[13] See later.
Take another example from the Laon collection, the History of Orosius. The first page is a type of the species to which it belongs, and, moreover, a good sample of the earliest efforts of all pictorial art. An ordinary rectangular cross occupies the centre of the page. The centre shows us the Lamb of the Apocalypse and St. John. On the arms are the beasts which typify the Evangelists—their emblems, as they are sometimes called. We notice that they are all symbolic, and not intended to be natural imitations of reality. The various animals scattered about the page are all symbolic—all have a mystical interpretation and raison d'être. A border-frame, passing behind each extremity of the cross, contains a number of dog-like animals, some plain, others spotted, while the body of the cross itself is occupied with attempts at foliage ornaments. In the left upper corner are the letters “X P I,” in the right “I H V,” thick foliage springing from the “I” and “V” and falling back over the monogram. In the lower corners are two fishes and two doves, each pair hanging to a penwork chain.
The emblem of John, on the upper extremity of the cross, is an eagle-headed and winged man holding a book; its opposite one of Lucas at foot is a singularly conceived anthropoid and winged ox, also with a book. On the left Marcus, whose head is indescribable; and on the right Matthew, with human head, the rest of the figures being as before. The eye in all the figures is a most remarkable feature. Both in the pictures and the initials of this MS. the outline has been drawn in black ink, and the colours yellow, red, brown, and green applied afterwards.
As the new masters of the West were not so much interested in the artistic remains of the mangled civilisation they were endeavouring to destroy as in mastery and military success, it was left for the monasteries and the church to see to the welfare of books and monuments.
In the seventh century it was the monasteries that saved almost all we know of the preceding centuries. During the turmoil of the period from the fifth to the eighth century we find certain quiet corners where learning and the arts still breathed, grew, and dwelt in security. Lérins, founded by St. Honoratus of Aries; Luxeuil by Columbanus, Bobbio his last retreat; and, above all, Monte Cassino, the great pattern of monasticism, the Rule of whose founder was destined to become the basis of all later Orders, were each of them steadily labouring to rescue the civilisation daily threatened by the ravage of war, and to preserve it for the benefit of the ignorant hordes who, because of their ignorance, now only aimed at its entire destruction. We have seen how these monks and clerics, with more goodwill than ability, did their best to adorn the books which came into their hands. It is a poor show, but there is no better. It is absolutely our only record of how civilisation managed to struggle through the storm.
Let us, then, be thankful even for the Laon “Orosius,” for the Sacramentary of Gellone, and the Mozarabic Liturgies of Puy. They are among the links between ancient and mediæval art.
As already stated, the handwriting of Merovingian MSS. is mainly an adaptation of the Roman uncial, as it is in Irish and Lombardic, or, we might say, everywhere else. Abbreviations we still uncommon. Where minuscules are used, the writing is not quite so legible as in the larger hands, but we are not met by the singular difficulties of some of the Lombardic texts.
A few solitary texts of the earliest time are in capitals, such as the really handsome “Prudentius” of the Paris National Library, where the entire text of the great Christian poet is boldly inscribed in the centre of a large white page of vellum, like a series of separate inscriptions. The first few words are “rubrished” in the antique manner. The MS. is supposed to date previous to the year 527. A little later than this St. Columbanus founded the monastery of Luxeuil, and later still, viz. in 616, that of Bobbio.
If we turn to the Visigothic area, including the South of France and the entire peninsula of Spain, our first and typical example is the celebrated Sacramentary of Gellone. This MS. dates, it is said, from the eighth century. It is written throughout in Visigothic uncials, though executed in the South of France. Its ornamentation is frankly barbaric. The colours used are yellow, red, and green. The great initials are double lined, and the interlinear space filled in with a flat tint of colour and lines of red dots, as in the Book of Kells occasionally follow the contours. Here, also, are the fish or bird-form letters as in the Laon “Orosius.” Now and then occurs a tiny scene—perhaps a fight between two grotesque brutes, neither fish, nor fowl, nor beast known to the naturalist, but a horrible compound of the worst qualities of each. The human figure, when it occurs, is childishly shapeless. But the design and treatment, nevertheless, bear witness to a lively imagination and considerable knowledge of Christian symbolism. It is these mental qualities which, in spite of the manifest absence of manual skill, render the Gellone Evangeliary one of the most precious monuments of its time. Of the rest of the MSS. of this wretched period we will say nothing.
“Non ragioniam di lor', ma guard' e passa.”
We are glad to hurry on for another century or so, remembering that the leading idea now is the development of the initial letter.
CHAPTER IX
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INITIAL
The initial and initial paragraph the main object of decoration in Celtic illumination—Study of the letter L as an example—The I of “In principio” and the B of “Beatus Vir.”
