Gold writing is usually executed with the fluid gold pigment, but in later manuscripts very gorgeous titles and headings are sometimes done with burnished leaf gold applied on the raised mordant, the writing being first done with a pen dipped in the fluid mordant.

The pencils and pens of the Illuminator. Two quite different classes of pencils were used for lightly sketching in the outline of the future floral design or miniature.

Lead point.One of these was the silver-point or lead-point^[282], very much like the metallic pencil of a modern pocket-book. The use of the silver-point was known in classical times; Pliny (Hist. Nat. XXXIII. 98) remarks as a strange thing that a white metal like silver should make a black line when used to draw with. It is, however, rather a faint grey than a black line that a point of pure silver makes, especially on vellum, and so it was more usual for illuminators to use a softer pencil of mixed lead and tin; Cennino recommends two parts of lead to one of tin^[283] for making the lead point, piombino.

Red pencil.Another kind of pencil was made of a soft red stone, which owed its colour to oxide of iron. From its fine blood-red tint the illuminators called it haematita, lapis amatista or amatito, hence an ordinary lead pencil is now called either lapis or matita in Italy. This stone is quite different from the hard haematite which was used in classical times for the early cylinder-signets of Assyria.

Burnisher.The harder varieties of the amatista or haematite were used to burnish the gold leaf in manuscripts, small pieces being polished and fixed in a convenient handle. They were also used as a red pigment, the stone being calcined, quenched in water and finely ground; see Cennino Cennini, § 42.

Besides the hard red chalky stone (amatita rossa) used for outlines by the illuminators, a somewhat similar black stone (amatita nera) was also used, but not so commonly as the red.

Reed pens.The pens of illuminators. In early times, throughout, that is, the whole classical period and probably till about the time of Justinian, the sixth century A.D., scribes' pens were mostly made of reeds (calamus or canna); and occasionally silver or bronze pens were used; see above, page 29.

But certainly as early as the eighth century A.D. and probably before that, quill-pens came into use and superseded the blunter and softer reed-pen.

Fine quills.Such exquisitely fine lines as those in many classes of mediaeval manuscripts could only have been made with some very fine and delicate instrument like a skilfully cut crow's quill or other moderately small feather.

The pen was a very important instrument for the illuminator, not only when his pictures were mainly executed in pen outline, like many of those in the later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but also in such microscopically delicate miniature work as that in the Anglo-Norman historiated Bibles of the thirteenth century; in these much of the most important drawing, such as the features and the hair of the figures, was executed, not with a brush, but with a quill-pen, which in the illuminator's skilful hand could produce a quality of line which for delicacy and crisp precision of touch has never been surpassed by the artists of any other class or age.

Brushes.Brushes were, as a rule, made by the illuminators themselves, so as to suit their special needs and system of working. Cennino (§§ 63 to 66) and other writers give directions for the selection of the best hair and the mode of fixing it so as to give a finely pointed brush. Ermine, minever and other animals of that tribe supplied the best hair for the brushes required for very minute work. But a great number of other animals provided useful material to the craftsman who knew the right places to select the hair from, and, a still more important thing, understood how to arrange and fix it in a bundle of the best form.

List of tools.The implements of scribes and illuminators. The following is a list of the principal tools and materials required by the illuminator of manuscripts, including those which have been already described^[284].

Paintings of scribes.Miniatures representing a scribe writing a manuscript are the commonest of all subjects in several classes of illuminated manuscripts. For example the first capital of Saint Jerome's Prologue in the historiated Anglo-Norman Vulgates almost always has a very minute painting of a monastic scribe^[285], seated, writing on a sloping desk, with his pen in one hand and his penknife in the other^[286].

The scribes' processes.In one respect such scenes are always treated in a conventional way; that is, the scribe is represented writing in a complete and bound book, whereas both the writing of the text and the illuminations were done on loose sheets of vellum, which could be conveniently pinned down flat on the desk or drawing-board.

