END OF MEDIAEVAL INK.
THE SECRETAS PRECEDE ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY--EFFORT
TO IMPROVE GALL INKS--VARIATIONS IN INK
COLORS--THE USE OF RED INK IN THE NINTH AND
TENTH CENTURIES--COLOR COMPARISONS BETWEEN INK
WRITINGS OF ITALY, GERMANY, FRANCE, ENGLAND AND
SPAIN--HOW TO DETERMINE THE ANTIQUITY OF
MSS.--PRACTICES WHICH OBTAINED IN MONASTIC LIBRARIES
OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES---KINDS OF INK EMPLOYED
IN LITURGICAL WRITINGS--THE PUBLIC SCRIBES
AND THEIR EMPLOYMENTS--EFFORTS TO COUNTERFEIT
OLD SCRIPT IN EARLY PRINTED BOOKS--WHEN THEY
WERE ABANDONED.
IT is well known that alchemy preceded chemistry
and hence the Secreta came first. When the formula
for making a real "gall" ink had ceased to be a secret,
chemistry was then but little understood. It is not a
matter for wonder, therefore, to learn that "gall" ink
of the first half of the twelfth century was low in
grade and poor in quality. It was a muddy fluid
easily precipitated and it deteriorated quickly. A
century or more of experimenting was needed to
modify or overcome defects, as well as to gain
information about the chemical value of the different
tannins, the relative proportions of each constituent
and the correct methods in its admixture.
There is no written account of this ink being manufactured
as an industry until over three hundred years
later. Hence, as it appears so frequently of varying
degrees of color on documents of the intervening
centuries, we are compelled to assume that it was
compounded by individuals who had neither chemical
knowledge, nor who had made a study or a business
of ink-making. Notwithstanding which, its progress
seems to have been comparatively rapid and like the
same ink of the present day was to be obtained of any
quality or kind, whether unadulterated or containing
some added color.
Intense black or a black tinged with red-brown
characterizes the color of the inks found on the very
earliest MSS. Their lasting color phenomena, due to
the employment of lampblack and kindred substances
even after a lapse of so many ages, is at this late day
of no particular moment as they but prove the virtues
of the different types of "Indian" inks.
A different set of facts are evident in the inks of
mediaeval times which are found to greatly vary according
to their ages and locality. But few black
inks of the ninth and tenth centuries remain to us.
In the MSS. of those centuries a red ink was the prevailing
one even to the extent of entire volumes being
written with it. In Italy and many other portions of
Southern Europe specimens now extant, when compared
with those belonging to Germany and other
more northern countries, are seen to be blacker and
this is also true when those of France and England
are compared, the blacker inks belonging to France.
With the gradual disappearance of the so-called
"Dark Ages," the ink found on Spanish written MSS.
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are notedly
of intense blackness while those of some of the other
countries appear of a rather faded gray color, and in
the sixteenth century, this gray color effect prevailed
all over the Christian world.
To revert again to the ink phenomena of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries which are of Italian
origin. In no section of that country or of Europe
during those centuries do ink creations possess, in so
marked a degree, the variety of color qualities that
are seen on those of the city of Florence. Indeed it
may be truly said that during those periods more ink
written MSS. were produced in that place than all the
rest of Europe. These productions of MSS. were not
confined to simple ink writings. The heads of religious
orders and rulers of the country liked to have
artists near them to illuminate their missals and sacred
books, besides the decorating of walls in their churches
and palaces.
Through this art of illuminating and the painting of
miniatures in MSS. books, "oil" painting took root and
the day for mere symbols and hieroglyphics was over.
In that city of scholars and wealth it was a fashion
and later the custom to acquire Greek, Latin and
Oriental MSS. and copy them for circulation and sale.
The prices offered were sufficient to stimulate the
search and zeal for them. We learn that in the year
1400 "on the square of the Duoma a spacciatore
was established whose business was to sell manuscripts
often full of mistakes and blunders." Nicholas V,
before he became Pope, was nicknamed "Tommaso the
Copyist." He is said to have presented to the Vatican
library as a gift five thousand volumes of his own
creation.
The information of these increasing demands for ancient
documents of any kind spread over Europe and
portions of Asia, bringing into Florence a great
quantity of them, as well as many scholars and copyists.
Shiploads of the works of the Byzantine historians
arrived from the Golden Horn, and the city
became a vast manufactory for duplicating or forging
ancient MSS. Parchment and vellum were too costly
to employ very much, so most of them were of paper.
Vespaciano, one of the many engaged in this business
and who lived in 1464, found it necessary in order to
reduce the cost of production, to become a paper merchant.
In writing to a friend he says:
"I engaged forty-five copyists and in twenty-
two months had completed two hundred volumes,
which included some Greek and Latin as well as
many Oriental writings."
