INK OF THE WEST.
REMARKS OF ARCH-DEACON CARLISLE--WHEN READING
AND WRITING CEASED TO BE MYSTERIES--ORIGIN
OF THE WORDS CLERK AND SIGN--SCARCITY OF MANUSCRIPTS
--FOUNDING OF IRISH SCHOOLS OF LEARNING
IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY--MONKS NOT PERMITTED
TO USE ARTIFICIAL LIGHT IN PREPARING
MSS.--OBSERVATIONS OF MADAN ABOUT THE HISTORY
OF WRITING DURING THE DARK AGES--INK-
WRITTEN MSS. TREASURES.
THE ancient history of the art of writing in more
northern sections of the Western world, William
Nicolson, Arch-Deacon of Carlisle, author of "The
English Historical Library," London, 1696, tells very
quaintly:
"The Danes register'd their more considerable
transactions upon Rocks; or on parts of them,
hewen into various Shapes and Figures. On these
they engrav'd such Inscriptions as were proper for
their Heathen Alters, Triumphal Arches, Sepulchral
Monuments and Genealogical Histories of
their Ancestors. Their writings of less concern
(as Letters, Almanacks, &c.) were engraven upon
Wood: And because Beech was most plentiful in
Demnark, (tho Firr and Oak be so in Norway and
Sweden) and most commonly employ'd in these
Services, form the word Bog (which in their Language
is the Name of that sort of Wood) they and
all other Northern Nations have the Name of Book.
The poorer sort used Bark; and the Horns of Rain-
Deer and Elks were often finely polish'd and shaped
into Books of several Leaves. Many of these old
Calendars are likewise upon Bones of Beasts and
Fishes: But the Inscriptions on Tapestry, Bells,
Parchment and Paper, are of later use.
"Some other Monuments may be known to be of
a Danish Extraction, tho they carry nothing of a
Runic Inscription. Few of their Temples were
cover'd; and the largest observ'd by Wormius (at
Kialernes in Island) was 120 foot in length, and 60
in breadth.
"The next Monument of Age is their Edda
Islandorum; the meaning of which Appellation they
that publish the Book hardly pretend to understand.
As far as I can give the Reader any satisfaction,
he is to. know that Island was first inhabited (in
the year 874) by a Colony of Norwegians; who
brought hither the Traditions of their Forefathers,
in certain metrical Composures, which (as is usual
with Men transplanted into a Foreign Land) were
here more zealously and carefully preserv'd and
kept in memory than by the Men of Norway themselves.
About 240 years after this (A. D. 1114)
their History began to be written by one Saemund,
surnam'd Frode or the wise; who (in nine years'
travel through Italy, Germany and England) had
amass'd together a mighty Collection of Historical
Treatises. With these he return'd full fraught into
Island; where he also drew up an account of
the affairs of his own Country. Many of his
Works are now said to be lost: But there is still an
Edda, consisting of several Odes (whence I suspect
its Name is derived) written by many several hands,
and at different times, which bears his Name.
The Book is a Collection of Mythological Fables,
relating to the ancient State and Behaviour of the
Great Woden and his followers, in terms poetical
and adapted to the Service of those that were employ'd
in the composure of their old Rhymes and Sonnets.
"There is likewise extant a couple of Norwegian
Histories of good Authentic Credit; which explains
a great many particulars relating to the Exploits of
the Danish Kings in Great Britain, which our own
Historians have either wholly omitted or very
darkly recorded. The former of these was written
soon after the year 1130, by one Theodoric a Monk,
who acknowledges his whole Fabrick to be built
upon Tradition, and that the old Northern History
is no where now to be had save only ab Islendingorum
antiquis Carminibus.
" 'Tis a very discouraging Censure which Sir
William Temple passes upon all the Accounts given
us of the Affairs of this Island, before the Romans
came and Invaded it. The Tales (says he) we have
of what pass'd before Caesar's Time, of Brute and
his Trojans, of many Adventures and Successions,
are cover'd with the Rust of Time, or Involv'd in
the Vanity of Fables or pretended Traditions;
which seem to all Men obscure or uncertain, but to
be forged at pleasure by the Wit or Folly of their
first Authors, and not to be regarded. And again;
I know few ancient Authors upon this Subject (of
the British History) worth the pains of perusal, and
of Dividing or Refining so little Gold out of so much
course Oar, or from so much Dross. But some
other Inferiour People may think this worth their
pains; since all Men are not born to be Ambassadors:
And, accordingly, we are told of a very Eminent
Antiquary who has thought fit to give his
Labours in this kind the Title of Aurum, ex Stercore.
