regained all its ancient favour, and united itself to the ancient
orders, which became intermingled, or, at any rate, superposed. The
ogive was abandoned, but the columns to decorate their capitals, and the
entablatures to give more grace to their projections, borrowed a certain
fantastical style which yielded in nothing to the ogival; the Grecian
pediment reappeared, changing sometimes the upper lines of its triangle
into a depressed semicircle; lastly the cupola, that striking object
which was the characteristic feature of the Byzantine style, became the
dome, whose ample curve defied, in the daring heights whereto it rose,
the wonders of the Perpendicular Gothic.
The Italian _Renaissance_ was now accomplished, the Gothic age at an
end. Rome and Florence sent in every direction their architects, who, as
they travelled far from these metropolises of the new style, were once
more subjected to certain territorial influences, but who knew how to
make the tradition of which they were the apostles triumphant. It was
then that France inaugurated in its turn a Renaissance peculiar to
herself; it was then that, under the reign of Charles VIII., after his
expedition into Italy, began, with the Château de Gaillon, a long
succession of edifices, which in many cases yielded neither in richness
nor in majesty to the works of the preceding period. Under Louis XII.
rose the Château de Blois, and the Hôtel de la Cour des Comptes, Paris,
a splendid building destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century. Under
Francis I., Chambord (Fig. 326), Fontainebleau, Madrid (near Paris),
magnificent royal “humours,” contended in
[Illustration: Fig. 326.--Château de Chambord, with its Ancient Moat.
(Seventeenth Century.)]
elegance and grace with the châteaux of Nantouillet, Chenonceaux, and
Azai-le-Rideau; and with the manor-house of Ango, near Dieppe, all
sumptuous, lordly mansions; the old Louvre, the palace of kings, the
cradle of monarchy, was regenerated under the care of Peter Lescot; the
Hôtel de Ville, Paris, still bears witness to the varied talent of
Dominique Cortona, who, as M. Vaudoyer said of him, “justly understood
that, in building for France, he should act in a perfectly different
manner to that in which he would have acted in Italy.” Under Henry II.
and Charles IX. this activity continued, and the architects who sought
their inspirations in Grecian and Roman antiquity, as much as in the
_souvenirs_ of the Italian Renaissance, delighted in loading all the
elegant and graceful buildings with ornaments, with bas-reliefs, and
with statues, which they seemed to carve in the stone, as delicately
wrought as a piece of goldsmith’s work. Philibert Delorme built for
Diana of Poitiers the Château d’Anet, that architectural jewel whose
portico, transported piece by piece at the time of the revolutionary
disorders, now decorates the court of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; Jean
Bullant built Ecouen for the Constable Anne de Montmorency; and the
architect d’Anet undertook, by order of Catherine de Medicis, the
construction of the Palace of the Tuileries, which, by a sort of
exigency resulting from its particular destination, seemed typically to
characterise the style of the French Renaissance.
[Illustration: Fig. 327.--Porte de Hal, Brussels. (Fourteenth Century.)]
We must not burden with details this summary of one of the most
important branches of art. The history of architecture is among those
vast domains which demand either a short epitome or a thoroughly deep
investigation. The epitome being alone consistent with the plan of our
work, we must confine ourselves to its limits; but we may, perhaps, be
allowed to think that the few rapid pages thus devoted to the subject
have inspired the reader with the desire of penetrating farther into a
study which is capable of offering him so many agreeable surprises, so
many rational delights.
[Illustration]
PARCHMENT AND PAPER.
Parchment in Ancient Times.--Papyrus.--Preparation of Parchment and
Vellum in the Middle Ages.--Sale of Parchment at the Fair of
Lendit.--Privilege of the University of Paris on the Sale and
Purchase of Parchment.--Different Applications of
Parchment.--Cotton Paper imported from China.--Order of the Emperor
Frederick II. concerning Paper.--The Employment of Linen Paper
dating from the Twelfth Century.--Ancient Water-Marks on
Paper.--Paper Manufactories in France and other parts of Europe.
Although most authors who speak of parchment attribute the invention of
it, on the testimony of Pliny, to Eumenius, king of Pergamus
(doubtlessly from the etymology of the word by which it was designated,
viz., _Pergamena_), it seems to be proved, according to Peignot, that
the use of it is much more ancient, and that its origin is utterly lost.
Certainly, in many passages of the Old Testament we find a Hebrew Word,
in Latin _volumen_, which can only be understood to mean a roll formed
of prepared skin or of the leaves of papyrus, and it is consequently
evident that the Jews, from the time of Moses, wrote the tables of the
Law on rolls of parchment.
