Part 6

Between the ninth century and the sixteenth, the multiplication of MSS. in Europe was very great, but comparatively few of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh have been preserved. Beautiful examples of blended writing and decoration were produced in England in the ninth century by Anglian and Irish calligraphers in the north, and by Saxon writers in the south. In York and Durham, and Lindisfarne, the style and the motifs of ornament were still thoroughly Irish; in the south, although the late Roman had conquered the Celtic, their collision had produced a singularly fine type of illumination, reminiscent of Byzantine work, but much more free and natural. That art had already beautified the Carolingian French school; in the Carolingian German its influence appears in a weaker and ruder form. When with the tenth century France and Germany emerged as two distinct nations from the chaos of the Frankish empire, their modes of book-decoration began to diverge. The rudeness of an earlier time remains, with a good deal of spirit, in the illustrative designs produced in Germany; the beauty of French work began to decay, while the English was at its best. Winchester, Canterbury, and Glastonbury were the real centres of English art at the middle of the tenth century; the Norsemen having destroyed the Anglo-Irish monasteries in the north. This south English school is considered to have benefited materially by the technical superiority of French methods. What the north English schools of York and Lindisfarne had given to Tours in the eighth century, came back to Winchester at the end of the ninth, refined and embellished. Thus the supremacy of English art was assured at a time when French art was declining. The great variety, however, in all countries, of work done by different men, renders it difficult to draw general deductions. The calligraphic decoration of "Visigothic" and "Lombardic" manuscripts during the ninth, {60}tenth, and eleventh centuries is visibly Celtic in origin and style. Their pictorial illustration is sometimes very striking, and indicates the existence of several central schools of design in Europe. The English, the French, the German, the Spanish, and the Italian, had all certain qualities in common, but the first two were most nearly akin. The other three schools produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries books containing pictures, in which the composition is more remarkable than the drawing, and the painting is full of barbaric contrasts of colour. At all times, fine work was to be found in Italy, but only in isolated examples, and Italy as a whole underwent the same barbarisation as the other countries. From that stage the English and the French were the first to emerge. They can hardly be said to have _revived_ any former state of art in connexion with books. It was with them a real creation. The frequent reference to Byzantium as having supplied the models for European illuminated work is misleading. The first sign of actual contact with Byzantium is in the early part of the ninth century, when certain pictures produced in Carolingian MSS. show that the painters had been made aware of the existence of similar Byzantine work. And that is actually all that can be referred to as direct imitation of Byzantine art. The magnificent early examples of chrysography on purple vellum were not Byzantine but Eastern-Roman, and the Roman traditions of the Eastern capital lingered on into the ninth century, having begun to grow weaker at the end of the sixth. Italy was nearer and more potent in its influence upon barbaric art than Byzantium, and there was little difference in book-decoration between East Rome and West Rome till after the time of Justinian; so far as the cultivation of the arts was concerned. Consequently there is no need to look to Byzantium as having supplied models for the rest of Europe to follow. There is a difference of kind, not merely of degree, between the _livres de luxe_ of the two Roman empires, and those of the new nations which began {61}with Irish work about A.D. 600, and ended with Italian and French work about 1550. The former were books written in gold, perhaps; perhaps decorated with red ink only; illustrated, maybe, with a picture or with pictures. The latter were books of which the principal characteristic was not their bookishness but their decorativeness. A set scheme of ornament sustained from beginning to end, with due proportion in the intervals, in which even the pictorial designs were subordinate to the decorative plan, constituted the value of the illuminated books of the European middle ages.