From the moment when the initial was placed beneath the miniature the object of the whole design was not to give prominence to the initial but to the picture. Until then, that is, whilst the initial remains above or beside or outside the picture, it is the initial we must watch for style and development. And therefore we seize on one letter among those of the latter part of the eighth century, because of the frequency of its occurrence in the Gospel-book or Evangeliary, one of the commonest books of the time. This the letter L of “Liber Generationis,” etc., the commencing words of St. Matthew. This passage is always made of importance, and on the initial and arrangement of the words the artist expends his best efforts.
Properly I should here display pictorially the series of which I speak. It would certainly be the quickest way of explaining the matter. But as this is out of the question for many reasons, and as the present little guide aims rather at showing the way than marching through it, the reader must be content to take its advice about where to look for examples which it cannot reproduce.
Regarding the letter L as an index of time and style, first we may take the Irish L of the Book of Kells on p. 17, pt. 1, of Miss Stokes' Early Christian Art in Ireland. Note first the form of the letter, then the way it is filled up with ornament. Compare this, which dates from the seventh century, with a similar L in the Ada-Codex in the Town Library at Trèves, No. 22. A black and white copy of this is given in taf. 6 of Lamprecht Initial Ornamentik. This carries up the work to the second half of the eighth century. Next, say the L in the Town Archives at Cologne, No. 147. This belongs to the second half of the ninth century. The chief departure here is towards the knotted band work which figures so largely afterwards both in German and Italian book ornament, the form is still unchanged. But with the tenth century comes change of form as well as of mode of filling, as for example taf. 19 of Lamprecht, in which there is a complete alteration of treatment. The student may take for similar comparison also the I of “In principio” of St. John's Gospel, and the B of the first psalm in the Psalter, and carry the comparison on to the end of the fourteenth century, by referring to the MSS. in the British Museum and other public libraries, or in the numerous illustrated works to be found in those collections.
CHAPTER X
FIRST ENGLISH STYLES
Transition from Iona to Lindisfarne—Influence of Frankish art—The “Opus Anglicum”—The Winchester school and its characteristics—Whence obtained—Method of painting—Examples—Where found and described.
The succession of the school of Iona shows us in the first examples of English illumination the type exemplified in the Book of Kells, modified, but not very much, by its transference to Lindisfarne.
Whatever doubt may be felt as to the influence of Byzantine or Romanesque models on pure Irish work, such as the Book of Kells, there can be none as regards the Lindisfarne Gospels. In the first place we have gold both in the lettering and ornament. This MS., known also as the Durham Book (Brit. Mus., Nero D. iv.), was the work of Abbat Eadfrith, of Lindisfarne. It has been often described, as it is really a most precious example of eighth-century art in this country. No other MS. of its time is to be found in any continental scriptorium to be compared with it. It is not a collection of clumsy inartistic attempts at ornamental writing, but high-class, effective work, which should be seen and studied by every student of illumination.
From its style of execution, its details of portraiture, and other features, it may be looked on as one of the earliest links between the two extremes of Oriental and Occidental Art.
Another MS. in the British Museum (Vesp. A. 1), which combines the Roman method of painting as in the Vergils with the penwork of these Anglo-Celtic Gospel-books, may also repay careful examination.
It is very possible that the celebrated scriptoria of York and Jarrow may have been furnished with both MSS. and copyists from Rome, yet there can be little doubt that the intercourse with Durham would be quite as active. Nor is it less probable that similar intercourse would keep them en rapport with Oxford, St. Alban's, Westminster, Glastonbury, and other scriptoria, so that in the eighth century England stood with respect to art second to no other country in the Christian world.
During the ninth century active intercourse with the Frankish Empire enriched English churches and religious houses, especially Winchester, with examples of Byzantine and Roman models, which Charlemagne had introduced into his own palatine schools. From such secondary models as the Sacramentaries and Evangeliaries executed at Tours, Soissons, Metz, and other busy centres of production, English illuminators succeeded in forming a distinctive style of their own. In the French or, rather, Frankish MSS., while the richness of the gold and the beauty and delicacy of the colouring are in themselves most charming, and while certain features may in general be recognised as no doubt suggestive there is nothing which quite predicts the remarkable treatment which characterises the English work. “Opus Anglicum” was its distinctive title. The term, indeed, was applied to all English artistic productions more or less—embroidery among the rest. The women of England, says William of Poitiers, were famous for their needlework, the men excelled in metal-work and jewellery. But it was the illuminated Service Books that have perpetuated the term.
