Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times

Front matter

ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS IN CLASSICAL AND MEDIAEVAL TIMES,

THEIR ART AND THEIR TECHNIQUE

BY

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

Classical Manuscripts written with a Stilus.

Before entering upon any discussion of the styles and methods of decoration which are to be found in mediaeval manuscripts and of the various processes, pigments and other materials which were employed by the mediaeval illuminators it will be necessary to give some account of the shapes and kinds of books which were produced among various races during the classical period.

The reason of this is that classical styles of decoration and technical methods, in the preparation of paper, parchment, pigments and the like, both survived to greater extent and to a very much later period than is usually supposed to have been the case, and, indeed, continued to influence both the artistic qualities and the mechanical processes of the mediaeval illuminator almost down to the time when the production of illuminated manuscripts was gradually put an end to by the invention of printing.

The word manuscript is usually taken to imply writing with a pen, brush or stilus to the exclusion of inscriptions cut with the chisel or the graver in stone, marble, bronze or other hard substance. The science of palaeography deals with the former, while epigraphy is concerned with the latter. The inscribed clay tablets of Assyria and Babylon might be considered a sort of link between the two, on account of the cuneiform writing on them having been executed with a stilus in soft, plastic clay, which subsequently was hardened by baking in the potter's kiln, but it will be needless to describe them here.

Manuscripts on metal plates. Another form of writing especially used by the ancient Greeks, which falls more definitely under the head of manuscripts, consists of characters scratched with a sharp iron or bronze stilus on plates of soft tin, lead or pewter, which, when not in use, could be rolled up into a compact and conveniently portable cylinder.

A considerable number of these inscribed lead rolls have been found in the tombs of Cyprus; but none of them unfortunately have as yet been found to contain matter of any great interest.

For the most part they consist either of monetary accounts, or else of formulae of imprecations, curses devoting some enemy to punishment at the hands of the gods. We know however from the evidence of classical writers that famous poems and other important literary works were occasionally preserved in the form of these inscribed tin or lead rolls. Pausanias, for example, tells us that during his visit to Helicon in Boeotia he was shown the original manuscript of Hesiod's Works and Days written on plates of lead; see Paus. IX. 31. Again at IV. 26, Pausanias records the discovery at Ithome in Messenia of a bronze urn (hydria) which contained a manuscript of the "Mysteries of the Great Deities" written on "a thinly beaten plate of tin, which was rolled up like a book," . This method of writing would be quite different from the laborious method of cutting inscriptions on bronze plates with a chisel and hammer, or with a graver.

A scribe could write on the soft white metal with a sharp stilus almost as easily and rapidly as if he were using pen and ink on paper, and the manuscript thus produced would have the advantage of extreme durability.

We may indeed hope that even now some priceless lost work of early Greece may be recovered by the discovery of similar lead rolls to those which Cesnola found in Cyprus.

Some very beautiful little Greek manuscripts, written on thin plates of gold, have also been discovered at various places. The most remarkable of these were intended for amulets, and were rolled up in little gold or silver cylinders and worn round the neck during life. After death they were placed with the body in the tomb. Several of these, discovered in tombs in the district of Sybaris in Magna Graecia, are inscribed with fragments from the mystic Orphic hymns, and give directions to the soul as to what he will find and what he must do in the spirit-world.

The most complete of these little gold manuscripts, usually known as the Petelia tablet, is preserved in the gem-room in the British Museum. The manuscript consists of thirteen hexameter lines written on a thin plate of pure gold measuring 1½ inches by 2⅝ inches in width; it dates from the third century B.C.

In classical times, manuscripts were of two different forms; first, the book form, , or , in Latin codex (older spelling caudex); and secondly the roll, , or , Latin volumen.

Manuscripts on tablets. Both the Greeks and the Romans used very largely tablets (, Lat. tabulae or cerae) of wood covered with a thin coating of coloured wax, on which the writing was formed with a sharp-pointed stilus () of wood, ivory or bronze. The wax was coloured either black or red in order that the writing scratched upon it might be clearly visible. The reverse end of the stilus was made flat or in the shape of a small ball so that it could be used to make corrections by smoothing out words or letters which had been erroneously scratched in the soft wax.

