Illuminated Manuscripts. John William Bradley

It was at first very rude and illegible, but afterwards became even handsome. A fine example exists in the British Museum (Palæograph. Soc., pl. 48). Its characteristic letters are g, s, t.

      Merovingian. The national hand of France. A hand made up chiefly of loops and angles in a cramped, irregular way. Its derivation the same as the preceding. In the seventh century it is all but illegible. In the eighth it is much better, and almost easy to read.

      Celtic. The national hand of Ireland. It is founded on the demi-uncial Roman, borrowed as to type from MSS. taken to Ireland by missionaries. It is bold, clear, and often beautiful, lending itself to some of the most astonishing feats of penmanship ever produced.

      Such are the chief varieties of writing found in the MSS. produced before the great revival of the arts and learning which took place during the reign of Charles the Great (Karl der Grosse), known familiarly as Charlemagne.

      Wattenbach (Schriftwesen, etc.) says that uncials date from the second century A.D. From examples still extant of the fifth and following centuries, it seems that while the Roman capitals were not uncommon, in Celtic MSS. the form generally adopted was the uncial. It was the form also usually chosen for ornamentation or imitation in those Visigothic, Merovingian, or Lombardic MSS., which made such remarkable use of fishes, birds, beasts, and plants for the construction of initial letters and principal words, of which we see so many examples in the elaborately illustrated Catalogue of the library at Laon by Ed. Fleury, and in that of Cambray, by M. Durieux. Most of these pre-Carolingian designs are barbarous in the extreme, dreadfully clumsy in execution, but they evince considerable ingenuity and a strong predilection for symbolism.

      Before concluding this chapter perhaps something should be said concerning the shape of books, though this is a matter somewhat outside the scope of our proper subject. Yet, as the brief digression will afford an opportunity for the explanation of certain terms used in MSS., we will avail ourselves of it.

      The ancient form of writing upon skins and papyrus was that of the roll. The Hebrew, Arabic, or Greek terms for this do not concern us, but its Latin name was volumen, “something rolled,” and from this we obtain our word volume. Such words as “explicit liber primus” etc., which we often find in early MSS., refer to this roll-form; explicare in Latin meaning to unroll; hence, apropos of a chapter or book, to finish. When transferred to the square form, or codex, it simply means, “here ends book first,” etc.

The modern book shape first came into use with the beginning of the Christian era under the name of codex. Here it will be necessary to explain that caudex, codex, in Latin, meant a block of wood, and had its humorous by-senses among the Roman dramatists, as the word block has among ourselves, such as blockhead.[5] So caudicalis provincia was a jocular expression for the occupation of wood-splitting.

      [5] Terence, Heautont., 5. 1, 4.

      Whether the word had originally any connection with cauda, “a tail,” is not here worth considering, as if so, it had long lost the connection; and when used to mean a book, had only the sense of a board, or a number of boards from two upwards, fastened together by means of rings passed through holes made in their edges.

Probably the first use was as plain smooth boards only; examples of such are still in existence. Then of boards thinly covered with, usually, black wax. A pair of such tablets, wax-covered, was a common form of a Roman pocket- or memorandum-book. It was also used as a means of conveying messages, the reply being returned on the same tablets. The method was to write on the wax with a fine-pointed instrument called a style, the reverse end of which was flattened. When the person to whom the message was sent had read it, he (or she) simply flattened out the writing, smoothed it level, and then wrote the reply on the same wax. School-children did their exercises on these tablets, housewives and stewards kept their accounts on them, and on them literary people jotted down their ideas as they do now in their pocket-books. Extant examples of these early books, or tablets, are fairly numerous, and may be seen in most public museums. A codex of two leaves was called a diptych; of three, a triptych, etc. The codex form was used for legal documents, wills, conveyances, and general correspondence. Hence the Roman postman was called a tabellarius, the tablets containing correspondence being tied with a thread or ribbon and sealed. This custom of sending letters on tablets survived for some centuries after Augustan times. Wattenbach gives several interesting instances of their mediæval use.[6]

[6] Schriftwesen, 48.

      Of course when the tablet gave place to the codex of skin or paper, the papyrus was too brittle and fragile for practical utility, and examples, as we have seen, were very rare; but vellum soon became popular. We may mention, in passing, that the papyrus roll gave us a word still in use in diplomatics, the word protocol. The first sheet of a papyrus roll was called the πρωτόκολλον. It usually contained the name of place and date of manufacture of the papyrus, and was stamped or marked with the name of the government officer who had charge of the department.

In the vellum codex, though each leaf might have only one fold, and thus technically be considered as a folio, the actual shape of it was nearly square, hence its name of codex quadratus. When other forms of books, such as octavo, duo-decimo, etc., came into use, it was in consequence of the increased number of foldings. The gatherings, originally quaternions or quires, became different, and those who undertake to examine MSS. with respect to their completeness have to be familiar with the various methods.[7] This kind of knowledge, however, though useful, is by no means essential to the story of illumination.

[7] Wattenbach, Schriftwesen; Madan, Books in Manuscript, etc.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

GREEK AND ROMAN ILLUMINATION

       Table of Contents

      The first miniature painter—The Vatican Vergils—Methods of painting—Origin of Christian art—The Vienna Genesis—The Dioscorides—The Byzantine Revival.

      It has been already stated that the earliest recorded miniature painter was a lady named Lala of Cyzicus in the days of Augustus Cæsar, days when Cyzicus was to Rome what Brussels is to Paris, or Brighton to London. All her work, as far as we know, has perished. It was portraiture on ivory, probably much the same as we see in the miniature portraiture of the present day.

      But this was not illumination. The kind of painting employed in the two Vatican Vergils was, however, something approaching it. These two precious volumes contain relics of Pagan art, but it is the very art which was the basis and prototype of so-called Christian art of those earliest examples found in the catacombs and in the first liturgical books of Christian times.

      The more ancient of the two Vergils referred to, No. 3225, which Labarte (2nd ed., ii. 158) thinks to be a century older than the other, Sir M.D. Wyatt considered as containing “some of the best and most interesting specimens of ancient painting which have come down to us. The design is free and the colours applied with good effect, the whole presenting classical art in the period of decline, but before its final debasement.” Whereas in the second MS., No. 3867, the style, though still classical, is greatly debased, and probably, in addition to this, by no means among the best work of its time. It is described