Bibles and liturgical books in the twelfth century are remarkable for their large size and the quantity of decoration with which they were produced. In Germany, the method of ornament still repeats the Anglo-Saxon type derived from Carolingian work, and the handwriting is still Carolingian, but the letters lean forward instead of being upright, their forms are narrowed and chiselled off by short sharp terminal strokes that give an appearance of angularity. (An example of the art is given on plate 21.) In Spain, the beautiful round "Visigothic" letters are still retained, with large initials of interlaced Celtic pattern, and the illustrative pictures (if there are any) have the same style as had been developed some centuries earlier in Aquitaine. The German and the Spanish have a sort of resemblance by reason of their common origin, but more especially because of the striking combination of green and yellow in the paintings, the note of yellow apparently being strongest in the latter, and of green in the former. The use of green tints predominates likewise in English work of the eighth-twelfth centuries, but became much more sparing under the influence of the French school which, after the eleventh century, began to avoid indulgence in that colour. It never lost its favourite place in German art, and the MSS. of Holland and Flanders only dropped it when they began to assimilate French methods in the fourteenth century. England in the twelfth century {62}produced much finer work than the French. In fact the English school of that century was the parent of nearly all the art of the following century. Both in calligraphy and in pictorial designs, it forestalled the work done in the whole of Western Europe between 1200 and 1300, which has rendered the thirteenth century the most noteworthy in the history of illustrated MSS. The mode and style of drawing, unfinished by illumination, which were practised in England towards the close of the thirteenth century, may be examined in plate 10. Italian work of the same time is shown in plate 11 to have been much more barbaric and unskilful. The difference between English twelfth-century work and that of Europe in the thirteenth century consisted in the large and ample freedom of hand which marks the former and the delicate minuteness which characterises alike the writing and the miniatures of the latter. As for style and quality of work, there is scarcely any difference between them. This new English school, so admirable in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had grown up over the decline of the Anglo-Saxon phase, which, fine as it was, had still somewhat of a barbaric air about it. The conquest of the Saxon monarchy by a Duke of Normandy in the eleventh century, and the succession in the twelfth of a Count of Anjou who united under his sceptre England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, made this country the centre of French art and literature for a considerable period. Hence the almost complete identity of the modes of writing and ornamentation between English and French work in the thirteenth century. In Central and South-eastern France the style varied somewhat as will be seen by comparing the examples given on plates 8 and 9. There is no school of art more interesting than the Anglo-Norman, as it is called, of that time. The illuminated border had not yet established itself, but the initials, drawn upon a ground of burnished gold or of diapered tints, enclose painted miniatures looking like very fine pen-and-ink designs carefully coloured. Bibles thus decorated are very {63}numerous. As they approach the end of the century, they exhibit now and then long straight lines, ending in curves or fleurons, which spread from the pictured initial upwards and downwards, and form a simple border to more than half the page. This incipient practice increased gradually from the beginning of the following century onwards. The fleurons became gold ivy-leaves, and similar leaves were figured as sprouting out from the long straight border-lines, these lines being extended so as to enclose the page on all sides. Still the effect was stiff and imperfect, but by the close of the fourteenth century, a very splendid kind of foliated border was used by French illuminators. The gold leaves called ivy-leaves were now introduced in greater number and made to sprout, no longer from the straight border frame itself, but more naturally out of branches which festooned from the frame. The ivy-leaf border in this state was very much favoured in French illumination, but was little used elsewhere. It generally accompanies pictorial illustration of superior merit, and gives an air of distinction and elegance to any MS. in which it is found. The French schools of Central France and of Paris had by the middle of the fourteenth century regained their lost pre-eminence in art.

The thirteenth century was the first and the finest period of mediæval "gothic," so far as handwriting is concerned. (The name is a misnomer, but has a clear recognised sense, and is useful.) The letters are angulated at their extremities, but the bodies are still rounded and perfectly clear. The square and lapidar Gothic was introduced in the fourteenth century, and prevailed during that and the two succeeding centuries. It was a vicious script, indistinct and difficult to read; and although some examples, distinct, legible, and handsome, were brought out in the fifteenth century, the system was generally bad, and there is no reason to regret its extinction, which took place in France, Italy, and Spain about the middle of the sixteenth {64}century, and in England somewhat later, although it is lingering on even now in Germany and Denmark.

The square Gothic of the fourteenth century, however unclear and objectionable as a script, was not ill adapted to ornamental purposes, as the vast number of prayerbooks for the laity produced between 1350 and 1400, and throughout the succeeding century, make manifest. Of those prayerbooks, which for a hundred and fifty years were the chief medium for displaying the skill of the mediæval illuminator, the number of copies which were made for individuals or families, as birth-day or wedding gifts, or for whatever reason, was incredibly large. The existence of such prayerbooks, well written and decorated with paintings, for private persons, is enough in itself to show that the office of calligrapher and miniaturist was a secular trade, and that the "old monks," to whom so many persons ascribe the writing of the "missals," had long ceased to be the sole producers of MSS.

Not many of the earlier Books of Hours have survived, that is, of those which were written between 1300 and 1350; but from the latter date onwards to 1400 they are not uncommon, and from 1400 onwards very numerous. This statement refers to French and Franco-Flemish and Burgundian work. Of English work, there are very few extant anterior to 1400, and the same may be said of Dutch examples. As for those written in Italy and Germany, it is only towards the close of the fifteenth century that they are met with. The English and French Hours produced during 1350-1420 are very different in their mode of ornamentation. The Gothic writing was pretty nearly the same everywhere, and the larger illuminated initials had followed one model since the thirteenth century. These initials (when not historiated with little miniatures) were painted in colour upon a ground usually of gold. The space within the letter-forms was filled up with a conventional flower-pattern, having buds of red and blue tints. At the earlier {65}period the letter-form has a small extension upwards and downwards, in a simple style resembling wood-carving. In the fourteenth century this extension is increased, and the long straight border, with ivy-leaves here and there, was produced. While that kind of border was in France being developed into its most elegant phase, a different type was preferred in England. The gold ground of the initial is prolonged into a stem, around which twines a corresponding prolongation of coloured foliage springing from the curved extremities of the initial letter. Thus they form a border which would be pretty enough in itself, but which is further decorated with tufts of long feathery grass, tipped with buds, which grow out of the stem and sweep in graceful curves outside the line of foliage. This feathery ornament--which, except for the little fleurons in colour here and there, seems drawn with a fine pen in brown ink--is distinctly English, and was retained till late in the fifteenth century, side by side with newer methods borrowed from France. The red and blue, with white lights, which are used in the initials and capitals by the French illuminators, are in the English MSS. pink and pale blue, and the white lights are broader.