From the Lindisfarne Gospels to the Winchester Benedictionals is a far cry—but Art is long and time is fleeting, hence many pages of intervening description must be omitted. We may, however, refer the reader to Westwood's Palæographia Sacra Pictoria, the Palæographical Society's publications, and other works, for enlightenment on this period. On the Rouen and Devonshire Benedictionals much interesting information may be found in vol. 24 of the Archæologia and in the recent volume of the Bradshaw Society concerning them.
The work is peculiar; and if we consider the treatment of foliage apart from the colour, we cannot but notice its similarity to the ivory carving observable in the consular diptychs. Ivory carving was then a popular artistic occupation. The foliage is graceful, the composition well-balanced, and the colour mostly bright body colour applied in the Greek manner. The fault of the heads is that they are too small for the figure, and of the draperies that the folds are overdone too much fluttering detail. The gilding differs from the Byzantine in not being laid on the vellum in the form of burnished leaf, but painted on like the colours, not only in the figures but in the framework and ornaments.
The British Museum contains several characteristic examples, but, as has been said, the very finest are those at Rouen and in the library of the Duke of Devonshire.
Perhaps no genuine example exists earlier than the Golden Charter of King Edgar of true Winchester illumination, executed forty years after the accession of Athelstan, whose Coronation Book (Brit. Mus., Tib. A. 2) is most probably not English at all, but Carolingian of the finest type. Many other scriptoria in England in the tenth century were equally busy with Winchester, but none could vie with the royal city in the production of illuminated books.
CHAPTER XI
CAROLINGIAN ILLUMINATION
Why so-called—Works to be consulted—The Library of St. Gall—Rise and progress of Carolingian art—Account of various MSS.—Features of the style—Gospels of St. Sernin—The Ada-Codex—Centres of production—Other splendid examples—The Alcuin Bible—The Gospel of St. Médard of Soissons.
Once more crossing the Channel let us now inquire what has been doing among the Franks since the Gellone Sacramentary, especially in the schools instituted by the Emperor Charles the Great. Materials for this inquiry are most abundant. One of the more important works on the subject is the lucid monograph of Dr. Rahn, of Zurich, on the Golden Psalter of Folchard at St. Gall, which deals more or less with the whole question of Carolingian art, while M. Léop. Delisle's brochure on the Evangeliary of St. Vaast of Arras gives us a copious account of the Franco-Saxon branch of it. Apart, however, from these sources of information, we have not a few original MSS. still extant, which, of course, more vividly speak for themselves, and only require pointing out to the student.
The clearest method of study being to take things in the order of their creation, so in order to understand the “character of savage grandeur and naïve originality” which has been attributed to this style, it will be best to take up these MSS. chronologically. At the same time, if anyone merely wishes to know what the style is like at its best, Dr. Rahn must be his guide, as the Golden Psalter which he has selected for study is as splendid an example as perhaps may be found in the whole career of the art. We have noticed how the Irish missionary-artists carried their work to their continental settlements, how they planted their schools in Burgundy, Switzerland, and Lombardy. Of all their depositories, however, numerous as they are elsewhere, none is richer in the relics of their work than the celebrated abbey which takes its name of St. Gall from that disciple of St. Columbanus, who in 614 founded his little cell beside the Steinach, about nine miles south of the Lake of Constance. Under Charles Martel the cell had become a monastery, which he endowed as a Benedictine abbey. In 830 was founded its magnificent library of MSS. The library still exists, and at the present moment gives shelf-room to 1,800 MSS. and more than 41,700 printed books. Besides this, another, called the Town Library, founded in the sixteenth century, and containing 500 MSS. and 60,400 printed books, gives this upland, busy, modern manufacturing Swiss town no mean importance as a centre of literary culture. Physically it is probably the highest town in Europe, its street-level being very nearly 2,200 feet above that of the sea. Its libraries and museums are rich storehouses of mediæval treasures. The architect raves over its monastic buildings; the scholar and palæographer gloat over its books and MSS. In the libraries of St. Gall are some of the masterpieces of Irish Saxon, and Carolingian art, and its great Benedictine abbey under Grimald from 841, i.e. during the later Carolingian period, possessed one of the most active scriptoria in Europe. To begin with the beginning, however, we must leave St. Gall, and, passing by some less important MSS., go back to the year 781 and the city of Toulouse. In that year, and in the Abbey of St. Sernin (Saturninus) in that city, was finished a wonderful and truly splendid manuscript of the Gospels as a present to the Emperor and his wife Hildegardis. This is our first example. It now is to be seen in the National Library, Paris (Nouv. acqu. Lat. 1203).
Next comes the Evangeliary of Abbat Angilbert of Centula (now St. Riquier), near Abbeville, Charlemagne's son-in-law. This MS., executed about the year 793, is still preserved in the Town Library of Abbeville. In the same rank, but somewhat finer in execution, comes a third Evangeliary, that of St. Médard of Soissons, now in the National Library, Paris (No. 8850, Lat.).
