbey of St Gallen, published by Prof. Willis, Arch. Jour., Vol. v. page 85 seq.
216 The Abbey of Westminster is a well preserved example of the typical Benedictine plan.
217 One walk of the Benedictine cloister, usually that on the west, was used as the school-room where the novices repeated their “Donats” and other lessons. Hence in many cloisters one sees the stone benches cut with marks for numerous “go-bang” boards—a favourite monastic game.
218 No monk could borrow a book to read without the express permission of his superiors given in the Chapter House.
219 The word carrel is probably a corruption of the French carré, from the square form of these little rooms.
220 When the great Benedictine Abbey of Gloucester was suppressed, Henry VIII. made the Church into a Cathedral by creating a new See; and so, happily, the very beautiful cloister was saved from destruction.
221 Gloucester is exceptional in having the cloister on the north side of the Church; and also in having these stone recesses in the scriptorium alley.
222 The Gloucester cloister and the carrel recesses shown in this woodcut date from the latter part of the fourteenth century.
224 Frequently in the Linen-armourers’ Guild, that of makers of defensive armour of linen padded and quilted, a very important protection against assassination, which was used till the seventeenth century.
225 Dante selected the Apothecaries’ and Physicians’ Guild.
226 This phrase was used in the twelfth century by Ordericus Vitalis, Hist. Eccles. Lib. III. p. 77, Ed. Le Prevost.
227 Mediaeval saddlery, with its cut, gilt and stamped leather (cuir bouillé), rich and elaborate in design, was a decorative art of no mean character; and in technique was akin to that of the bookbinder, which in most places was included in the same Guild.
228 See Le Beffroi, Bruges, Vol. IV. 1873.
229 In poetic beauty, however, they cannot be compared to the glory of the French Apocalypses such as that in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
230 Gérard David is mentioned above as one of the illuminators of the famous Grimani Breviary; see page 165.
231 See pages 117 and 122 for examples of this.
232 That is, for noting or writing the plain song of certain parts of the service which were sung at Christmas and during Holy Week. This explanation I owe to my friend Mr J. T. Micklethwaite.
233 Evidently mis-spelt for psalterio; and again in the next item.
234 The quaternion was a gathering of four sheets of vellum, each folded once; thus forming sixteen pages.
[235] This book was partly written on sheets of vellum which were in stauro (in stock), and therefore do not come into the accounts.
236 Twelve quires of vellum which were in stock were also used for this Antiphonale.
237 See Trans. Bristol and Glouces. Arch. Soc. Vol. XV. 1891, pp. 257 and 260.
238 See Peignot, Essai sur l’histoire du parchemin et du vélin, Paris, 1812.
239 Strictly speaking the word vellum should denote parchment made from calfskin, but the word is commonly used for any of the finer qualities of parchment which were used for manuscripts.
240 Quoted by Hook, Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury, Vol. III. p. 353; the Rev. Canon G. F. Browne kindly called my attention to this passage. Other examples of the cost of vellum are given in the preceding chapter.
[241] The same arrangement is to be seen in books printed on vellum.
242 For example, the mere vellum required to print a small thick folio, such as Caxton’s Golden Legend, would now cost about £40.
243 I owe many of the facts in the following account of early paper to the excellent article on that subject in the Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, Vol. XVIII. by Mr E. Maunde Thompson. See also E. Egger, Le papier dans l’antiquité et dans les temps modernes, Paris, 1866.
244 A good illustrated account of early water-marks is given by Sotheby, Principia Typographia, London, 1858.
245 Some fifteenth century paper has a special maker’s mark, but more usually a general town or district mark was used, such as the cross-keys, a Cardinal’s hat, an Imperial crown or double-eagle.
246 What is now called “foolscap paper” originally took its name from a paper-mark in the form of a fool’s cap and bells, a device which was frequently used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
247 Some of Caxton’s books, printed in Westminster, bear many different paper-marks of Germany and Flanders, even in the same volume.
248 Paper was also made at an early date in Constantinople, through its intimate relationship with the East. Hence the Monk Theophilus, writing in the eleventh century, calls linen-paper “Greek vellum,” pergamena Graeca; see I. 24.
249 This old paper is almost as stout, tough and durable as parchment—very unlike modern machine-made paper.
250 The size was made by boiling down shreds of vellum. Blotting-paper is paper that has not been sized. A coarse grey variety was used as early as the fifteenth century, though, as a rule, fine sand was used for this purpose till about the middle of the present century, especially on the Continent.
251 Modern “shell gold” is practically the same thing as the fluid gold of the mediaeval illuminators, except that it is not made with the pure, unalloyed metal.
252 The following are the most useful and easily accessible books on the technical processes of the illuminator; Theophilus, Schedula diversarum Artium, Hendrie’s edition with a translation, London, 1847; Cennino Cennini, Trattato della pittura, 1437, edited, with a translation, by Mrs Merrifield, London, 1844; and a large and valuable collection of early manuscripts on the same subject, edited and translated by Mrs Merrifield under the title of Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting, 2 Vols., London, 1849.