As soon as the ivy-leaf pattern, with its brilliant gold points, began to go out of fashion in France, a new kind of border came into vogue. The conventional red and blue foliage still continued to spring out from the initials and at intervals below and above; all the intervening space was filled in with curling and twining tendrils, drawn with a pen or a very fine brush, forming a kind of hedge, in the midst of which were scattered here and there little natural flowers and fruits, growing out of the curled tendrils. This was in use in French and Burgundian and Flemish MSS. from about 1420-30 onwards, and became a favourite method of decoration in England towards the middle of the century. At that time, and in that style, prayerbooks done in the three countries are often much alike, and it is {66}only the painting of the miniatures and the differences in the calendar and litany which distinguish them.

_The chief Liturgical Books distinguished_

A word may be said here as to the means of distinguishing the liturgical MSS., and obtaining an idea of their place of origin. It ought not to be necessary, but, as a matter of fact, there are many persons of fair education, and possessing no inconsiderable familiarity with manuscripts, who call every Book of Hours a "Missal," and who cannot distinguish between a Breviary and a Missal.

The Missal gives the service of the Mass for the whole year. Its essence lies in the Canon of the Mass, beginning with the words "Te igitur," which is preceded by a number of præfationes (some of them general, some of them appropriated to special occasions), and followed by the Communion and the concluding thanksgivings. This was in more ancient times the first and the larger part of the Mass-book, and was followed by a set of prayers, which in the service itself preceded and led to the Preface, these preliminary prayers being arranged under the festivals of the year from December to December. In the Missal, as arranged and enlarged in the thirteenth century, there are four divisions: 1. De Tempore (Sundays and festivals); 2. Prefaces, Canon, and Ordinary of the Mass; 3. Mass-prayers appropriated to special Saints' days; 4. Mass-prayers common to all Saints' days. The chronological order from Advent to Advent (30th November to 29th November) was followed, except in the case of some of the most solemn and ancient commemorations, and also of some special festivals that had been appointed after the original compilement of the Mass-book. These were incorporated in the part De Tempore, in succession to the text relating to the Advent. At the end of the fourth part were also added some of the special offices in regard to the laity, which had to be {67}performed by the priest, such as matrimony, baptism, and burial.

The essence of the Breviary was the Psalter, which formed the groundwork of all the forms of devotion used at the Canonical Hours. With the appointed extracts from the Psalter a number of prayers were used, and these were divided in exactly the same way as those of the Missal into Temporal (of Sundays and festivals) in one sequence; and Sanctoral, in two sections, Proper and Common. The perpetually recurring rubrics of Matins, Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, and Vespers (ad matutinas, in laudibus, ad primam, ad tertiam, ad sextam, ad nonam, ad vesperas) mark the hours of their use from midnight to midnight. These headings, repeated from day to day all over the year, ought to be sufficient even to the least observant eye to indicate the Breviary. It also contains at the end the offices of Marriage, Baptism, Burial, &c.; and in some of the Breviaries the office of the Mass itself (not the whole Missal) is included.

The Book of Hours (or Private Prayerbook) is a selection from the Breviary, and is likewise marked with the rubrics of the hours (Matins, Lauds, Nones, &c.), but they are applied only to the offices selected, and do not contain the chronological divisions, Temporal and Sanctoral, for the year. The offices are usually those of the Virgin, of the Cross, of the Holy Ghost, of the Trinity, and these, with the Office for the Dead, and commemorations of some special Saints, form the chief bulk of the Horæ.