These tablets were commonly about ten to fourteen inches in length by about half that in width. The main surface of each tablet was sunk from ⅛ to 1/10 of an inch in depth to receive the wax layer, leaving a rim all round about the size of that round a modern school-boy's slate. The object of this was that two of these tablets might be placed together face to face without danger of rubbing and obliterating the writing on the wax, which was applied in a very thin coat, not more than 1/16 of an inch in thickness. As a rule these tablets were fastened together in pairs by stout loops of leather or cord. These double tablets were called by the Greeks or (from and ) and by the Romans pugillares or codicilli. Homer (Il. VI. 168) mentions a letter written on folding tablets—

Representations of these folding tablets occur frequently both in Greek and in Roman art, as, for example on various Sicilian coins, where the artist's name is placed in minute letters on a double tablet, which in some cases, as on a tetradrachm of Himera, is held open by a flying figure of Victory.

A gem of about 400 B.C., a large scarabaeoid in chalcedony, recently acquired by the British Museum, is engraved with a seated figure of a lady holding a book consisting of four leaves; she is writing lengthwise on one leaf, while the other three hang down from their hinge.

Some of the beautiful terra-cotta statuettes from the tombs of the Boeotian Tanagra represent a girl reading from a somewhat similar double folding tablet.

On Greek vases and in Roman mural paintings the pugillares are frequently shown, though the roll form of manuscript is on the whole more usual.

Some examples of these tablets have been found in a good state of preservation in Graeco-Egyptian tombs and during recent excavations in Pompeii.

Part of a poem in Greek written in large uncial characters is still legible on the single leaf of a pair of tablets from Memphis in Egypt, which is now in the British Museum. Though the coating of wax has nearly all perished, the sharp stilus has marked through on to the wood behind the wax, so that the writing is still legible. Its date appears to be shortly before the Christian era.

Some well preserved pugillares found in Pompeii are now in the Museum in Naples; the writing on them is of less interest, consisting merely of accounts of expenditure. Though the wood is blackened and the wax destroyed, the writing is still perfectly visible on the charred surface.

A more costly form of pugillares was made of bone or ivory; in some cases the back of each ivory leaf was decorated with carving in low relief.

A good many examples of these tablets, dating from the third to the sixth century A.D., still exist. These late highly decorated pugillares are usually known as Consular diptychs, because, as a rule, they have on the carved back the name of a Consul, and very frequently a representation of the Consul in his pulvinar or state box presiding over the Games in the Circus. It is supposed that these ivory diptychs were inscribed with complimentary addresses and were sent as presents to newly appointed officials in the time of the later Empire.

In some cases the ancient writing-tablets consisted of three or more leaves hinged together (, &c.); this was the earliest form of the codex or book in the modern sense of the word. The inner leaves of these codices had sinkings to receive the wax on both sides; only the backs of the two outer leaves being left plain or carved in relief to form the covers.

When the written matter on these tablets was no longer wanted, a fresh surface for writing was prepared either by smoothing down the wax with the handle of the stilus, or else by scraping it off and pouring in a fresh supply. This is mentioned by Ovid (Ar. Am. I. 437); "cera ... rasis infusa tabellis." These tablets were sometimes called briefly cerae; the phrases prima cera, altera cera, meaning the first page, the second page. The best sorts of wooden writing-tablets were made of box-wood, and hence they are sometimes called . In addition to the holes along one edge of each tablet through which the cord or wire was passed to hold the leaves together and to form the hinge, additional holes were often made along the opposite edge in order that the letter or other writing on the tabulae might be kept private by tying a thread through these holes and then impressing a seal on the knot. Plautus (Bacch. IV. iv. 64) alludes to this in mentioning the various things required to write a letter,

Effer cito stilum, ceram, et tabellas et linum.