In these three MSS., reproductions from which are to be found in various modern works on art, the writing and ornamentation are the parts into which the artist puts his best work, not the figure drawing. Although in the St. Sernin MS. there is, in the Christ-figure, a distinct attempt at portraiture quite different from the coils and pen-flourishes which make up the Gospel-figures in the Irish and Merovingian MSS. Here the inspiration is clearly Greek, not Irish. The figure is draped in green and violet—seated on an embroidered cushion before a low castellated wall. The hair is light, and the chin beardless. The design shows a decided likeness to the consular ivory diptychs, and the painting follows the Eastern methods. In the details of ornament only are Irish features. Thus we trace in this MS. the sources of Carolingian art. The MS. being dated, is important as affording a means of comparison with other undated work. It was presented to St. Sernin on the occasion of the visit of the Emperor and Empress with their son, the amiable Louis “le Debonaire,”[14] just after the latter had been made King of Aquitaine. Godeschalk, the writer of it, on the last two leaves tells us that it took him seven years to accomplish. It is written throughout in gold and silver letters on purple vellum, and is, moreover, ornamented with borders, pictures, portraits, and panellings. At first it was kept in a cumdach of silver, set with precious stones, but that has disappeared.
[14] Mod. Fr. “Debonnaire.”
The Golden Gospels of St. Médard, like the Centula MS., are similar, but betoken an advance in both taste and execution. The figures are still rude and deformed, but the artist shows a laudable desire, an ambition, in fact, to imitate the work of better artists than himself. Nevertheless, the calligraphy and borderwork are the best parts of his performance. In this MS. the use of silver betrays a tendency to prodigality. In design, the influence of the artists who built the new church of San Vitale at Ravenna, a church which became the model for the Abbey of St. Médard itself, is quite manifest, yet perhaps need not be traced further than Soissons or Pavia. In certain of the illustrations, as, for instance, the “Fountain of Life,” there is at once a likeness and a variation as compared with the same symbol in the Evangeliary of St. Sernin. They are both too intricate to describe, but of both it may be said that they show an intimate acquaintance with early Christian symbolism. The ivory carving and architecture of Ravenna have evidently been known to the director of these frames and backgrounds. In the year which saw the completion of Godeschalk's Gospels, Alcuin was at Parma, but when the St. Médard's Gospels were written he was Abbot of St. Martin's at Tours. It was the presence of Alcuin at the Court of Charlemagne that accounts for the prevalence of the Saxon character in the new and beautiful handwriting we now call Carolingian. It was the presence of Paul Warnefrid that accounts for much of the classic and most of the Lombardic features, both of the writing and the illumination. Many other scholars assisted these two in the various centres in which Alcuin established branches of the palatine schools. The intercourse with Italy and England was constant, and led to the frequent interchange of books, and community of methods and models. Another fine MS. of the same period (c. 780) is the Golden Ada-Codex of St. Mesmin or Maximin, of Trèves. In 1794 this MS. was taken from Trèves to Mainz; in 1815 it was transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle, and is now back again at Trèves. The externals of the Ada-Codex are very costly, its binding being a late Gothic pendant to the cover of the Echternach Evangeliary at Gotha. In the centre of the fore-cover there is a magnificent topaz,[15] with several imperial figures. Inside, the work is a handsome example of the early Carolingian.[16] It contains the four Gospels written by order of the “Mother and Lady Ada,” sister of Charles the Great, Abbess of St. Mesmin. Next we have in the British Museum another grand example of the style as modified by English or Saxon influence. Also the Zurich Bible, of the same date, executed at Tours—and the Bamberg Bible, said to be a copy of the Alcuin Bible of the same school. Then follow the Drogo Sacramentary, presented by the Emperor to his natural son Drogo, Archbishop of Metz (826-855), perhaps illuminated at Metz, but of the same school as those above mentioned.
[15] Or sardonyx (Lamprecht says topaz.)
[16] A photograph of the cover is sold by F. Linz of Trèves.
In our own National Library, again, we have the Athelstan Gospels (Harl. 2788), also in all probability executed at Metz. At Paris (Nat. Lib., Theol. Lat. 266) is the Evangeliary of Lothaire—a most beautiful example of gold-writing and ornament. So we might enumerate a score of splendid MSS., and classify them into their various minor schools. But such is not our object. All we want here is a general but clear idea of the style as a whole.
