MONASTIC ILLUMINATION
Introductory--Monasteries and their work from the sixth to the ninth
century--The claustral schools--Alcuin--Warnefrid and Theodulf--Clerics
and monastics--The Golden Age of monasticism--The Order of St.
Benedict--Cistercian houses--Other Orders--Progress of writing in
Carolingian times--Division of labour.
In the sixth century the monasteries, such as they were, necessarily
kept themselves very quiet and unobtrusive. They were situated usually
in out-of-the-way corners, solitudes apart from civilisation, or, at
least, apart from the busy haunts of men. In the eighth century there is
a marked difference. The Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, of 789, required
that minor schools should be attached _to all monasteries and cathedral
churches_ without exception, and that children of all ranks, _both noble
and servile_, should be received into them. Also that the larger
monasteries should open major schools in which the seven sciences of
mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectics, and
geography, were to be taught--and this in two ways. There were to be two
sorts of schools--interior or _claustral_, intended for monastics only,
and exterior or _canonical_, intended for secular students. These
schools were under separate scholastics or masters, and lay students
were received in the exterior schools as freely and fully as in the
public schools of the present time. Mabillon[18] gives a list of some
twenty-seven monastic and cathedral schools, by no means confined to
great or wealthy cities, but well distributed throughout the Empire.
[18] Præfat. in iv. Sæcul. 184.
In the time of Charlemagne those most in repute were Tours, St. Gall,
Fulda, Reims, and Hirsfeld.
We have given the names of Alcuin and Paul Warnefrid as the chief
promoters of the Carolingian Revival, but we should not omit that of
Theodulf, of Orleans, the indefatigable school inspector of the time. He
it was who assisted the artistic side of the movement by his ingenious
contrivances as a writer and illustrator of school books. Undoubtedly it
was from his suggestions that we so often find in mediæval scientific
treatises of the driest kind those graphic and wonderful tabulations and
edifices, labelled and turreted, which make Aristotle, Priscian, and
Marcianus Capella, not only comprehensible, but attractive. Theodulf
composed in simple and easy Latin verse--somewhat after the style of the
_Propria quæ maribus_ our own childhood--the description of a supposed
tree of science, which he had drawn and painted, on the trunk and
branches of which were the figures and names of the seven liberal arts.
At the foot sat Grammar--the basis of all learning--holding on her hand
a lengthy rod (ominous for the tender student). On the right Rhetoric
stretched forth her hand. On the left was Dialectic. Philosophy sat on
the summit; the rest being disposed according to their relative
importance. The whole was explained in the _Carmina de septem artibus_,
in which the bishop, who was one of the famous poets of the age, strove
in flowery language to render these dry-as-dust studies acceptable to
the youthful understanding. Theodulf was a great scholar, and assisted
Alcuin in the revision of the Bible, one copy of which he himself had
written whilst still Abbat of Fleury, about 790. At the beginning of
this Bible is a poem in golden letters on purple, and a preface in
prose, also in golden letters, giving a synopsis of the several books.
The text differs somewhat from the Alcuin Bible, as it is that of Jerome
before Alcuin's revision. This MS. is now at Paris. Another Bible
executed to the order of Theodulf is now in the Town Library at Puy.
It seems incredible, after the efforts made by Charlemagne and his
ministers for the maintenance of learning and the arts, that there
should ever be any risk of a return to barbarism, but it is a fact that
the dissolution of the Empire proved in certain localities the
suspension of prosperity. Fortunately the monastics--especially the
Benedictines--and the canons of the cathedrals still kept up the
practice of copying books; but almost all the South of France,
Languedoc, and Provence, always conservative, remained more or less
illiterate. They produced poets and jongleurs, but seldom artists or
scholars. And even in the North, where the capitular schools were most
flourishing--as Paris, Reims, and Chartres--the general tendency was
towards relapse. In High Germany it was even worse. In spite of all
efforts of the clergy by the extension of secular schools, the laity
preferred the excitement of chase and camp to the quiet humdrum of the
schoolroom. Religion seemed to be regarded rather as a profession than a
principle, quite right in its place, _i.e._ the Church and the
monastery, but unsuited for active life. The wealthy land-owners,
therefore, did not cease to endow religious houses or to build churches,
but they left book-learning to the clerics. Accordingly the clerics and
the monastics flourished exceedingly.