In some cases wooden tablets of this kind were used without a coating of wax, but had simply a smooth surface to receive writing with ink and a reed pen. Many examples of these have been found in Egypt. The writing could be obliterated and a new surface prepared by sponging and rubbing with pumice-stone.

Among the Greeks wooden boards, whitened with chalk or gypsum, were often used for writing that was intended to be of temporary use only. Charcoal was used to write on these boards, which were called or . Public advertisements and official announcements were frequently written in this way and then hung up in a conspicuous place in the agora or market-place of the city.

Thus some of the inscriptions of the fourth century B.C., found at Delos mention that every month a was suspended in the agora, on which was written a statement of the financial management and all the expenses of the Temple of the Delian Apollo during the past month. Finally, at the end of the year, an abstract of the accounts of the Temple was engraved as a permanent record on a marble stele. This was also the custom with regard to the financial records of the Athenian Parthenon, and probably most of the important Greek temples. In connection with the sacred records, the Delian inscriptions mention, in addition to the , other forms of tablets, the and the , and also or writings on papyrus; manuscripts of this last kind will be discussed in a subsequent section.

Late survivals of writing on tablets. Before passing on to describe other forms of classical manuscripts, it may be interesting to note that the ancient waxed tablets or pugillares continued to be used for certain purposes throughout the whole mediaeval period, down to the sixteenth century or even later. Many of the principal churches, especially in Italy, but also in other countries, possessed one or more diptychs on which were inscribed the names of all those who had in any way been benefactors either to the ecclesiastical foundation or to the building. In early times, during the daily celebration of Mass, the list of names was read out from the diptych by the Deacon standing in the gospel ambon; and the congregation was requested or "bid" to pray for the souls of those whose names they had just heard.

The "bidding prayer" before University sermon at Oxford and Cambridge is a survival of this custom, which in the fifteenth century was termed "bidding the beads," that is "praying for the prayers" of the congregation. In some cases fine specimens of the old ivory Consular diptychs were used for this purpose in Italian churches till comparatively late times, but as a rule they fell into disuse before the eleventh or twelfth century, as the list of names became too long for the waxed leaves of a diptych, and so by degrees vellum rolls or else codices, often beautifully written in gold and silver letters, were substituted. One of the most splendid of these lists, the Liber vitae of Durham, is now preserved in the British Museum; Cotton manuscripts, Domit. 7. 2.

For many other purposes, both ecclesiastical and secular, the classical waxed tablets were used in England and on the Continent, especially for lists of names, as for example in great Cathedral or Abbey churches the list for the week of the various priests who were appointed to celebrate each mass at each of the numerous altars.

The British Museum possesses a very interesting late example of a waxed tablet which in shape, size and general appearance is exactly like the Roman pugillares. This is an oak tablet, about 20 inches long by 10 inches wide, covered with a thin layer of wax protected by the usual slightly raised margin about half an inch wide. Along one edge are three holes with leather loops to form the hinges; the other leaf is lost. On the wax is inscribed a list of the names of the members of a Flemish guild; each name is still as sharp and legible as the day it was written. The form of the writing shows that it belongs to the end of the fifteenth century. Such tablets were used both by the trade guilds of the middle ages and by the religious guilds formed for the cult of some special Saint.

The most interesting mediaeval example of the classical form of manuscript made up of several leaves of waxed tablets was found a few years ago in a blocked-up recess in the old wooden church at Hopperstad in Norway. It was enclosed in a casket of wood covered with leather, and thus it still remains in a very perfect state of preservation; it is now in the University Museum at Christiania. The book consists of six tablets of box-wood, coated with wax within the usual raised margin, and hinged with leather thongs. The outer leaves are decorated on the back with carving mixed with inlay of different coloured woods.