The processes employed in the execution of an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth or fifteenth century were the following;

First, if the text were to be in one column, four lines were ruled marking the boundaries of the patch of text and the margin. These four lines usually cross at the angles and are carried to the extreme edge of the vellum^[287].

Ruled lines.Next, the scribe, with a pair of dividers or compasses, pricked out at even distances the number of lines which were to be ruled to serve as a guide in writing the text. These pricked holes were, as a rule, set at the extreme edge of the vellum, and were intended to be cut off by the binder, but in many manuscripts they still remain. The scribe then filled the space within the first four marginal lines with parallel ruled lines at the intervals indicated by the pricks at the edge.

Stilus lines.In early manuscripts the guiding lines to keep the text even are usually ruled, not with colour or ink, but simply traced with a pointed stilus, which made a sufficiently clear impressed line on the vellum, showing through from one side to the other.

Lead lines.In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practice began of ruling the lines with a lead point; and then, from the fourteenth century onwards, they were usually ruled with bright red pigment^[288]; this has a very decorative effect in lighting up the mass of black text, Red lines.and thus we find in many early printed books^[289] these red guiding lines have been ruled in merely for the sake of their ornamental appearance.

This ruling was nearly always done with special metal ruling-pens, very like those now used for architectural drawing; and thus the lines are perfectly even in thickness throughout.

The plain text.The next stage in the work was the writing of the plain black text. In early times it appears to have been usual, or at least not uncommon, for the same hand to write the text and add the painted illuminations, but when the production of illuminated manuscripts came mostly into secular hands, the trades of the scribe and the illuminator were usually practised by different people; and in late times a further division still took place, and the miniaturist frequently became separated from the decorative illuminator.

Guiding letters.Thus we find that in many manuscripts the scribe has introduced in the blank spaces minute guiding letters^[290] to tell the illuminator what each initial was to be, and, especially in fifteenth century Italian manuscripts, instructions are added for the miniaturist, telling him what the subject of each picture was to be. These instructions were commonly written on the edge of the page so that they were cut off by the binder, but in many cases they still exist, not obliterated by the subsequent painting.

But to return to the progress of the page, when the scribe had finished the plain text, leaving the necessary blank spaces for the illuminated capitals and miniatures, the work of decoration then began.

Decoration.As a rule the decorative foliage and the like was finished before the separate miniatures, if there were any, were begun. First the illuminator lightly sketched in outline the design of the ornament, using a lead point. Next, wherever burnished gold was to be introduced, the thick mordant-ground was laid on; the gold leaf was then applied and finished with tooling and burnishing.

Gold leaf.The reason why the gold was applied before any of the painting was begun was this; the long rubbing with the burnisher acted not only on the gold leaf, but also naturally rubbed the vellum a little way all round it. This would have smudged the painting round the gold if it had been applied first. Moreover, the burnisher was liable to carry small particles of gold on to the surrounding vellum, which would have given a ragged look to the design, if the adjacent surfaces had not been subsequently covered with pigment. In cases where there is an isolated gold boss there is usually a slight disfigurement from the burnisher rubbing the vellum all round the gold. In these cases the outline of the gold was made clean and definite by the addition of a strong black outline, as is mentioned above.

The painting.When the whole of the burnished gold was finished, the painting was then executed. If any fluid gold pigment were used, that was usually added last of all.

Transferred patterns.In some cases, in the later and cheaper French and Flemish manuscripts, the ornaments in the borders were not specially designed and sketched in for the manuscripts but previously used outline patterns were transferred on to the vellum by a bone stilus and ordinary transfer paper, made by rubbing red chalk all over its surface.

In some of the better class of manuscripts with the "ivy-leaf" border, the illuminator has made the general design of one page serve for the next one in this way; when he had drawn in the main lines of the scroll-pattern on the borders of one page, he held the vellum up to the light and so was able to trace the pattern through from the other side of the leaf. To prevent monotony he varied the design by introducing different little blossoms among the repeated scroll-work which formed the main pattern.