Herodotus says that the Ionians called books _diphthera_ (διφθἑρα, a
prepared hide), because, at a time when the _biblos_ (βἱβλος, the inner
bark of the papyrus) was scarce, they wrote on skins of goats or of
sheep. Diodorus Siculus affirms that the ancient Persians wrote their
annals on skins, and we must suppose that Pliny’s assertion refers only
to some improvements the King of Pergamus had made in the art of
preparing a material that could supply the place of papyrus, which
Ptolemy Epiphanius would no longer allow to leave Egypt. The absolute
deficiency of papyrus raised into activity the fabrication of parchment,
and soon so large a quantity was seen to flow into Pergamus that this
town was considered as the cradle of the new trade, already so
flourishing. There were then books of two kinds, the one in rolls
composed of many leaves sewed together, on one side of which only was
there writing; the others, square-shaped, were written upon both sides.
The grammarian Crates, ambassador of Eumenius at Rome, passed as the
inventor of vellum.
Ordinary parchment is the skin of a goat, sheep, or lamb, prepared in
lime, dressed, scraped, and rendered smooth by pumice-stone. Its
principal qualities are whiteness, thinness, and stiffness; but the work
of the currier must have been formerly very imperfect, for Hildebert,
Archbishop of Tours in the eleventh century, tells us that the writer,
before beginning his occupation, “was in the habit of clearing away from
the parchment, with the aid of a razor, the remains of fat and other
gross impurities, and then with pumice-stone to make the hair and
tendons disappear:” this almost amounts to affirming that the scribes
bought the hide undressed, and, by an elaborate preparation, made them
fit for proper use. Virgin parchment, which in its grain and colour
resembles vellum, was made of the skins of those lambs and goats which
had been clipped. Vellum, more polished, whiter, more transparent, is
made, as its name indicates, of the hide of the calf.[52]
It is probable that with the Romans, papyrus, considering the facility
they had of procuring it for themselves, was more frequently used than
parchment, which, at first, was rare and costly. But parchment, more
durable and of greater resistance than papyrus, was reserved for the
transcription of the most important works. Cicero, who had many books on
parchment in his magnificent library, said that he had seen the “Iliad”
copied on a scroll of _pergamena_ which went into a nut-shell. Many of
Martial’s epigrams prove to us that in the time of this poet books of
such kind were still more numerous. Unfortunately, there remains to us
no writing on parchment dating from this distant period. The Virgil in
the Vatican, and the Terence at Florence, are of the fourth and fifth
century of our era. Admitting that time destroys all, and also that the
work of the rude tribes on many occasions assisted this natural cause of
destruction, we must not forget that at certain periods, to supply the
place of new parchment when it was scarce, a plan had been devised of
making the parchment rolls which had already been used for manuscripts
serve again
[Illustration: Fig. 328.--Miniature of the Ninth Century, representing
an Evangelist who is transcribing with the _Calamus_, on Parchment, the
Sacred Text, of which he is receiving the revelation.
(Bibl. de Bourgogne, Brussels.)]
for a similar purpose, either by scraping and rubbing them with
pumice-stone, or by boiling them in water or soaking in lime. There is
no doubt but the scarceness and the dearness of parchment was the cause
of the loss of very many excellent works. Muratori cites, for example, a
manuscript of the Ambrosian Library, of which the writing, dating from
eight or nine centuries back, had been substituted for another of more
than a thousand years old; and Maffei informs us that the employment of
ancient parchment scraped and washed became so general, in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, throughout Germany, that the
Emperors put a stop to this dangerous abuse by issuing an order to the
notaries to use nothing but parchment “quite new.”
[Illustration: Fig. 329.--View of the Ancient Abbey of St. Denis and its
Dependencies.]
Generally, the quality of parchment serves to determine the date of its
manufacture. The vellum of manuscripts till the middle of the eleventh
century is very white and thin; the parchment of the twelfth century is
thick, rough, and brownish, which often shows it has been scraped or
washed. The greater number of fine manuscripts are on
[Illustration: Fig. 330.--Seal of the University of Paris (Fourteenth
Century), after one of the Dies preserved in the Collection of Medals in
the Imperial Library, Paris.]
virgin parchment, which from its nature was suited to the delicacies of
calligraphy and illumination. Moreover, we see from a statute of the
University of Paris, dated 1291, that the parchment trade had attained
at that period to considerable development; so, as a protection against
the frauds and deceptions which might result from the great competition
of traders in it, and to insure a good article being furnished to
students and artists, a special privilege was granted to the university,
which, in the person of its rector, had not only the right of
inspection, but also the refusal of all parchment bought in Paris, no
matter whence it had come. Besides which, at the fair of Lendit, which
was held every year at Saint-Denis, on the domains of the abbey (Fig.
