Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times/Chapter 16

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. Such costly methods of binding were of course exceptional, and most manuscripts were covered in a much simpler manner.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 bound in crimson velvet, the greater part of which is concealed by the most elaborate 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.