There's a deal of Servile Drudgery requir'd
to the Discovery of these riches, and such as every
Body will not stoop to: for few Statesmen and
Courtiers (as one is lately said to have observ'd in
his own Case) care for travelling in Ireland, or
Wales, purely to learn the Language.
"A diligent Enquirer into our old British Antiquities
would rather observe (with Industrious Leland)
that the poor Britains, being harass'd by
those Roman Conquerours with continual Wars,
could neither have leisure nor thought for the
penning of a Regular History: and that afterwards
their Back-Friends, the Saxons, were (for a good
while) an Illiterate Generation; and minded nothing
but Killing and taking Possession. So that
'tis a wonder that even so much remains of the
Story of those Times as the sorry Fragments of
Gildas; who appears to have written in such a
Consternation, that what he has left us looks more
like the Declamation of an Orator, hired to expose
the miserable Wretches, than any Historical Account
of their Sufferings."
Palgrave asserts that reading and writing were no
longer mysteries after the pagan age, but were still
acquirements almost wholly confined to the clergy.
The word "clericus" or "clerk," became synonymous
with penman, the sense in which it is still most
usually employed. If a man could write, or even
read, his knowledge was considered as proof presumptive
that he was in holy orders. If kings and great
men had occasion to authenticate any document, they
subscribed the "sign" of the cross opposite to the place
where the "clerk" had written their name. Hence
we say, to sign a deed or a letter.
Books (MSS.) were extremely rare amongst the
Scandinavian and northern nations. Before their
communication with the Latin missionaries, wood appears
to have been the material upon which their
runes were chiefly written: and the verb "write,"
which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to
scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage.
Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods,
one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English
word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably
a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed
in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards
supplied the place of these materials. Real paper,
manufactured from the pellicle of the Egyptian reed
or papyras, was still used occasionally in Italy, but
it was seldom exported to the countries beyond the
Alps; and the elaborate preparation of the vellum,
upon which much greater care was bestowed than in
the modern manufacture, rendered it a costly article;
so much so, that a painstaking clerk could find it
worth his while to erase the writing of an old book,
in order to use the blank pages for another manuscript.
The books thus rewritten were called "codices rescripti,"
or "palimpsests." The evanescent traces of
the first layer of characters may occasionally be
discerned beneath the more recent text which has been
imposed upon them.
In Ireland, first known as the Isle of Saints, was
founded in the seventh century a great school of
learning which included writing and illuminating,
which passed to the English by way of the monasteries
created by Irish monks in Scotland. Their earliest
existing MSS. are said to belong to that period. In
the Irish scriptoriums (rooms or cells for writing) of
the Benedictine monasteries where they were prepared,
so particular were the monks that the scribes were
forbidden to use artificial light for fear of injuring the
manuscripts.
Most interesting and entertaining are the observations
of Falconer Madan, a modern scholar of some
repute. Of the history of writing in ink during the
"Dark Ages" he says:
"In the seventh and eighth centuries we find the
first tendency to form national hands, resulting in
the Merovingian or Frankish hand, the Lombardic
of Italy, and the Visigothic of Spain. These are
the first difficult bands which we encounter; and
when we remember that the object of writing is to
be clear and distinct, and that the test of a good
style is that it seizes on the essential points in
which letters differ, and puts aside the flourishes
and ornaments which disguise the simple form, we
shall see how much a strong influence was needed
to prevent writing from becoming obscure and degraded.
That influence was found in Charles the Great.