The manuscript itself which is written on the wax is a Bestiary, dating, as its style shows, from the latter part of the thirteenth century, though the book itself is probably older. It contains lists of animals in Latin with a Norwegian translation, and it is copiously illustrated with drawings of scenes from agricultural and domestic life, executed in fine outline on the wax with a sharply pointed stilus. In every detail, except of course in the character of the writing and drawings, this book exactly resembles an ancient Greek or Roman many-leaved wooden book, , a very striking example of the unaltered survival of ancient methods for an extraordinarily long period.

During the mediaeval period, sets of ivory tablets hinged together were frequently made for devotional purposes. This form of manuscript has no layer of wax, but the writing is executed with a pen on the thin smooth leaf of ivory. Each leaf has its margin raised, like the ancient pugillares, to prevent the two adjacent surfaces from rubbing together.

These ivory tablets usually contain a set of short prayers, and they are frequently illustrated with painted miniatures of sacred subjects exactly like those in the vellum manuscripts of the same date.

The South Kensington Museum possesses a very beautiful example of these ivory books; it is of Northern French workmanship dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. It consists of eight leaves of ivory, measuring 4⅛ inches by 2⅜ inches in width. The six inner pages are extremely thin, no thicker than stout paper, and have paintings on both sides, the two covers are of thicker substance, about a quarter of an inch, and are decorated on the outside with beautiful carved reliefs.

This remarkable work of art has on the inner leaves fourteen very delicately executed miniatures of sacred subjects, single figures of Saints and scenes from Christ's Passion, painted in gold and colours in the finest style of French fourteenth century art, evidently executed by some very skilful illuminator.

Tablets like this with as many as eight ivory leaves are rare, but a very large number of beautiful ivory diptychs still exist, with carved reliefs on the outside of very graceful style and delicate execution. Most of these diptychs date from the fourteenth century, and are of French workmanship, but they were also produced in England at the same time and of quite equal merit in design and execution.

Manuscripts on lead plates, like those of the ancient Greeks, were occasionally used in mediaeval times.

A single lead leaf of an Anglo-Saxon manuscript from Lord Londesborough's collection is illustrated in Archaeologia, Vol. XXXIV, Plate 36, page 438. This leaf measures 6½ inches by 5 inches in width. On it is incised with a stilus in fine bold semi-uncial writing the beginning of Aelfric's preface to his first collection of Homilies, which in modern English runs thus:—"I, Aelfric, monk and mass-priest, was sent in King Aethelred's time from Aelfeage the Bishop, the successor of Aethelwold, to a certain minster which is called Cernel, &c." At the top of the page there is a heading in large Runic characters. Aelfric was sent by Aelfeage Bishop of Winchester to be Abbot of Cerne in 988 or 989, and this interesting page appears to be of contemporary date. It was found by a labourer while digging in the precincts of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. Along one edge of the leaden page there are three holes to receive the loops which hinged the plates together, but the other leaves were not found.

Horn-books. One form of wooden tablet continued in use, especially in boys' schools, till the sixteenth century. This was a wooden board, rather smaller than an ordinary school-boy's slate, with a long handle at the bottom; on it was fixed a sheet of vellum or paper on which was written or (in the latest examples) printed the Alphabet, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer or such like. Over this a thin sheet of transparent horn was nailed, whence these tablets were often called "horn-books." A good example dating from the sixteenth century is now preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.

Classical Manuscripts written with Pen and Ink.

To return now to classical forms of manuscripts, it appears to have been a long time before the book or codex form of manuscript was extended from the wood and ivory tablets to writings on parchment or paper.

It seems probable that throughout the Greek period manuscripts on paper or vellum were usually, if not always, in the shape of a long roll; and that it was not till about the beginning of the Roman Empire that leaves of parchment or paper were sometimes cut up into pages and bound together in the form of the older tablets. During the first two or three centuries of the Empire, manuscripts were produced in both of these forms—the codex and the volumen; but the roll form was by far the commoner, almost till the transference of the seat of government to Byzantium.

The roll form of book is the one shown in many of the wall paintings of Pompeii; but on some sarcophagi reliefs of the second century A.D. books both of the roll and the codex shape are represented.

