Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times/Chapter 5

The age of Charles the Great and his successors. Charles the Great, who was elected King of the Franks in 768, and in the year 800 became Emperor of the West, did much to foster all branches of art—architecture, bronze-founding, goldsmith's work, and more especially the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts. The Imperial Capital, Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), became a busy centre for arts and crafts of all kinds, and various monasteries throughout the Frankish kingdom became schools of manuscript illumination of a very high order of excellence.



It was specially with the aid of a famous English scholar and manuscript writer, Alcuin of York, that Charles the Great brought about so remarkable a revival both of letters and of the illuminator's art, and created what may be called the Anglo-Carolingian school of manuscripts. From 796 till his death in 804 Alcuin was Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St Martin at Tours; and there he carried out various literary works for Charles the Great, and superintended the production of a large number of richly illuminated manuscripts. Alcuin's most important literary work was the revision of the Latin text of the Bible, the Vulgate, which since Saint Jerome's time had become seriously corrupted. The British Museum possesses (Add. Manuscripts, No. 10546) a magnificently illuminated copy of the Vulgate as revised by Alcuin, which, there is every reason to believe, is the actual manuscript which was prepared for Charles the Great either by Alcuin himself or under his immediate supervision. This splendid manuscript is a large folio in delicate and beautifully formed minuscule characters, with the beginnings of chapters in fine uncials; it is written in two columns on the purest vellum. The miniature paintings in this manuscript show the united influence of various schools of manuscript art. The figure subjects are mainly classical in style, with fine architectural backgrounds of Roman style, drawn with unusual elaboration and accuracy, and even with fairly correct perspective. The initial letters and all the conventional ornaments show the Northern artistic strain which Alcuin himself introduced from York. Delicate and complicated interlaced patterns, such as were first used in the wonderful sixth and seventh century manuscripts of the Celtic monks, are freely introduced into the borders and large capitals.



In Alcuin's time Northumbria and especially York was one of the chief centres in the world, for the production of manuscripts, and the Dean of York naturally introduced into France the style and influence of his native school, which had grown out of a combination of two very different styles, that of Rome, as introduced by St Augustine, and the Celtic style which the monks of Ireland and Lindisfarne had brought to such marvellous perfection in the seventh century.

Fig. 10 shows an initial of the Celtic-Carolingian type, with a goldsmith's pattern on the shaft of the P, and a bird of Oriental type forming the loop; and fig. 11 gives a large initial B in which the Oriental element is very strong, cf. fig. 13, page 68.

The Carolingian class of manuscripts in this way combined many different strains of influence—native Frankish, Classical, Oriental and English, all modified by the Byzantine love for gorgeous colours, shining gold and silver, and purple-dyed vellum. A considerable number of manuscripts were written in the reign of Charles the Great in letters of gold on purple vellum like those prepared in earlier times for the Byzantine Emperors. A manuscript Book of the Gospels of this magnificent class was given by Pope Leo X. to Henry VIII. of England in return for the presentation copy of his work against Luther, entitled Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, which the king had sent in 1521 to the Pope as a proof of his allegiance to the Catholic Faith and the Holy See. This magnificent Textus afterwards came into the Hamilton collection through Mr Beckford of Fonthill, and was subsequently bought by Mr Quaritch.



As was the case with the earlier Byzantine manuscripts, the most magnificent books produced in the Carolingian period were this kind of Evangeliaria or Books of the Gospels. Though differing in the details of their ornamentation, these later Gospels are decorated with the same set of miniature subjects that occur in the Byzantine Gospels. The library of Paris possesses a fine typical example of this (Bibl. Nat. Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1993), a richly decorated and signed Evangeliarium, which was written for Charles the Great in 781 by the scribe and illuminator Godesscalc. Every page is sumptuously ornamented with large initials and a border in brilliant burnished gold, and silver, and bright colours; and there are also six full-page miniatures, the first four representing the four Evangelists enthroned in the usual way. The fifth has a painting of Christ in Majesty with one hand holding a book, the other raised in blessing; see fig. 12. The sixth miniature represents the Fountain of Life. In all these paintings the backgrounds are very rich and decorative, with a greater variety and more fancifully designed ornament than is to be found in Byzantine manuscripts of a similar class, owing, of course, to the introduction of the many different elements of design which were combined with great taste and skill by the Carolingian illuminators.