Preparation for binding.When the scribe, the rubricator, the illuminator and the miniaturist (either as one or as several different people) had completed the manuscript it was ready for the binder. As an indication of the order in which the leaves of the manuscript were to be bound, the scribe usually placed on the lower margin of the last page of each "gathering" of leaves a letter or number.

In the earliest printed books these guiding letters, or signatures as they are called, were added by hand in the same way^[291]; but in a few years the regular and more developed system of printed signatures was introduced^[292].

Scribes' signatures.Scribes' signatures at the end of manuscripts are comparatively rare, but they do occasionally occur in various interesting forms. My friend Mr W. J. Loftie kindly sends me the following:

In a Sarum Missal of the fifteenth century at Alnwick Castle,

More commonly manuscripts terminate with a vague phrase invoking a blessing on the scribe, such as this, from a Bible in the Bodleian (No. 50),

Or this, which occurs in several manuscripts,

Owner's name.In another manuscript Vulgate in the Bodleian (No. 75), the owner of the book, who was named Gerardus, has recorded the fact in this fanciful way,—

CHAPTER XVI.

The Bindings of Manuscripts.

Costly bindings.For the more magnificent classes of manuscripts, such as the Textus (Gospels) used as altar ornaments, every costly and elaborate artistic process was employed. In addition to the sumptuous gold and jewelled covers mentioned above at page 55, manuscripts were bound in plates of carved ivory set in gold frames, in plaques of Limoges enamel, especially the chamlevé enamels with the heads of the figures attached in relief, such as were produced with great skill at Limoges during the eleventh to the thirteenth century. Some Evangeliaria were bound in covers made of the ancient Roman or Byzantine ivory diptychs, a custom to which we owe the preservation of the most important existing examples of these.^[294] Such costly methods of binding were of course exceptional, and most manuscripts were covered in a much simpler manner.

Common bindings.The commonest form of binding was to make the covers of stout oak boards, which were covered with parchment, calf-skin, pig-skin or some other leather. Five brass or bronze bosses were fixed on each cover, arranged thus and two or four stout clasps made of leather straps with brass catches were firmly nailed on to the oak. The angles of the covers were often strengthened by brass or latten cornerpieces, and in some cases metal edgings were nailed all along the edges of the oak, making a very strong, massive and heavy volume. Large pieces of rock crystal, amethyst or other common gem were frequently set in the five bosses of the covers. These were always cut in rounded form en cabochon, not faceted as is the modern custom.

The small amount of decoration, which was usually employed on early bindings, was often limited to tooled lines joining the five bosses on the covers^[295].

Titles of MSS.If the title of the manuscript was placed on the binding, a not very common practice, it was usually written on the upper part of one of the covers. In some cases the title was written on a separate slip of vellum and was protected by a transparent slice of horn, fixed with little brass nails.

This appears to have been the usual system as long as books were kept in coffers or armaria; but when open bookshelves with chained books came into use, about the time when printing was invented, the title of a book was usually written on the front edges of the leaves.

At that time books were set on the shelves in the opposite way to that now used, so that, not the back, but the edge of the volume was visible.

Painted edges.Towards the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century, the front edges of printed books and manuscripts were sometimes decorated with painted illumination, usually a portrait figure of the author of the work or some object illustrating its subject^[296].

The parchment which was used to cover the oak bindings of manuscripts was often coloured by staining or painting; red and purple being the favourite colours. Chaucer, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describing the Clerke of Oxenford says,

Painted bindings.In some cases the oak covers of manuscripts were not hidden by leather, but were decorated by elaborate paintings. A very interesting series of folio account-books of the Cathedral of Siena, now preserved in the Opera del Duomo, are specially remarkable for their pictured bindings. These manuscripts date from about 1380 to 1410, one volume being devoted to the expenses and records of each year. On one of the covers of each is a large painting on the oak, frequently of a view of some part of Siena or of the interior of the Cathedral. Very interesting evidence with regard to the old fittings of the high altar, with Duccio di Buoninsegna's great retable, and the original position of the magnificent pulpit are given by some of these pictured covers. One volume of this Sienese series is now in the South Kensington Museum.