Having given some account of the various classical forms of manuscript in which the writing is incised with a sharp stilus, we will now pass on to the other chief forms of manuscript which were written with a pen and with ink or other pigment.

Manuscripts on papyrus; the oldest existing examples of this class are the so-called Rituals of the Dead found in the tombs of Egypt, especially in those of the Theban dynasties; the oldest of these date as far back as the sixteenth or fifteenth century B.C.

They are executed with a reed pen in hieroglyphic writing on long rolls of papyrus, and are copiously illuminated with painted miniatures illustrating the subject of the text, drawn with much spirit and coloured in a very finely decorative way. Immense numbers of these Egyptian illuminated manuscripts still exist in a more or less fragmentary condition. One of the most perfect of these is the Book of the Dead of Ani, a royal scribe, dating from the fourteenth century B.C., now in the British Museum. An excellent facsimile of the whole of this fine illuminated manuscript has been edited by Dr Budge and published by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1890.

Manuscripts of this important class are not very accurately described as Rituals of the Dead; as Dr Budge points out they really consist of collections of psalms or sacred hymns which vary considerably in different manuscripts.

They appear to have been written in large numbers and kept in stock by the Egyptian undertakers ready for purchasers. Blank spaces were left for the name and titles of the dead person for whom they were bought.

Thus we find that the names are often filled in carelessly by another hand than that of the writer of the manuscript, and some examples exist in which the spaces for the name are still left blank.

Another of the finest and most complete of the funereal papyri is preserved in the Museum in Turin; see Pierret, Le livre des Morts des anciens Egyptiens, Paris, 1882.

Papyrus seems to have been used for manuscripts more than any other substance both by the Greeks from the sixth century B.C. and by the Romans down to the time of the later Empire. Some very valuable Greek manuscripts on papyrus are preserved in the British Museum; among them the most important for their early date are some fragments of Homer's Iliad of the third or second century B.C. Another papyrus manuscript in the same collection dating from the first century B.C. contains four Orations of the Athenian Orator Hyperides, a contemporary and rival of Demosthenes. In the last few years the important discovery has been made that in certain late tombs in Egypt, dating from the Roman period, the mummied bodies are packed in their coffins with large quantities of what was considered waste paper. This packing in some cases has been found to consist of papyrus manuscripts, some of which are of great importance. In this way the newly discovered treatise by Aristotle on the Political Constitution of Athens, and the Mimes of Herondas were saved from destruction by being used as inner wrappings for a coffin of about the year 100 A.D.

Other important manuscripts may yet be found, now that careful search is being made in this direction.

Unfortunately the large library of manuscripts, consisting of nearly 1800 papyrus rolls, which was discovered about the middle of the last century in the lava-buried town of Herculaneum, has not as yet been found to contain any works of much value or interest. These rolls are all charred by the heat of the lava, which overwhelmed the town, and the work of unrolling and deciphering the brittle carbonized paper necessarily goes on very slowly. The owner of this library appears to have been an enthusiastic student of the Epicurean philosophy in its later development, and his books are mainly dull, pedantic treatises on the various sciences such as mathematics, music and the like, treated from the Epicurean point of view, or rather from that of the Graeco-Roman followers of Epicurus.

All these manuscripts appear to be of about the same date, not many years older, that is, than the year 79 A.D., when the eruption of Vesuvius overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii in the same catastrophe. They are written in fine bold uncial characters without illumination or ornament of any kind on rolls of papyrus nine or ten inches in breadth. In their present burnt and shrunken condition the rolls average about two inches in diameter, but they were probably larger than that in their original state; see Palaeo. Soc. Pl. 151, 152; the other published 'facsimiles' of the Herculaneum manuscripts are not perfectly trustworthy.