In this and many other manuscripts of the same class a very distinct Semitic or Persian strain of influence can be traced in much of the rich conventional ornament. Very beautiful and highly decorative forms and patterns were derived from Oriental sources, owing to the active import into France and Germany of fine Persian carpets and textile stuffs from Moslem looms in Syria, Sicily (especially Palermo) and from other parts of the Arab world; all these textiles were designed with consummate taste and skill both in colour and drawing.

Fig. 13 shows a fine specimen of woven silk from the Arab looms of Syria. It was used as an Imperial cope or mantle by various German Emperors; in the centre is a palm-tree, and on each side a lion devouring a camel, treated in a very decorative and masterly manner. The form of the conventional foliage on the lions' bodies is imitated in many manuscript illuminations, as, for example, in the ornaments of the initial B shown in fig. 11, page 64.



One important characteristic of the Carolingian manuscripts is their extreme splendour. The freely used burnished gold is often made more magnificent by the contrast of no less brilliant silver. Purple-stained vellum was largely used, and all the pigments are of the most gorgeous hues that great technical skill could produce. And yet in spite of all this magnificence of shining metals and bright colours the effect is never harsh or gaudy, owing to the taste and judgment shown by the illuminators in the way they broke up their colours, avoiding large unrelieved masses, and in the arrangement of the colours so as to give a general effect of harmony in spite of the great chromatic force of the separate parts.

The somewhat realistic way of representing the Evangelists as aged white-haired men, which occurs in Byzantine manuscripts, in the Carolingian Gospels is replaced by a more conventional treatment, and thus they are as a rule represented as youthful, beardless men of an idealized type. The general treatment of the figure is flat, with little or no light and shade or modelling of any kind. The drapery is represented by strong, dark lines applied over a flatly laid wash of pigment. The painter first drew in his outlines with a fine brush dipped in red, and then filled in the intermediate spaces with a wash of colour mixed with a large proportion of gummy medium, so that a very glossy, lustrous surface was produced. The folds of the drapery and the rest of the internal drawing of the figures were put in after the application of the flat ground colour. This method very much resembles the process of the early Greek vase-painters. In order to give richness of effect by the use of a thick body of colour the illuminator commonly applied his flat tints in two or even three distinct washes, a method which is recommended by Theophilus and other early writers on the technique of illumination.

Another Book of the Gospels which belonged to Charles the Great, now preserved in the Imperial Treasury at Vienna, is decidedly inferior as a work of art to the Paris manuscript mentioned above. In it the influence of the enfeebled Roman style is much stronger; the detail is far less refined and decorative, in spite of a copious use of burnished gold. This inferiority is due mainly to the absence of that Northumbrian influence, to which the best Carolingian manuscripts owe so much of their beauty.

Manuscripts of the later Carolingian school. Under Charles the Great's successors the art of illuminating manuscripts continued to flourish, and, in the ninth century, under his grandsons Lothair and Charles the Bald, reached the climax of its development. During this century decorative splendour of a very high order was reached, in spite of there being very little advance in the power of rendering the human form. Gold, silver, ultramarine and brilliant pigments of all kinds were skilfully used; the subjects for miniatures became more varied, and detail was more delicate and highly finished.

Portraits of the kings are often introduced at the beginning of books of this period, a fashion which in later times was extended to other than royal patrons of art and learning. A great number of places, chiefly Benedictine monasteries in France, became active centres for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts. Among them some of the principal places were Paris, St Denis, Rheims, Verdun, Fontanelle, and the two Abbeys of St Martin at Tours and Metz.

Fig. 14 shows a miniature from a manuscript of the Gospels in the Paris library representing King Lothair enthroned between two guards. This manuscript was written about the year 845 in the monastery of St Martin at Metz. In this picture a strong classical influence is apparent; the illuminator must have been familiar with manuscripts written in Rome or elsewhere in Italy.

Some of the finest manuscripts of this period show a strongly marked Northern influence, imitated from the old Celtic illuminations of Ireland and Lindisfarne. Less gold is used in this class of manuscripts; and the intricate interlaced patterns of the Celtic monks are used with much skill and great beauty of effect. The figures of Christ and the Evangelists are sometimes hardly human in form, but are worked up into a kind of conventional scroll-pattern, just as they are in the older Celtic illuminations. The Paris library possesses two manuscripts of the Gospels, which are good examples of this revived Celtic style (Bibl. Nat. Lat. Nos. 257 and 8849). The borders and initial letters in these manuscripts are remarkable for their intricate delicacy of design, and for their rich colour, tastefully arranged; while the figure drawing is of the purely ornamental scroll type.