The Calendar, which is found at the beginning, and the Litany (or Litanies) of Saints, which is found in the body, of each of the three books, are usually the most obvious sources of information with regard to the origin of the manuscript. If the _use_, or diocesan form of the liturgy, is purely Roman, as is sometimes the case even in books written in France, Flanders, and England, then the search is frustrated. It happens, however, frequently that even {68}the Roman Calendar and the Roman Litany are enlarged by the addition of names to which a special local veneration was paid, and then one is able to discover hints of origin which may indicate either a country or a diocese. In the French books, the number of French Saints is usually considerable, that is of French Saints who do not appear in the Roman calendar, but they are generally gathered impartially from all the dioceses. It is only when we find that a single diocese furnishes the names of two or three canonised bishops, or when a name appears in gold in the calendar which had no special importance for the whole of the country, but must have had a particular interest in one city or diocese, that we can begin to think of special attributions. Thus, if St. Ives (Yvo), Ste. Genevieve, St. Germain, St. Leufroy, St. Louis, S. Faro, St. Ursin, St. Saintin, St. Saturnin, Ste. Radegonde, St. Fiacre, St. Austrebert, and many others, are found in the Calendar, and any of them in the Litany, it is a sure proof of French origin. If St. Saturnin appears in gold in the Calendar, it serves to indicate Toulouse; if St. Sainctin, Meaux; Martial, Limoges; Firmin, Metz or Amiens; and if SS. Ursin, Guillaume, and Austregisile occur together in the Litany, they point out Bourges--all three having been Archbishops of that see. But in all cases collateral or cumulative testimony is required.

Saints Vedastus and Amandus (Vaast and Amand), although belonging to Flanders, may occur either in French or Flemish Calendars; but when they are combined with Bavo and Bertin, and Quintin and Aldegund, they indicate Ghent or its vicinity as the place of origin. St. Piat, St. Lehyre (or Eleutherius), and St. Guillain point to Tournay. St. Valery or Walery (Walaricus) is another Flemish Saint, as also are Audomar, Gaugericus, Godeleve, Winnoc, and Amelberga. As for MSS. of Flemish origin, it must be remembered that the word Flemish is loosely used to designate all portions of the Low Countries except the {69}purely Dutch provinces, and that Artois and Picardy and other portions of the French _Pays Reconquis_ of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were part of them. In the same way Franche Comté and the Duchies of Burgundy and Lorraine were also outside of France in the fifteenth century; and Languedoc and Provence and Dauphiné were late additions to the French monarchy. The words Flemish (in its fullest sense) and French have therefore to be used with caution. Even Brittany was only incorporated at the end of the fifteenth century.

Manuscript liturgies of English origin of any date are unmistakable by reason of the saints' names. St. Thomas a Becket is _not_ one of the distinctive ones, for he was worshipped everywhere; but all the English books, whether they be of Roman use, or of Salisbury or York use, contain the names of SS. Alban, Cuthbert, Aldhelm, Guthlac, Botulph, Grimbald, Edward, Richard, Edmund, Swithin, Dunstan, Etheldreda, Edith, Winifrid, Chad, John of Beverley. The names of St. Wilfrid, St. William, St. Hilda, St. Aidan, St. Bede, and St. Everilda, are proofs of York and northern use; St. Milburga, St. Guthlac, and St. Thomas Cantilupe indicated Hereford, as also does St. Osytha, although one name alone is not sufficient. St. Wulfstan points to Worcester, St. Hugh to Lincoln, but not always. Aldatus, Kinburga, Egwin, and Elwin, are only found in books of Gloucester or western origin. St. Erkenwald always indicates London or the south.

Scottish liturgies of the kind are very rare, and contain the names of saints not elsewhere met with. There can be no doubt as to the origin beyond the border of a book which either in its calendar or its Litany gives the names of Kentigern, Ninian, Aidan, Adamnan, Monan, Queen Margaret, Duthac, and Modoc. Even any one of these names is sufficient, although Adamnan, Aidan, and Ninian might possibly appear on this side of the Tweed, as well as St. Adrian who was likewise Scottish.

{70}Special German saints are Gotthard, Lambert (not always), Adelbert, Bernward, Sebald, Swibert, Cunegund, Hermenegild, Willibald, Kilian, Hedwig, Wolfgang, Irmin.

Among the saints of the Spanish calendar are Isidore, Ildefonsus, Eulalia, Raimund, Leocadia, Gumersind, Baldomer, Leander, Braulio, Turibius, Quiteria, Froilan. There is sometimes a curious coincidence between the Spanish and the German calendars. The Spanish coincidences with the calendar of Southern France are more easily to be accounted for.

The Italian saints are always those of the Roman calendar, but St. Zenobio is seldom found outside of Tuscany. SS. Bernardinus of Siena and Nicolas of Tolentinum are Italian saints of the fifteenth century more frequently found in Italian calendars (after 1450) than in calendars of other countries. In the case of the latter two, their names are sometimes useful in fixing a limit for the age of a book, because MSS. of the time of their canonisation are numerous. The dates of beatification of some earlier saints such as Thomas Becket, Francis, Dominic, and King Louis, are also occasionally of service; but as a rule the names of the saints in the calendars are far older than the thirteenth century.

_The Fourteenth Century in Italy and Germany_