Stamped leather.In the fourteenth century bindings of books began to be decorated by stamping patterns with dies or punches on the vellum or pigskin covering of the oak board; a method of decoration which was greatly elaborated and developed in the sixteenth century, especially by the German and Dutch bookbinders.

The earlier stamped designs were of a much simpler character, usually consisting of powderings all over the surface of the cover, with small flowers or animals, such as lions, eagles, swans and dragons of heraldic character. In many cases these punches, or at least their designs, continued in use for a long time, and so one occasionally meets with a fifteenth century book, the binding of which is decorated with stamps of fourteenth or even thirteenth century style.

Stamped bindings.The later class of stamped bindings, belonging rather to printed books than to manuscripts, is often very beautiful and decorative in character, the whole surface of the cover being completely embossed in relief by the skilful application of a great number of punches used in various combinations, so as to form one large and perfectly united design. In these later times, from about the middle of the sixteenth century the tendency was to cut larger designs on one punch or die; and the leather or parchment was softened by boiling so that a large surface could be embossed at one operation. This process was much aided by the invention of the screw-press, which enabled the workman to apply a steady and long-continued pressure. But in the older stamped bindings, as a rule, small punches were used, and the force was simply applied by the blow of a hammer^[297].

English bindings.In England very fine stamped bindings of this class were made even in the first half of the fifteenth century. And, just as in earlier times the operations of the binder and the manuscript illuminator had been carried on by the same man, or at least in the same workshop, so we find that some of the earliest English printers, such as Julian Notary, were also skilful binders of their own printed books. The very fine stamped bindings of Julian Notary and other English craftsmen are commonly decorated on one side with the Tudor arms and badges supported by angels, and on the other side with a pictorial scene of the Annunciation of the B. V. Mary with I. N. or other maker's initials.

Wallet bindings.Returning now to the earlier bindings of manuscripts, we should mention one system which was frequently applied to Books of Hours, Breviaries (portiforia), and other portable books. This system was to extend the leather covering far beyond the edges of the wooden boards, which formed the main covers of the manuscripts, so that the book, edges and all were protected, very much as if it were kept in a bag. In fact this sort of binding really was a leather bag to the inside of which the book was attached.

The mouth of the bag was closed by a running thong, a loop or some other fastening, and the book was thus carried about, hung from its owner's girdle^[298].

In bindings of this class the leather covering was frequently dressed with the hair on. Corpus Christi College at Oxford possesses a very well-preserved example of this, a manuscript of the thirteenth century in a contemporary bag-covering made of deer's skin, with its soft brown fur in a perfect state of preservation.

Velvet.Bindings of red or violet velvet were also frequently used for manuscripts. Plain red velvet, with elaborate clasps and corner-pieces of chased gold or silver, was perhaps the most usual form of binding for costly manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Fine gems, especially the carbuncle and turquoise, were set in the gold mounts of some of these princely books.

Dyed vellum.Vellum dyed with the murex was used to cover the oak boards of manuscripts at a time when purple-stained vellum was no longer used for the pages of manuscripts. A fine green dye and other colours were also used for vellum bindings. The Vatican records of books borrowed (and returned) usually mention how each volume was bound. Among the earliest of these records, dating from the Pontificate of Leo X. (1513 to 1522) the commonest descriptions of bindings are in tabulis, in rubio, in albo, in nigro, and in gilbo, indicating the colour of the skin or velvet in which the manuscript was bound.

Later bindings.In the sixteenth century, when private luxury and pomp were taking the place of the earlier religious feelings and beliefs which had so greatly fostered the decorative arts, bindings as costly as those of the Altar-textus of the great Cathedral and Abbey churches were again made at the command of wealthy patrons. Thus, for example, Cardinal Grimani had his famous Breviary^[299] bound in crimson velvet, the greater part of which is concealed by the most elaborate Gold mounts.mounts, clasps, corner-pieces and borders of solid gold, of the most exquisite workmanship, decorated with a medallion portrait head of the Cardinal himself.

