INTRODUCTION
The ornamentation of books dates probably from the time of their invention, that is to say, it goes back to a very remote antiquity. From Greece, where the book-trade was flourishing at an early period, it passed into Italy, extending thence to the provinces of the Empire, to Gaul and Spain, where book-lovers became more and more numerous, and as civilisation became more refined, increasingly particular about bindings and ornamentation.
The verse of Tibullus,
shows the extent of the embellishments to which bibliophiles had then become accustomed, requiring the titles of their favourite authors to be engrossed in coloured or illuminated letters.[2]
[2] Numerous passages might be quoted from Latin writers to show how great an interest they took in books, and how valuable rare, and what might be called original, editions had even then become. It would seem, too, that they even knew the pleasures of book-hunting, for Aulus Gellius relates how, having a few hours to spare after landing at Brindisi, he spent his time looking through the contents of an old book-stall, and was lucky enough to discover a very old work on occult science.
Besides the title, the headings of chapters and the initial letters were also distinguished in the same way from the rest of the work, a custom which passed from the Roman copyists to those of the Lower Empire, and in course of time became generally adopted in the preparation of manuscripts. But this was not all. It is now recognised that book illustration was known to the Romans, and that the miniatures of the mediæval manuscripts only followed the fashion of the rich and sumptuous volumes transcribed by the copyists of Athens and Rome. The fourth-century Virgil, for instance, one of the treasures of the Vatican, which has been so well described by M. Pierre de Nolhac, is an example of this, containing as it does a large number of figures. Like all manuscripts of the time, it was written exclusively in majuscules, very similar to those used in Roman inscriptions.[3]
[3] Pliny speaks of a marvellous, almost divine, invention by which pictures were added to the book of Imagines of Varro—no doubt printed by stamping.
The taste for luxury spreading from the third century, Byzantium became the centre of the most extravagant and costly elegance in all its manifestations, and books of that origin have come down to us written on purple parchment in letters of gold. It was not until several centuries later that a reaction took place, when Leo the Isaurian, in 741, considering such refinement as sinful, put an end to it by burning the public library, together with its staff of bibliothecarii and copyists, the survivors finding a refuge for their art in the western cloisters and monasteries.
The intelligent protection and encouragement and hospitality afforded to men of letters by Charlemagne was a great contrast to the bigotry of Leo the Byzantine. Interesting himself warmly in all questions relating to instruction, he took a special interest in the copying and transcription of manuscripts, inviting to his kingdom the Irish and Anglo-Saxon monks, who from the sixth century had made a special study of calligraphy, and were celebrated all over Europe for their miniatures and historiation.
In consequence of the patronage of Charlemagne and of Charles the Bald, son of Louis the Débonnaire, artists of all nationalities, but more particularly Germans and Italians, who had come from Oriental schools, received a warm welcome. At first in the sixth century the initial letter was of the same size as the others, only distinguished by the difference of colour, being in minium or cinnabar. A hundred years later, under the Byzantine influence, the letter grows larger, until it occupies the whole page, at the same time being painted with the most vivid colours according to the fancy and caprice of the artist. Little by little the Byzantine style first introduced became modified, and assumed by degrees a national character. The decoration of the initials took the form of interlaced chequer-work or of historiated arabesques, resembling the mosaics of enamelled specimens of Gallo-Frank jewellery.
Then come figures of animals, in which the imagination of the artist runs riot, as in the alphabet of which Montfaucon has given a specimen in his Origins of the French Monarchy.
To quote the opinion of a contemporary writer, there was nothing under heaven or earth that had not served as a model for designers of ornamental letters.
Towards the fourteenth century this exuberance of decoration quiets down. Fancy is by no means excluded, but it becomes more regulated and more sure, to the advantage of art itself, which speaks through the skill of the painters, whose names, however, with but few exceptions, unfortunately remain unknown to us.
Paris was renowned at an early period for the excellence of its manuscripts, and the talents of its copyists and illuminators. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham and Chancellor of England, speaks in his Philobiblion of the five libraries he had seen in that town, and the magnificent books that he had been able to buy.
In England, illumination had flourished from before the twelfth to the fourteenth century, but by the middle of the fifteenth art was dead, and when handsome miniatures or other decorations were required for books, it was to French artists that it was necessary to apply.
In Italy, the influence, as regards book ornamentation, of French art may be judged from the passage of Dante, who, speaking to a miniaturist of his profession, is obliged to use a periphrase to design it:
The dawn of printing was at hand. Manuscripts, whether handsomely embellished or copied simply without ornament, were expensive luxuries which only the rich could purchase. With the revival of learning, for students in general, for the poorer classes, for school children, cheap books costing as little as possible, but serving the same end as the manuscript, were necessary, and the xylograph came at its hour.[4]
[4] It should be mentioned that block-books are now considered by some authorities to have come later than the invention of printing with movable type, i.e. about 1460.
From the earliest times copyists had used stamps[5] and copper stencillings in order to apply initials that recurred frequently, a practice which contains in it the first germ of printing. Playing-cards were printed by the same process and afterwards illuminated.
[5] Passavant.
Picture-books came next, with text and illustrations cut on the same block, the leaves being printed on one side only, and afterwards gummed back to back.
Such was the book known as the Biblia Pauperum, ‘Figurae typicae veteris atque antitypicae novi testamenti,’ a short pictorial history in forty leaves of the Old and New Testament. Another of these block-books is devoted to the history of St. John the Evangelist and his apocalyptic dreams, of which there are six different editions, with texts in Flemish, Saxon, and German. The Ars Moriendi, or temptations of the dying, with terrifying pictures, shows a moribund man assailed by devils,[6] but, as in all similar productions, the terrible is relieved by a touch of the grotesque. The Speculum humanae salvationis is remarkable for being printed partly from blocks and partly with movable characters. This shows the transition from xylography to printing proper. The printer of this work, in order to economise the composition of twenty-seven leaves, used the blocks he possessed, and printed them together with twenty-seven others composed with movable type. The example is not unique.
[6] See, under ‘Paris,’ the representation of one of these death-scenes in an initial of Chevallon’s.
A last variety of xylographic impressions is known under the generic name of ‘Donatus.’ This is a little primer of Latin grammar first compiled by the grammarian Aelius Donatus, by whose name it was afterwards known.
We have mentioned the xylographic publications, because in a certain number of them ornamental initials are to be met with. These, as would naturally be supposed, are of the same style as those found in manuscripts of the same period. It may be observed here, that whilst books of price were embellished with expensive work, the less valuable manuscripts were left either without initials at all, or with ornamental letters of a few stereotyped patterns, that experience had shown to be most harmonious to the written text. Of these patterns the most popular is the Maiblümchen, or lily of the valley design, constantly seen in manuscript books, and adopted by many of the early printers. This design will be seen in many of the first initials of the Augsburg printers, and especially of Rihel of Basle.
Historiated initials are less frequent in the block-books, the only one we have found being the S of an Ars Memorandi, of which a reproduction is given.
We have noted briefly the successive changes in the manuscript book, the different phases of its evolution towards its final formula and expression as an impression from movable type.
This brings us to the invention of printing, but it must be noted that printing, which revolutionised in so many ways the world, did not immediately put an end to the professions of the rubricator and illuminator. Some printed works of the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries are embellished with miniatures of the very highest merit and illuminated letters of the greatest beauty.