In the time of Herodotus (c. 460 B.C.) papyrus paper ( or ) appears to have been used by the Greeks almost to the exclusion of parchment or other kinds of skin. In his interesting section on the introduction of the art of writing into Greece by the Phoenicians, Herodotus (v. 58) remarks that the Ionians in old times used to call papyrus rolls or "parchment," because they had once been in the habit of using skins of sheep or goats for manuscripts, at a time when papyrus paper was not to be had; and, Herodotus goes on to say, "Barbarians even now are accustomed to write their manuscripts on parchment."

Manuscripts on parchment; this old use of parchment for manuscripts was again introduced among the Greeks by Eumenes II., king of Pergamus from 197 to 159 B.C. At this time men had forgotten that parchment had ever been used for books, and so Varro, quoted by Pliny (Hist. Nat. XIII. 70), tells us that Eumenes invented this use of parchment; the real fact being that he re-introduced an old custom, and stimulated the careful preparation of parchment for the sake of the great library which he was anxious to make the most important collection of manuscripts in the world.

Varro tells us that he was driven to this use of parchment by the jealousy of the Egyptian King Ptolemy Epiphanes, whose enormous library at Alexandria was the only existing rival to the Pergamene collection. One of the Greek names for parchment, Pergamena, was derived from the fact of its being so largely made for the Pergamene Kings Eumenes and Attalus, both of whom were not only great patrons of literature and collectors of ancient manuscripts, but were also enthusiastic buyers of pictures, statues, rich textiles and works of art of every class. The other word for parchment used for manuscripts is membrana.

Manuscripts on linen; in ancient Egypt hieroglyphic manuscripts with sacred hymns and portions of the so-called Ritual of the Dead were frequently written with a reed pen on fine linen. These manuscripts, which are often found among the mummy wrappings of burials under the Theban Dynasties, are usually illustrated with pen drawings in outline, not painted miniatures like those on the papyrus rolls. These drawings are executed with much spirit and with a beautiful, clean, certain touch.

The early Italian races, Latins, Samnites and others, appear to have used linen very frequently for their manuscript records and sacred books. Among the public records mentioned by Livy as having once been preserved with the Archives in the Capitoline Temple of Juno Moneta were some of these early linen manuscripts (libri lintei); see Liv. IV. 7, 13, 20. Livy also (X. 38) describes an ancient manuscript, containing an account of the ritual customs of the Samnites, as a liber vetus linteus. In historic times, however, papyrus and parchment appear to have superseded linen in ancient Rome.

Ostraka Manuscripts. For ephemeral purposes, such as tradesmen's accounts and other business matters, writing was often done with a pen and ink on broken fragments of pottery (). An enormous number of these inscribed potsherds, mostly dating from the Ptolemaic period, have been found in Egypt, and especially on the little island of Elephantine in the Nile a short distance below the first cataract.

Among the Greeks too, writing on potsherds was very common; especially when the Athenian tribes met in the Agora to record their votes for the exile of some unpopular citizen, whence is derived the term ostracism ().

The word liber as meaning a book is supposed to be derived from a primitive custom of writing on the smooth inner bark of some tree, such as the birch, which supplies a fine silky substance, not at all unsuited for manuscripts.

The large broad leaves of some varieties of the palm tree have also been used for manuscript purposes, more especially among the inhabitants of India and Ceylon. In early times the questions asked of the Oracle of the Pythian Apollo at Delphi were said to have been written on leaves of the laurel plant. Pali manuscripts in Ceylon are even now frequently written on palm-leaves; and we have the evidence of Pliny that this custom once existed among some of the ancient classical races: see Hist. Nat. XIII. 69, "Ante non fuisse chartarum usum, in palmarum foliis primo scriptitatum; deinde quarundam arborum libris. Postea publica monumenta plumbeis voluminibus, mox et privata linteis confici coepta aut ceris. Pugillarium enim usum fuisse etiam ante Trojana tempora invenimus apud Homerum." In this passage Pliny gives a list of all the chief materials that had been used for manuscripts in ancient times, the leaves and bark of trees, plates of lead, linen cloth and waxed tablets, he then goes on to describe at considerable length the methods of making paper from the pith of the papyrus plant; see page 22.