To characterise it broadly by the names of its most important elements we should call it a Lombard-Saxon style—the interlacing bands and knots and other minor features and the main character of the writing being of Saxon origin, the classical foliages and manner of painting the figures and certain ideas of design Lombardic, strengthened by direct contact with the sources of the latter style. Whatever variations there may be, they can generally be accounted for according to locality and centre of production. We have instanced a few examples of the earlier time as showing the principal features of the style. Under the Emperor Charles the Great's grandson, Charles the Bald, Carolingian illumination reached its highest point of excellence, and the MSS. executed for him or his contemporaries accordingly give a correct idea of what Carolingian illuminators considered as good work. The chief centres were still Tours and Metz—the latter a branch of the former, but gradually developing distinct features of its own; and among the productions of these schools there still remain precious—we might say priceless—examples, such as the Vivien Bible of the Paris Library, so-called because presented by Count Vivien, Abbat of St. Martin's of Tours, to Charles the Bald in 850.[17] It contains a fine picture of the presentation with beardless figures. It has also a number of exceedingly splendid initials showing strong Byzantine influence—capitals of columns of classic origin and traces of Merovingian in letter forms and ornamental details. It is like the Evangeliary of Lothaire, already mentioned, a most sumptuous example rich in silver and gold—the latter having a grand portrait of Lothaire seated on his throne. Both MSS. are in the National Library at Paris, the Vivien, No. 1 (Theol. Lat.), the Lothaire, No. 266. But the one example to which we would call the reader's attention, though among the earlier productions of the period, as not only most readily accessible, but most precious to the English student, is the celebrated Alcuin Bible in the British Museum (Add. MS. 10546). This venerable MS. is a copy of the Vulgate revised by Alcuin himself, and said to be exactly similar to the one at Bamberg. Biblical revision was perhaps the most important of his many literary occupations, and this volume is reasonably believed to be the actual copy prepared for presentation to Charlemagne under the reviser's own superintendence, possibly, in part at least, the work of his own hand. It is a large folio, finely written in a neat minuscule, mainly Saxon hand, with uncial initials in two columns. The miniatures, including their architectural details, are in the Roman manner, the ornaments partly Byzantine, partly Celtic. The great similarity of design between different manuscripts is strikingly exemplified by a comparison of three borders from (a) the Evangeliary of St. Vaast of Arras, fol. 28 v. (see Delisle); (b) the Evangel. in National Library, Paris, anc. fds. Lat. 257 (see Louandre), and Evangeliary No. 309 Bibl. de Cambrai (see Durieux).
[17] Plate in t. 1 of Louandre.
Indeed, comparisons of this kind are very instructive frequently as suggestive of provenance, as each working centre would have its own set of models and designs. Of course, comparison of the MSS. themselves is out of the question, but the comparisons can often be effected by the student's having Louandre, Durieux, Fleury, Labarte, etc., by his side during the examination of any given period. The limits of our little book forbid our speaking of other examples of this splendid style, but we cannot conclude without noticing that in the opinion of M. Ferdinand Denis, the Golden Gospels of St. Médard of Soissons is the most beautiful Carolingian MSS. extant.
CHAPTER XII
MONASTIC ILLUMINATION
Introductory—Monasteries and their work from the sixth to the ninth century—The claustral schools—Alcuin—Warnefrid and Theodulf—Clerics and monastics—The Golden Age of monasticism—The Order of St. Benedict—Cistercian houses—Other Orders—Progress of writing in Carolingian times—Division of labour.
In the sixth century the monasteries, such as they were, necessarily kept themselves very quiet and unobtrusive. They were situated usually in out-of-the-way corners, solitudes apart from civilisation, or, at least, apart from the busy haunts of men. In the eighth century there is a marked difference. The Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, of 789, required that minor schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches without exception, and that children of all ranks, both noble and servile, should be received into them. Also that the larger monasteries should open major schools in which the seven sciences of mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectics, and geography, were to be taught—and this in two ways. There were to be two sorts of schools—interior or claustral, intended for monastics only, and exterior or canonical, intended for secular students. These schools were under separate scholastics or masters, and lay students were received in the exterior schools as freely and fully as in the public schools of the present time. Mabillon[18] gives a list of some twenty-seven monastic and cathedral schools, by no means confined to great or wealthy cities, but well distributed throughout the Empire.
[18] Præfat. in iv. Sæcul. 184.
In the time of Charlemagne those most in repute were Tours, St. Gall, Fulda, Reims, and Hirsfeld.