329), and at the fair of Saint-Lazare, the rector likewise caused the
parchment brought to them to be examined, and the merchants of Paris
could not purchase any till the king’s agents, those of the Bishop of
Paris, and the masters and scholars of the university, had provided
themselves with what they required (Fig. 330). Let us add that the
rector was paid a duty on all parchment sold, and the result of this
tax was the only source of income attached to the rectorship in the
seventeenth century.
Although white parchment seems to be the best suited for writing, the
Middle Ages, following the example of antiquity, gave to the material
various tints, especially purple and yellow. The purple was chiefly
intended to receive characters of gold or silver. The Emperor
Maximinius, the younger, inherited from his mother the works of Homer
inscribed in gold on purple vellum; and parchment tinted in this way
was, during the first centuries, one of the prerogatives reserved for
princes and the great dignitaries of the Church. It is remarkable that
the barbarism of the seventh and eighth centuries did not diminish the
favour in which these luxurious manuscripts were held. Little by little,
however, the custom (of writing the entire work in gold or colours)
dwindled away. Scribes began by colouring a few pages only in each
volume, then some margins or frontispieces; and lastly this decoration
was restricted to the heads of chapters, or to words to which great
prominence was to be given, or to capital letters. The _rubricatores_
(literally, writers in red), workmen who performed this operation, came
in time to be mere painters of letters or _rubrics_ (so called because
they were originally painted red), of whose assistance, however, the
first printers availed themselves to _rubric_ or colour the initials of
missals, Bibles, and law books.
The dimensions or sizes of our books at the present day have their
origin in the sizes of the parchment in olden times. The entire skin of
the animal, cut square and folded in two, represented the “in-folio,”
which, moreover, varied in length and breadth; and we have every reason
to suppose that paper, from the day it was invented, followed the
ordinary sizes of the folded parchment.
As to the dimensions of the parchment employed for diplomas, they varied
according to the time, the brevity of the matter, or the nature of its
employment. Among the ancients, who wrote only on one side of the
parchment, the skins were cut in bands joined together so as to form
_volumes_ or rolls, which were unrolled as their contents were read.
This custom was preserved for public and judicial acts for a long time
after the invention of the square book (_codex_) had caused the
_opisthographic_ writing to be adopted, by which is to be understood
writing on both sides of the page. In principle, only the final formulæ,
or the signatures, were written on the back of the document. By degrees
people adopted the practice of writing on the back as well as the front
of the page; but it was not till the sixteenth century that this custom
became general.
[Illustration: Fig. 331.--Seal of the King of La Basoche. (This title
was suppressed, with all its prerogatives, by Henry III.)]
Judicial acts, composed sometimes of many skins sewed together, came in
time to form rolls of twenty feet in length; to such extreme proportions
did they reach, though at first they were so small in size that their
limited dimensions are truly incredible; for in 1233 and 1252 we find
contracts of sales of two inches long by five inches wide, and in 1258 a
will written on a piece of parchment of two inches by three and a half.
It was by way of compensating for the great cost of parchment that
opisthographic writing was adopted and rolls were put aside; and the
name alone remains as applied to the _rolls_ of procedure. The size that
leaves should assume was also fixed, according to the different uses for
which they were intended. For instance, the leaves of parliamentary
documents were nine inches and a half long by seven and a half wide;
those of the council, ten by eight; those of finance and of private
contracts, twelve and a half by nine and a half; letters of pardon,
under the king’s hand, were to be on entire skins squared, two feet two
inches by one foot eight inches in diameter.
[Illustration: Fig. 332.--The Paper-Maker, drawn and engraved in the
Sixteenth Century by J. Amman.]
But while the use of parchment was still strictly employed in the
chancellor’s offices and the tribunals, where the _basoche_ (a
brotherhood of lawyers of all grades) considered it as one of their most
lucrative privileges (Fig. 331), it had for a long while ceased to be
used anywhere else. Paper, after having during many centuries competed
with parchment, at last almost entirely replaced it (Fig. 332); for if
less durable, it had the great advantage of costing much less. Formerly
nothing but the ancient papyrus of Egypt was known, and it was made use
of concurrently with parchment till there was brought into Europe,
towards the tenth century, cotton paper, which is generally believed to
be a Chinese invention, and which was at first called _Grecian
parchment_, because the Venetians, who introduced it into the West, had
found it in use in Greece.
Actually, this paper was at first of a very inferior quality, coarse,
spongy, dull, and subject to the attacks of damp and worms; so much so
that the Emperor Frederick II. issued, in 1221, an order declaring null
and void all documents written on it, and fixing the term at two years
by which all were to be transcribed on parchment.