The reading and judging of manuscripts are now
known as the science of diplomatics. To determine
their antiquity or genuineness requires the nicest distinctions
and care, irrespective of alleged dates (whether
exhibited by Roman numbers or the Arabic one which
we continue to employ, and which first made their
appearance near the commencement of the twelfth
century). The inks as already mentioned and used
on them, as we shall see, serve fully as much in estimating
authenticity or genuineness as does combined
together,--the style of the writing, the miniatures,
vignettes and arabesques (if any), the colors, covers,
materials, ornamentation and the character of their
contents.
With the re-establishment of learning in the fifteenth
century and the creation of alleged stable governments,
who may perhaps have realized the necessity
for an ink of enduring good commercial and record
qualities, so-called "gall" inks were chosen as best
possessing them, and were made and employed with
varying results even more than the ancient "Indian"
inks.
Mediaeval practices in relation to ink and other
writing materials as well as the monastic libraries of
which England, France, Germany and Italy possessed
many during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and more
particularly the fifteenth centuries, were governed by
established rules.
The libraries of such institutions were placed by the
abbot under the sole charge of the "armarian," an
officer who was made responsible for the preservation
of the volumes under his care; be was expected frequently
to examine them, lest damp or insects should
injure them; he was to cover them with wooden
covers to preserve them and carefully to mend and
restore any damage which time or accident might
cause; he was to make a note of any book borrowed
from the library, with the name of the borrower;
but this last rule applied only to the less valuable
portion of it, as the "great and precious books"
could only be lent by the permission of the abbot
himself. It was also the duty of the armarian
to have all the books in his charge marked with their
correct titles, and to keep a perfect list of the whole.
Some of these catalogues are still in existence and are
curious and interesting in their exemplification of the
kinds of ink employed and as indicative of the state
of literature in the Middle Ages, besides presenting
the names of many authors whose works have never
reached us. It was also the duty of the armarian,
under the orders of his superior, to provide the transcribers
of manuscripts with the writings which they
were to copy, as well as all the materials necessary
for their labors, to make bargains as to payment, and
to superintend the work during their progress.
These transcribers, Mr. Maitland in his "Dark
Ages" tells us, were monks and their clerks, some of
whom were so skilled that they could perform all the
different branches. They were exhorted by the rules
of their order to learn writing, and to persevere in
the work of copying manuscripts as being one most
acceptable to God; those who could not write were
recommended to bind books. This was in line with
the behest of the famous monk Alciun who lived in
the eighth century and who entreated all to employ
themselves in copying books, saying:
"It is a most meritorious work, more useful to
the health than working in the fields, which profits
only a man's body, while the labour of a copyist
profits his soul."
When black ink was used in liturgical writings, the
title page and heads of chapters were written in
red ink; whence comes the term rubric. Green,
purple, blue and yellow inks were sometimes used
for words, but chiefly for ornamenting capital
letters.
A large room was in most monasteries set apart for
such labors and here the general transcribers pursued
their avocations; in addition, small rooms or cells,
known also as scriptoria, occupied by such monks as
were considered, from their piety and learning, to be
entitled to the indulgence, and used by them for their
private devotions, as well as for the purpose of transcribing
works for the use of the church or library.
The scriptoria were frequently enriched by donations
and bequests from those who knew the value of the
works carried on in them, and large estates were often
devoted to their support.
"Meanwhile along the cloister's painted side,
The monks--each bending low upon his book
With head on hand reclined--their studies plied;
Forbid to parley, or in front to look,
Lengthways their regulated seats they took:
The strutting prior gazed with pompous mien,
And wakeful tongue, prepared with prompt rebuke,
If monk asleep in sheltering hood was seen;
He wary often peeped beneath that russet screen.
"Hard by, against the window's adverse light,
Where desks were wont in length of row to stand,
The gowned artificers inclined to write;
The pen of silver glistened in the hand
Some of their fingers rhyming Latin scanned;
Some textile gold from halls unwinding drew,
And on strained velvet stately portraits planned;
Here arms, there faces shown in embryo view,
At last to glittering life the total figures grew."
--FOSBROOKE.
The public scribes of those days were employed
mostly by secular individuals, although subject to be
called upon at any moment by the fathers of the
church. They worked in their homes except when
any valuable work was to be copied, then in that of
their employer, who boarded and lodged them during
the time of their engagement.
To differentiate the character of the class of pigments
or materials then employed in making colored
inks, from those of the more ancient times is difficult;
because we not only find many of like character but of
larger variety. These were used more for purposes of
illuminating and embellishing than for regular writing.
Even when printing had been invented spaces were
frequently left, both in the block books and in the
earliest movable type, for the illumination by hand,
of initial letters so as to deceive purchasers into the
belief that the printed type which was patterned
closely after the forms of letters employed in MSS.
writings was the real thing. The learned soon discovered
such frauds and thereafter these practices
were abandoned.