We have given the names of Alcuin and Paul Warnefrid as the chief promoters of the Carolingian Revival, but we should not omit that of Theodulf, of Orleans, the indefatigable school inspector of the time. He it was who assisted the artistic side of the movement by his ingenious contrivances as a writer and illustrator of school books. Undoubtedly it was from his suggestions that we so often find in mediæval scientific treatises of the driest kind those graphic and wonderful tabulations and edifices, labelled and turreted, which make Aristotle, Priscian, and Marcianus Capella, not only comprehensible, but attractive. Theodulf composed in simple and easy Latin verse—somewhat after the style of the Propria quæ maribus our own childhood—the description of a supposed tree of science, which he had drawn and painted, on the trunk and branches of which were the figures and names of the seven liberal arts. At the foot sat Grammar—the basis of all learning—holding on her hand a lengthy rod (ominous for the tender student). On the right Rhetoric stretched forth her hand. On the left was Dialectic. Philosophy sat on the summit; the rest being disposed according to their relative importance. The whole was explained in the Carmina de septem artibus, in which the bishop, who was one of the famous poets of the age, strove in flowery language to render these dry-as-dust studies acceptable to the youthful understanding. Theodulf was a great scholar, and assisted Alcuin in the revision of the Bible, one copy of which he himself had written whilst still Abbat of Fleury, about 790. At the beginning of this Bible is a poem in golden letters on purple, and a preface in prose, also in golden letters, giving a synopsis of the several books. The text differs somewhat from the Alcuin Bible, as it is that of Jerome before Alcuin's revision. This MS. is now at Paris. Another Bible executed to the order of Theodulf is now in the Town Library at Puy.
It seems incredible, after the efforts made by Charlemagne and his ministers for the maintenance of learning and the arts, that there should ever be any risk of a return to barbarism, but it is a fact that the dissolution of the Empire proved in certain localities the suspension of prosperity. Fortunately the monastics—especially the Benedictines—and the canons of the cathedrals still kept up the practice of copying books; but almost all the South of France, Languedoc, and Provence, always conservative, remained more or less illiterate. They produced poets and jongleurs, but seldom artists or scholars. And even in the North, where the capitular schools were most flourishing—as Paris, Reims, and Chartres—the general tendency was towards relapse. In High Germany it was even worse. In spite of all efforts of the clergy by the extension of secular schools, the laity preferred the excitement of chase and camp to the quiet humdrum of the schoolroom. Religion seemed to be regarded rather as a profession than a principle, quite right in its place, i.e. the Church and the monastery, but unsuited for active life. The wealthy land-owners, therefore, did not cease to endow religious houses or to build churches, but they left book-learning to the clerics. Accordingly the clerics and the monastics flourished exceedingly.
From the beginning of the tenth century to the beginning of the thirteenth was the Golden Age of monasticism. The Order of St. Benedict scattered its foundations thickly over France and Western Germany, while its reformed colonies of Cluny, Citeaux, Clairvaux, and the Chartreuse again spread their settlements in all directions. Thus we find Cluny established in 910, Grammont in 1076, the Chartreuse in 1080, Citeaux in 1098, Savigny in 1105, Tiron in 1109, Austin Canons in 1038, Premonstrants in 1120, Crutched Friars in 1169. In England, from 1100, scarcely a year passed by without the establishment of some fresh foundation. During the thirty-five years of the reign of Henry I. more than 150 religious houses were founded. And even during the disastrous reign of Stephen, in less than twenty years, no fewer than 100 houses of various Orders were established. The twelfth century in England was especially the age of monasteries.
It is true that not very much in the way of original literature, except theological treatises, can be assigned to the three centuries referred to, but the unwearied labours of the copyist and illuminator did much to preserve the works which previous centuries had created. Of course, in so long a period changes were many and great. So great, indeed, that between a MS. of 850 and another of 1200 scarcely is there a common feature.
From 850 to 1000 in France the Carolingian minuscule, from the first so clear and beautiful, remained with scarce a stroke of alteration. But immediately after the opening of the eleventh century a series of rapid changes set in, and by the beginning of the twelfth a new hand, perfectly clear and regular, but quite different from the Carolingian, had been formed, which lasted until it was superseded by the Gothic, while a system of contractions adopted because of the scarcity of parchment creates a fresh need for study apart from the peculiarities of personal habits. Side by side, too, with this there grows up a non-professional hand—the so-called cursive or running hand of the ordinary writer—in many cases, especially in deeds and other brief compositions, all but utterly illegible, except to the professional palæographer. Occasionally these autographs are of the highest importance and intensely interesting, as, for instance, when in an English MS. we come Across a note in the handwriting of Ordericus (Vitalis) or Matthew Paris.
From 900 to 1200 the vast majority of MSS., illuminated and otherwise, were the work of monastics. Every house of any note had its room set apart for writing. The larger monasteries sometimes utilised the cloisters of the churches themselves, in recesses of which they had desks or tables placed for the copyist. Usually, however, they had a large common room called the scriptorium, where either the copyist and illuminator worked separately and each on his own account, or where a number of copyists awaited with pen and parchment the dictation by one of the fraternity of some work of which a number of copies had to be made. “No admittance except on business” was the rule of this chamber. There, under the direction of the armarius, the expert writers did their work.