In the ninth century the Benedictine monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland, which had formerly produced manuscripts of a purely Celtic type, now developed a very strange school of miniature art. The pictures in these St Gallen manuscripts have figure subjects drawn in outline and then faintly coloured with transparent washes, very like the Anglo-Saxon (classical) style of illumination during the ninth and tenth centuries. These rather weak drawings, which have but little decorative value, show the influence of the Roman school of illuminators, who still mainly adhered to the old debased form of classical art, modified by some observation and even careful study of the actual life and movement which the painters saw around them. In this curious class of manuscripts, though the figure subjects are devoid of much vigour and artistic force, yet the decorative details of the initials and borders are extremely fine, full of invention and delicacy of detail. Fig. 15 shows a pen drawing from a St Gallen manuscript of the ninth century, the magnificent Psalterium aureum ; it represents David going forth to battle.

With regard to studies from the life, either of men or animals, it should be remembered that an artist is always biased by tradition and association to a degree which is now very difficult to realise. Even when looking at the same object two painters of different race and education might receive very different impressions on their retina. Thus in the very interesting sketch-book of Villard de Honecourt, a French sculptor and architect of the thirteenth century, there are studies of men, lions and other animals, which he has noted as being from the life; and yet these drawings look to us like the purely imaginative conceptions of a heraldic draughtsman, in spite of the fact that Villard certainly represented them as faithfully as he was able, putting down on his vellum the subjective visual and mental impression that he had received.







In the same way a modern Japanese artist evidently sees the nobler animals, such as men and horses, in a very subjective and distorted manner, whereas when he is dealing with fishes, reptiles, plants and the like he is able to depict them with the most wonderful grace, accuracy and realistic spirit.

For this reason in examining an illuminated manuscript, or other early work of art, to discover what use the artist has made of actual study from nature, one should always take into account the influences which made him see each natural object in a special, personal way, and we must not argue that because the drawing now looks very unreal that it may not possibly have been as careful and accurate a study from life as the painter's eye and hand could produce.

During the later Carolingian period there was a marked revival of Byzantine influence, which did not tend to delay the advancing decadence. Figs. 16 and 17 show a very striking example of this, a two-page miniature from a magnificent purple and gold manuscript of the Gospels, which was executed for the Emperor Otho II., and is now in the Munich library. On the right-hand page is the Emperor enthroned holding the long sceptre and the orb, with an archbishop and some armed courtiers beside him. On the opposite page, personifications of Rome, Gaul, Germany and Slavonia are doing homage and offering gifts. The whole motive and design is borrowed from a much earlier Byzantine work, such as the mosaics of Justinian's time (c. 530 A.D.) in the churches of Ravenna.

Fig. 18 from another fine manuscript of the Gospels is far nobler in style; here the influence is rather classical than Byzantine. The figure illustrates one of the usual four miniatures of the Evangelists, Saint Mark dipping his pen into the ink. The Saint is robed in the alb, dalmatic with two stripes, chasuble and pall as being Archbishop of Alexandria. The figure is very dignified, and is evidently copied from a much earlier Italian Textus, such as that which Saint Augustine received from Pope Gregory or brought from Italy to Canterbury.



Throughout the tenth century, and especially under the patronage of the three Emperor Othos and Henry the Fowler, fine and richly decorative manuscripts continued to be produced, with little change in the style of ornament employed. After a long period of great artistic brilliance and wonderful fertility of production the Carolingian style of illumination came to an end when Charles the Great's Empire was (in France) divided among various Feudal Lords. Then a serious decadence of art set in, and lasted till the beginning of a most magnificent artistic revival in the twelfth century.



To a large extent the illuminations of French manuscripts during the latter part of the eleventh century consisted of rude pen drawings with no washes of colour. The subsequent history of the illuminator's art in France is discussed below, see page 126.

Fig. 19 gives an example of the extreme artistic decadence that in many places followed the brilliant Carolingian period. This miniature of the Crucifixion is copied from a German early eleventh century manuscript, now at Berlin. The ludicrous ugliness of the drawing is not atoned for by any decorative beauty of colour; the whole miniature is dark and heavy in tone, with yellow and green flesh-tints of the most cadaverous hues.