"In the field of writing it has been granted to no
person but Charles the Great to influence profoundly
the history of the alphabet. With rare
insight and rarer taste he discountenanced the prevalent
Merovingian hand, and substituted in eclectic
hand, known as the Carolingian Minuscule, which
way still be regarded as a model of clearness and
elegance. The chief instrument in this reform was
Alcuin of York, whom Charles placed, partly for
this purpose, at the head of the School of Tours in
A. D. 796. The selection of an Englishman for
the post naturally leads us to inquire what hands
were then used in England, and what amount of
English influence the Carolingian Minuscule, the
foundation of our modern styles, exhibits.
"If we gaze in wonder on the personal influence
of Charles the Great in reforming handwriting, we
shall be still more struck by the spectacle presented
to us by Ireland in the sixth, seventh and eighth
centuries. It is the great marvel in the history of
writing. Modern historians have at last appreciated
the blaze of life, religions, literary, and artistic,
which was kindled in the 'Isle of Saints' within
a century after St. Patrick's coming (about A. D.
450); how the enthusiasm kindled by Christianity
in the Celtic nature so far transcended the limits of
the island, and indeed of Great Britain, that Irish
missionaries and monks were soon found in the
chief religious centres of Gaul, Germany, Switzerland,
and North Italy, while foreigners found their
toilsome way to Ireland to learn Greek! But less
prominence has been given to the artistic side of
this great reflex movement from West to East than
to the other two. The simple facts attest that in
the seventh century, when our earliest existing
Irish MSS. were written, we find not only a style
of writing (or indeed two) distinctive, national,
and of a high type of excellence, but also a school
of illumination which, in the combined lines of
mechanical accuracy and intricacy, of fertile invention
of form and figure and of striking arrangements
of colour, has never been surpassed. And
this is in the seventh century--the nadir of the rest
of Europe!
"It is certain that Alcuin was trained in Hiberno-
Saxon calligraphy, so that we may be surprised to
find that the writing which, under Charles the Great,
he developed at Tours, bears hardly a trace of the
style to which he was accustomed. En revanche,
in the ornamentation and illumination of the great
Carolingian volumes which have come down to our
times, we find those constant, persistent traces of
English and Irish work which we seek for in vain
in the plainer writing.
"This minuscule superseded all others almost
throughout the empire of Charles the Great, and
during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries
underwent very little modification. Even in the two
next centuries, though it is subject to general
modification, national differences are hardly observable,
and we can only distinguish two large divisions,
the group of Northern Europe (England, North
France, Italy, and Spain). The two exceptions
are, that Germany, both in writing and painting,
has always stood apart, and lags behind the other
nations of Western Europe in its development, and
that England retains her Hiberno-Saxon hand till
after the Conquest of 1066. It may be noted that
the twelfth century produced the finest writing ever
known--a large, free and flowing form of the minuscule
of Tours. In the next century comes in the angular
Gothic hand, the difference between which and
the twelfth century hand may be fairly understood
by a comparison of ordinary German and Roman
type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries the writing of each century may be
discerned, while the general tendency is towards
complication, use of abbreviations and contractions,
and development of unessential parasitic forms of
letters.
"The Book of Kells, the chief treasure of Trinity
College, Dublin, is so-called from having been
long preserved at the Monastery of Kells, founded
by Columba himself. Stolen from thence, it eventually
passed into Archbishop Ussher's hands, and,
with other parts of his library, to Dublin. The
volume contains the Four Gospels in Latin, ornamented
with extraordinary freedom, elaboration, and
beauty. Written apparently in the seventh century,
it exhibits, both in form and colour, all the
signs of the full development and maturity of the
Irish style, and must of necessity have been preceded
by several generations of artistic workers,
who founded and improved this particular school
of art. The following words of Professor Westwood,
who first drew attention to the peculiar excellences
of this volume, will justify tile terms made
use of above: 'This copy of the Gospels, traditionally
asserted to have belonged to Columba, is
unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS.
of early art now in existence, far excelling, in the
gigantic size of the letters in the frontispieces of
the Gospel, the excessive minuteness of the ornamental
details, the number of its decorations, the
fineness of the writing, and the endless variety of
initial capital letters with which every page is
ornamented, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the
Cottonian Library. But this MS. is still more valuable
on account of the various pictorial representations
of different scenes in the life of our Saviour,
delineated in a style totally unlike that of every
other school.' "