Sometimes a single monk executed the book from first to last by himself. He prepared the vellum, ruled it with the fine metal point, copied the text, painted the illuminations, put on the gilding, and even added the binding. Generally, however, the labour was divided—one monk scraped and polished the parchment; another ruled it; another wrote the text, leaving spaces for initials and miniatures; another put in the initials and did the gilding and flourishing with borders, etc.; and another painted the miniatures. This in the monasteries was done in the case of large and important MSS., and afterwards, when illuminating became a lay-craft, subdivision of labour was the common practice. Binding was done in a special apartment, and by one specially skilled therein.
The scriptorium was looked upon as a sort of sacred place, and the work of copying often considered as a labour of piety and love—entered upon with devout prayer, and solemnly blessed by the superior, especially in cases where the books to be written were Bibles, or connected with the services of the house, the Lives of the Saints, or Treatises on Theology.
Very frivolous or absurd indeed are sometimes the inducements to copyists to do gratuitous work of this kind, such as that every letter transcribed paid for one sin of the copyist, and it is said that a certain monk—a heavy sinner—only owed his salvation to the fact that the number of letters in a Bible which he copied exceeded by a single unit the sum total of his sins.
CHAPTER XIII
MONASTIC ILLUMINATION—continued
The copyists—Gratuitous labour—Last words of copyists—Disputes between Cluny and Citeaux—The Abbey of Cluny: its grandeur and influences—Use of gold and purple vellum—The more influential abbeys and their work in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Of course, only really expert calligraphers were employed on great and important works. In the monastery all such labour was gratuitous, that is, the copyist received no pecuniary remuneration, only his food and lodging. Yet even this had to be provided for. Hence the frequent requests for donations from the laity.
To give a volume to a monastery did not always mean actually to present the book, but to stand the expense of its production in the monastery itself. In the case of specially distinguished penmen, their entertainment in a monastery was sometimes an expensive business. It was only in later times, however, when lay-artists were invited to reside in the monastery to do their work that money was paid for their services. Very often we find notices at the end of volumes that “So-and-so” had ordered the book to be written and illuminated at his expense, and an invocation for the gratitude of the reader and remembrance in his prayers is added, sometimes with the date to the very hour when the book was finished.
The copyist's last words after his task was completed are often very full of weariness—sometimes pious, sometimes hankering after fleshly lusts, occasionally quite too dreadful to repeat. “May Christ recompense for ever him who caused this book to be written.” At the end of a Life of St. Sebastian: “Illustrious martyr, remember the monk Gondacus who in this slender volume has included the story of thy glorious miracles. May thy merits assist me to penetrate the heavenly kingdom; and may thy holy prayers aid me as they have aided so many others who have owed to them the ineffable enjoyments both of body and soul.” Wailly quotes the following: “Dextram scriptoris benedicat mater honoris” (“May the mother of honour bless the writer's right hand”). A very common ending is “Qui scripsit scribat semper cum Domino vivat” (“He who wrote, let him write; may he ever live with the Lord”). Another: “Explicit expliceat. Bibere scriptor eat” (“It is finished. Let it be finished, and let the writer go out for a drink”). Another ending is “Vinum scriptori reddatur de meliori” (“Let wine of the best be given to the writer”). And again: “Vinum reddatur scriptori, non teneatur” (“Let wine be given to the writer; let it not be withheld”). Here is the recompense wished for by a French monk: “Detur pro penâ scriptori pulcra puella” (“Let a pretty girl be given to the writer for his pains,” or “as a penance”) The monks enjoyed puns, as “bibere,” a common pun on “vivere.” One writer groans thus: “Scribere qui nescit, nullum putat esse laborem” (“Whoso knows not how to write, thinks it is no trouble”).
As time goes on, after the tenth century, it is noticeable that the more beautiful a manuscript becomes in its writing the less accurate becomes its Latinity. And so the monks who once were noted for learning, gradually lose their grip on Latin. The manuscripts executed in Benedictine abbeys became inaccurate—almost illiterate. Faults of ignorance of words; misrendering of proper names; blundering in the inept introduction of marginal notes and confounding such notes with the text, showing that the heart of the copyist was not in his work nor his head capable of performing it. His hand is simply a machine, which when it goes wrong does so without remorse and without shame. So in the greater houses, men were appointed whose sole business was to supervise the copyists—in fact, to supply the brains, while the scribe furnished the manipulation of the pen. Even they, however, did not always succeed to perfection, as very few of them were too well furnished with scholarship. There were not many Alcuins or Theodulfs in the twelfth century. What they did usually keep free from serious error were the books used in their own services. It was the aim, particularly among the Cistercian houses, to have their liturgical texts absolutely without fault. In respect of illumination, there was a great quarrel between the Abbey of Citeaux and that of Cluny. The great Abbey of Clugny (or Cluny) in ancient Burgundy was founded in 910, and in the course of a century or obtained a degree of splendour, influence, and prosperity unrivalled by any other mediæval foundation. It possessed enormous wealth and covered Western Europe with its affiliated settlements. Under Peter the Venerable, when the controversy began, it was the chief monastic centre of the Christian world. The words of Pope Urban II., when addressing the community, were: “Ye are the light of the world.”