From the beginning of the tenth century to the beginning of the
thirteenth was the Golden Age of monasticism. The Order of St. Benedict
scattered its foundations thickly over France and Western Germany, while
its reformed colonies of Cluny, Citeaux, Clairvaux, and the Chartreuse
again spread their settlements in all directions. Thus we find Cluny
established in 910, Grammont in 1076, the Chartreuse in 1080, Citeaux in
1098, Savigny in 1105, Tiron in 1109, Austin Canons in 1038,
Premonstrants in 1120, Crutched Friars in 1169. In England, from 1100,
scarcely a year passed by without the establishment of some fresh
foundation. During the thirty-five years of the reign of Henry I. more
than 150 religious houses were founded. And even during the disastrous
reign of Stephen, in less than twenty years, no fewer than 100 houses of
various Orders were established. The twelfth century in England was
especially the age of monasteries.
It is true that not very much in the way of original literature, except
theological treatises, can be assigned to the three centuries referred
to, but the unwearied labours of the copyist and illuminator did much to
preserve the works which previous centuries had created. Of course, in
so long a period changes were many and great. So great, indeed, that
between a MS. of 850 and another of 1200 scarcely is there a common
feature.
From 850 to 1000 in France the Carolingian minuscule, from the first so
clear and beautiful, remained with scarce a stroke of alteration. But
immediately after the opening of the eleventh century a series of rapid
changes set in, and by the beginning of the twelfth a new hand,
perfectly clear and regular, but quite different from the Carolingian,
had been formed, which lasted until it was superseded by the Gothic,
while a system of contractions adopted because of the scarcity of
parchment creates a fresh need for study apart from the peculiarities of
personal habits. Side by side, too, with this there grows up a
non-professional hand--the so-called cursive or running hand of the
ordinary writer--in many cases, especially in deeds and other brief
compositions, all but utterly illegible, except to the professional
palæographer. Occasionally these autographs are of the highest
importance and intensely interesting, as, for instance, when in an
English MS. we come Across a note in the handwriting of Ordericus
(Vitalis) or Matthew Paris.
From 900 to 1200 the vast majority of MSS., illuminated and otherwise,
were the work of monastics. Every house of any note had its room set
apart for writing. The larger monasteries sometimes utilised the
cloisters of the churches themselves, in recesses of which they had
desks or tables placed for the copyist. Usually, however, they had a
large common room called the scriptorium, where either the copyist and
illuminator worked separately and each on his own account, or where a
number of copyists awaited with pen and parchment the dictation by one
of the fraternity of some work of which a number of copies had to be
made. "No admittance except on business" was the rule of this chamber.
There, under the direction of the _armarius_, the expert writers did
their work.
Sometimes a single monk executed the book from first to last by himself.
He prepared the vellum, ruled it with the fine metal point, copied the
text, painted the illuminations, put on the gilding, and even added the
binding. Generally, however, the labour was divided--one monk scraped
and polished the parchment; another ruled it; another wrote the text,
leaving spaces for initials and miniatures; another put in the initials
and did the gilding and flourishing with borders, etc.; and another
painted the miniatures. This in the monasteries was done in the case of
large and important MSS., and afterwards, when illuminating became a
lay-craft, subdivision of labour was the common practice. Binding was
done in a special apartment, and by one specially skilled therein.
The _scriptorium_ was looked upon as a sort of sacred place, and the
work of copying often considered as a labour of piety and love--entered
upon with devout prayer, and solemnly blessed by the superior,
especially in cases where the books to be written were Bibles, or
connected with the services of the house, the Lives of the Saints, or
Treatises on Theology.
Very frivolous or absurd indeed are sometimes the inducements to
copyists to do gratuitous work of this kind, such as that every letter
transcribed paid for one sin of the copyist, and it is said that a
certain monk--a heavy sinner--only owed his salvation to the fact that
the number of letters in a Bible which he copied exceeded by a single
unit the sum total of his sins.