253 See page 144.
254 That is to say, it looks as if the whole substance, mordant and all, were one solid mass of gold, nearly as thick as a modern half-sovereign; see Theophilus, I. 24 and 25.
255 So when William Torell was about to gild the bronze effigy of Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey he procured a large number of gold florins from Lucca.
256 Not even the smallest admixture of alloy was permitted in the gold coinages of the Middle Ages. Dante (Inf. XXX. 73) mentions the coiner Maestro Adamo who had been burnt at Romena in 1280 for issuing florins which had scarcely more alloy than a modern sovereign.
257 The gold penny of Henry III. and the florin and its parts of Edward III. were only struck as patterns. The gold noble was first issued in 1341; its value was 6s. 8d. or half a mark. So many nobles were destroyed to make gold leaf for illuminating, and for other purposes, that an Act was passed prohibiting, under severe penalties, the use of the gold coinage for any except monetary purposes.
258 In the same way the gold leaf used by the Greeks was comparatively thick. The famous Erechtheum inscription of 404 B.C. gives one drachma as the cost of each leaf (πέταλον) used for gilding the marble enrichments; see Cor. Ins. Att. I. 324, fragment C, col. ii. lines 35 and 42. Eighteen-pence will now buy 100 leaves of gold.
259 The best account of the way to make the mordant was given about 1398 by a Lombard illuminator called Johannes Archerius; see Mrs Merrifield’s interesting collection of Treatises on Painting, Vol. I. page 259 seq.
260 See Theophilus, I. 25.
261 See Mrs Merrifield, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 154.
262 In Cennino’s time, the early part of the fourteenth century, in Europe, sugar was sold by the ounce as a costly drug. Apothecaries, not grocers, dealt in it. In Persia, Syria and some other Moslem countries cane sugar was made and used in comparatively large quantities throughout the mediaeval period; but in Europe it did not come into use as an article of food till the 16th century, and even then it was very expensive.
263 The date of this receipt is about 1410; it is quoted in Jehan de Begue’s manuscript published by Mrs Merrifield, Vol. I. pp. 9, 95, and 154; see also Theophilus, I. 31, who speaks of burnishing fluid gold laid on a mordant of red lead and cinnabar.
264 See Theophilus, I. 33 and 34; he recommends white of egg as a medium for ceruse, minium and carmine, and for most other pigments, ordinary vellum size.
Jehan le Begue’s manuscript gives the same advice as to the use of white of egg, but advises the use of gum Arabic with other pigments; see § 197.
265 The British Museum possesses an interesting manuscript on pigments, entitled De coloribus Illuminatorum (Sloane manuscripts, 1754); see also Eraclius, De artibus Romanorum, published by Raspe, London, 1783 and 1801; and the twelfth century Mappae Clavicula printed in Archæologia, Vol. XXXII. pp. 183 to 244. The first book of Theophilus, Diversarum artium schedula, written in the eleventh century, contains much interesting matter on this subject; see also the works mentioned above at page 230.
266 The Journal of the Society of Arts, Dec. 25, 1891, and Jan. 8 and 15, 1892, has a valuable series of papers on “The pigments and vehicles of the Old Masters” by Mr A. P. Laurie, who throws new light on the treatises edited by Mrs Merrifield with the help of his own chemical investigations.
267 This word is spelt in many different ways.
268 In mediaeval times this was done by first embedding the powdered stone in a lump of wax and resin, from which the blue particles were laboriously extracted by long-continued kneading and washing. The theory of this apparently was that the wax held the colourless particles and allowed the blue to be washed out; see Mrs Merrifield, Treatises on Painting, Vol. I. pp. 49, and 97 to 111.
269 The modern value of ultramarine is about equal to its weight in gold. Sir Peter Lely, in the time of Charles II., paid £4. 10s. an ounce for it.
270 The Prior in question was the Superior of the Convent of the Frati Gesuati in Florence.
271 The German blue was also liable to turn to a bright emerald green if exposed to damp air. This change has taken place in a great part of the painted ceilings of the Villa Madama, which Raphael designed for Cardinal de’ Medici (afterwards Clement VII.) on the slopes of Monte Mario, a little distance outside the walls of Rome.
272 Because it was used by goldsmiths in soldering gold.
273 Minium was largely used in the manuscripts of classical times; this is mentioned by Pliny (Hist. Nat. XXXIII. 122) who says minium in voluminum quoque scriptura usurpatur.
274 All natural earthy pigments owe their colours to the various metals, which in combinations with different substances give a great variety of tints. Thus, iron gives red, brown, yellow and black; copper gives many shades of brilliant blues and greens; and manganese gives a quiet purple, especially in combination with an alcaline silicate.
275 Plutarch (De defec. Or. § 41) mentions flour made from beans as being used with murex purple and kermes crimson to give them sufficient body for the painter’s purpose.