The grand Basilica at Cluny was completed in 1131, and, until the erection of St. Peter's at Rome, was the largest church in Christendom, and even then was only ten feet shorter than the Roman edifice. The building is a masterpiece of architectural beauty and massiveness, being with its narthex added by Abbat Roland de Hainaut, no less in length than 555 feet. The splendour of the church, its gorgeous tombs and mausoleums, its huge coronals for lights of brass, silver, and gold—the grand candelabrum before the altar, with its settings of crystal and beryl—the mural painting of the cupola, and the general luxury and magnificence of the whole constituted an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the stern and self-denying Cistercians. Hence arose long disputes between the abbats of the two houses about tithes and other matters. Among the other matters were included questions of candlesticks and bindings and gildings of books. The two houses were long at variance on the right definition of luxury in living, and this variance may to this day be observed in their separate and distinct styles, both of architecture and the ornamentation of books. The use of gold was still continued in the older Benedictine abbeys, but was long forbidden in the Cistercian, almost all the ornament of the latter being confined to pen-drawing and the use of coloured inks. The employment of gold for the text of manuscripts so common in the ninth century became rare in the eleventh. Only here and there do we hear of such volumes. Where the gold lettering still lingers, it is confined to the first page or two, and the same may be said of the purple vellum. A certain monk, Adémar, who died at Jerusalem in 1034, wrote a Life of St. Martial of Limoges entirely in letters of gold; but it was quite an exceptional volume. Another example occurs in an Evangeliary, which was probably a copy of a ninth-century model, as at first glance it might be assigned to that age, but on closer examination it is found that in one of the borders is a medallion bearing the name of the Emperor Otho, showing that it cannot be later than the latter part of the tenth century. It is now in the National Library at Paris.
Before speaking of Othonian illumination it may be well to refer to that of the Netherlands in these earlier centuries.
The most ancient writings known in this district were charters and other documents, and the pious effusion of the occupants of the monasteries, such as St. Amand, Lobbes, Stavelot, etc.
It was the revival of art and literature under Charlemagne that was the beginning of artistic calligraphy, then followed the production of books outside the monasteries, classical authors, chronicles, and mirrors of various sciences. In the eleventh century we find monastic books and others of which the ornamentation is sometimes even splendid, such as Psalters, Evangeliaries, Bibles, and Missals, glowing with gold and colours. Already the Abbeys of Stavelot and Liége were high-class centres of production. St. Martin's of Tournay had a famous scriptorium also, noted for the beauty of its writing and its grand initial letters. Immediately following St. Martin's, the Abbeys of Gembloux, St. Bavon at Ghent, and others, produced or acquired MSS. of the most sumptuous kind, and before the thirteenth century the Netherlands had established quite a distinguished reputation.
In a later chapter we shall deal with the development of its remarkable schools, whose work eventually took rank, not only among the most artistic, but the most prolific in Europe.
CHAPTER XIV
OTHONIAN ILLUMINATION
Departure from Carolingian—Bird and serpent—Common use of dracontine forms in letter-ornament—Influence of metal-work on the forms of scroll-ornament—The vine-stem and its developments—Introduction of Greek taste and fashion into Germany—Cistercian illumination—The Othonian period—Influence of women as patronesses and practitioners—German princesses—The Empress Adelheid of Burgundy—The Empress Theophano—Henry II. and the Empress Cunegunda—Bamberg—Examples of Othonian art.
Perhaps the first departure towards a new style arising out of the elements of Carolingian illumination is in the combination of the bird and serpent used for letter forms and continued into coils of vine-stem and foliage in combination with golden panelled frames or pilasters. The monsters thus produced seem to be a revival of the dracontine forms of the semi-barbarous Celtic and early Frankish arts. But the difference in elegance and refinement of drawing and beauty of colouring is very great indeed. Other animal forms are also made use of, nor is the human figure altogether absent. Sometimes entire letters are made up of the latter in various attitudes. Little scenes illustrative of the subject which the initial commences are often placed within it, as, for instance, in the B of the first psalm.[19]