So also the very similar Horae of Albert of Brandenburg^[300] is decorated with clasps and other mounts of pure gold; and an immense number of other sumptuous bindings, rich with embossed and chased gold, studded with precious gems, were made to enshrine the costly manuscripts of Giulio Clovio and other famous miniaturists of the sixteenth century period of decadence.

Bindings of needlework.At the close of the fifteenth century or rather earlier, the custom became popular of having Horae and other manuscripts owned by wealthy secular personages bound in velvet, richly decorated with embroidery in gold and silver thread and silk mixed with a great number of seed pearls. The arms, badges and initials of the owner are the commonest designs for these embroideries.

Some of the German examples of this class of binding are especially elaborate and magnificent; but on the whole this method of decoration is not at all suited for covering books.

Works on bindings.With regard to books on the subject of early bindings; it is much to be regretted that existing works, of which there are a great many, especially in French, all begin just about the period when bindings of the greatest interest and the truest artistic value were no longer made. Plenty has been written about the costly bindings in which Grolier, Maioli, and other wealthy book-buyers had their purchases encased, but no work exists on the bindings of the mediaeval period, when, frequently, the covers of a manuscript were as much a labour of love as the illuminated pages within. The sixteenth century binders, who worked for Grolier and other rich patrons of art, lived at the verge of a commercial epoch, and though their works are often very pretty and technically of high merit, yet they cannot be compared, as true works of art, with the bindings of the period before printing was invented.

Small cost of MSS.The present value of illuminated manuscripts. On the whole a fine manuscript may be regarded as about the cheapest work of art of bygone days that can now be purchased by an appreciative collector. Many of the finest and most perfectly preserved manuscripts which now come into the market are actually sold for smaller sums than they would have cost when they were new, in spite of the great additional value and interest which they have gained from their antiquity and comparative rarity.

For example, a beautiful and perfectly preserved historiated Anglo-Norman Vulgate of the thirteenth century, with its full number of eighty-two pictured initials, written on between six and seven hundred leaves of the finest uterine vellum, can now commonly be purchased for from £30 to £40. This hardly represents the original value of the vellum on which the manuscript is written.

Manuscripts of a simpler character, however beautifully written, if they are merely decorated with blue and red initials, commonly sell for considerably less than the original cost of their vellum^[301].

Again, the more costly manuscripts of fine style, which now fetch several hundred pounds, usually contain a wealth of pictorial decoration and laborious execution far in excess of that which could be purchased for a similar sum in any other branch of art.

Want of taste.Another noticeable point is that the modern pecuniary values of manuscripts, even those which are bought only as works of art, are by no means in proportion to their real artistic merits. Manuscripts of the finest period of the illuminator's art, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are now sold for very much smaller sums than the immeasurably inferior but more showy and over-elaborated manuscripts of the period of decadence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Modern want of taste.A melancholy example of the existing want of taste and lack of appreciation of what is beautiful in art is afforded by the fact that such a thing as a manuscript signed and illuminated by Giulio Clovio would fetch a far larger sum than so perfect a masterpiece of poetic art as a fine example of a fourteenth century Anglo-Norman Apocalypse.

So also the late and inferior Horae of about 1480 to 1510 often sell for much higher prices than simpler but far more beautiful manuscripts of earlier date. Of course I am here speaking of the values of manuscripts regarded simply as works of art, not of those which are mainly of importance from the interest of their text.

The result of this is that a collector with some real knowledge and appreciation of what is artistically fine can perhaps lay out his money to greater advantage in the purchase of manuscripts than by buying works of art of any other class, either mediaeval or modern.

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.

Translation.

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.

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

SOME PUBLICATIONS OF

The Cambridge University Press.