CHAPTER XIII. Page 206 to 223.

THE WRITERS OF ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS.

Monastic scribes; the great beauty of their work, and the reasons for it; their quiet, monotonous life; examples of monastic humour; no long spells of work in a monastery; care in the preparation of pigments; variety of the schemes of decoration; the _scriptoria_ of Benedictine monasteries; their arrangement in one alley of the cloister; the row of _armaria_; the row of _carrels_; the _carrels_ in the Durham cloister described in _the Rites of Durham_; the scribes of other regular Orders. Secular scribes; the growth of the craft-guilds; the guilds of Bruges; their rules, and advantages to both buyer and seller; the production of cheap _Horae_; wealthy patrons who paid for costly manuscripts; women illuminators, such as the wife of Gérard David; the high estimation of fine manuscripts. Extract from the fourteenth century accounts of St George's at Windsor showing the cost of six manuscripts. Similar extract from the Parish books of St Ewen's at Bristol in the fifteenth century, giving the cost of a _Lectionary_.