276 Kermes is the Arabic name for this insect.
277 It should be remembered that a large number of the mediaeval receipts and processes were not based on any reasonable principle, and endless complications were often introduced quite needlessly; this is well shown in a very interesting paper by Prof. John Ferguson of Glasgow on Some Early Treatises on Technological Chemistry, read before the Philos. Soc. Glasgow, Jan. 6, 1886.
278 The use of litharge as a drier was one of the most important improvements made in the technique of oil painting by the Van Eycks of Bruges in the first half of the fifteenth century. Before then, oil paintings on walls had often been laboriously dried by holding charcoal braziers close to the surface of the picture. Among the accounts of the expenses of painting the Royal Palace of Westminster in the thirteenth century (see above, page 110) charcoal for this purpose is an important item in the cost. Paintings on panel, being moveable, were usually dried by being placed in the sun; but, in every way, a good drier like litharge answers better than heat, either of the fire or of sunshine.
279 See Theophilus, I. 39.
280 See Vitruvius, VII. 10; and Pliny, Hist. Nat. XXXV. 41; and Dioscorides, V. 183.
281 Sometimes accidentally produced in domestic life by some overdrawn tea remaining on a steel knife.
282 The modern “lead-pencil” is wrongly named, being made of graphite, which is pure carbon. This does not appear to have been used in mediaeval times.
283 The vellum was not prepared in any way to receive the silver-point drawing; but when an artist wanted to make a finished study in silver-point he covered his vellum or paper with a priming of fine gesso, powdered marble, or wood-ashes; this gave a more biting surface to the paper, and made the silver rub off more easily and mark much more strongly. In the case of manuscript illuminations a strongly marked line was not needed, as the outline was only intended as a guide to the painter.
284 See above, pages 29 and 30, on the pens and inkstands of the classical scribes.
285 Usually meant for Saint Jerome translating or revising the Latin edition of the Bible.
286 Again, the first miniature in the French and Flemish Horae usually represents Saint John in Patmos writing his Gospel. The eagle stands by patiently holding the Evangelist’s inkhorn. In some manuscripts the Devil, evidently in much awe of the eagle’s beak, makes a feeble attempt to upset the ink. In the latest manuscript Horae this scene is replaced by the one of Saint John at the Latin Gate.
287 A two-columned page of text had, of course, two sets of framing lines, one for each patch of writing.
288 In some manuscripts lines are ruled in blue or purple, but much less frequently than in the more decorative vermilion.
289 In certain classes of books, such as large Bibles and Prayer-books, the custom of ruling red lines lasted till the present century.
290 These guiding letters were used in all the early printed books which had initials painted in by an illuminator.
291 As a rule these manuscript signatures in printed books were written close to the edge of the page, and so have been cut off by the binder; in some tall copies, however, they still exist.
292 The next stage was the numbering of each folio or leaf, and the last system was to number each page. Folios appear to have been first numbered in books printed at Cologne about the year 1470. A further modification has recently been introduced, namely, in two column pages, to number each column separately.
293 The Lectionary mentioned on p. 120 was written and signed by a monastic scribe called Sifer Was.
294 Some fine examples of magnificently bound manuscripts are illustrated by Libri, Monumens inédits; Hist. Ornam. Paris, 1862-1864.
295 In Geyler’s Fatuorum Navicula, of which many editions, copiously illustrated with woodcuts, were published shortly before and after the year 1500, the cut showing the first fool of the series, the Bibliomaniac, represents him surrounded with books, all of which are bound after this design.
296 A complete sixteenth century Venetian library, consisting of a hundred and seventy volumes, all with painted illuminations on their edges, is now in the library of Mr Thos. Brooke, at Armitage Bridge, near Huddersfield. The whole collection forms a beautiful array of delicately painted miniatures, mostly the work of Cesare Vecellio, a Venetian illuminator of the latter part of the sixteenth century; see Catalogue of Mr Brooke’s library, London, 1891, Vol. II., pp. 663 to 681.
297 An analogous change took place in the reign of Elizabeth in England when coins, which up to that time had always been made by hammering, were first struck by the “mill and screw.”
298 In the miniature pictures in manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one often sees ladies represented with their Horae suspended in this way from their girdle.
299 See page 167.
300 See page 167.
301 The same want of appreciation extends to bindings. As a rule a book in a fine mediaeval binding sells for no more than if it were in a modern binding by Bedford. It is only the sixteenth century bindings of so-called “Grolier style” and the like which add largely to the value of a book.
302 This library is now deposited in the Guildhall; the press-mark is probably that of an old monastic library.
303 Probably a blundered version of Pliny’s statement (Hist. Nat. XXXVII. 119) that azure blue (cyanus) was invented by a king of Egypt.
304 This is evidently a different thing from the epicausterium or brazier for hot coals mentioned below. My friend Mr J. T. Micklethwaite suggests that it was a board covered with leather on which to stretch and dry vellum before writing on it.
305 An explanation of the nature and constitution of the Breviary will be found in the preface to the Psalter-volume of the Cambridge University Press edition of the Sarum Breviary, lately published.
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