The use and the knowledge of the process of manufacturing paper from
cotton soon led to the fabrication of paper from linen or rags. It is,
however, impossible to say when and where it was accomplished--the
assertions and the testimonies on this point are so contradictory. Some
think that the paper was brought from the East by the Spanish Saracens;
others say it came from China; these affirm it has been employed since
the tenth century; those, that we can only find specimens of it as far
back as the reign of St. Louis.
[Illustration: Fig. 333.--Water-Marks on Paper, from the Fourteenth to
the Fifteenth Century.]
At any rate, the most ancient writing on paper made of rags known at the
present day is a letter from Joinville to Louis X., dated 1315; we may,
moreover, mention with certainty, as written on linen paper, an
inventory of goods belonging to a certain Prior Henry, who died in 1340,
which is preserved at Canterbury, and many authentic writings, dating
back as far as 1335, preserved in the British Museum, London. The first
paper-manufactory established in England was, it is said, at Hertford,
which dates only from 1588; but important paper-manufactories existed in
France from the reign of Philippe de Valois, that is, from the middle of
the fourteenth century; particularly at Essonne and at Troyes. The paper
which came from these manufactories bore generally, in the paper itself,
different marks (Fig. 333) called water-marks, such as a bull’s head, a
cross, a serpent, a star, a crown, &c., according to the quality or
destination of the paper. Many other countries in Europe had also
flourishing paper-manufactories in the fourteenth century. From this
period we find, indeed, a large number of documents written on paper
made of rags, the use of which thus preceded by about a century the
invention of printing.
[Illustration: Fig. 334.--Banner of the Paper-Makers of Paris.]
MANUSCRIPTS
Manuscripts in Olden Times.--Their Form.--Materials of which they
were composed.--Their Destruction by the Goths.--Rare at the
Beginning of the Middle Ages.--The Catholic Church preserved and
multiplied them.--Copyists.--Transcription of
Diplomas.--Corporation of Scribes and
Booksellers.--Palæography.--Greek Writings.--Uncial and Cursive
Manuscripts.--Sclavonic Writings.--Latin Writers.--Tironian
Shorthand.--Lombardic
Characters.--Diplomatic.--Capetian.--Ludovicinian.--Gothic.--Runic.--
Visigothic.--Anglo-Saxon.--Irish.
Let the reader refer to the chapters on PARCHMENT and BINDING, and he
will find a few remarks on the purely material part of manuscripts; we
may, then, here treat this question very summarily; and for that purpose
we shall avail ourselves of the remarkable work of J. J.
Champollion-Figeac.
When writing was once invented, and had passed into general use in
civilised society, the choice of substances suited for its reception,
and to fix it in a durable manner, was very diversified, although
depending on the nature of the text to be written.
People wrote on stone, on metals, on the bark and leaves of many kinds
of trees, on dried or baked clay, on wood, on ivory, wax, linen, the
hides of quadrupeds, on parchment, the best of these preparations; on
papyrus, which is the inner bark of a reed growing in the Nile; then on
paper made of cotton; and lastly, on paper made from hemp and flax,
called rag paper. The Roman world had adopted the use of papyrus, which
was a very important branch of commerce at Alexandria. We find proof of
this in the writers of antiquity: St. Jerome bears witness to it as far
as regards the fifth century of our era. The Latin and Greek emperors
gave their diplomas on papyrus. Popes traced their most ancient bulls
upon it. The charters of the kings of France of the first race were also
issued on papyrus. From the eighth century parchment contended with
papyrus; a little later cotton paper also became its competitor, and the
eleventh century is generally fixed on as the period when papyrus was
entirely superseded by the new materials appropriated to the
preservation of writing.
For writing on papyrus the brush or reed was employed, with inks of
different colours; black ink was, however, most generally used. There
grew on the banks of the Nile, at the time when the reed furnished
papyrus, another sort of reed, stiffer and also more flexible, and
admirably suited for the manufacture of the _calamus_, an instrument
supplying the place of the pen, which was not adopted before the eighth
century.
The size of manuscripts was in no way subject to fixed rules, there were
volumes of all dimensions; the most ancient on parchment are, in
general, longer than they are broad, or else are square; the writing
rests on a line traced with the dry point of the _calamus_, and
afterwards with black-lead; the parts making up a volume are composed of
an indeterminate number of leaves; a word or a figure, placed at the
bottom of the last page of each part and at the end of the volume,
serves as a _catchword_ from one fasciculus to another.
The emperors of Constantinople used to sign in red ink the acts of their
sovereignty; their first secretary was the guardian of the vase
containing the cinnabar (vermilion), which the emperor alone might use.
Some diplomas of the kings of France of the second race are signed in
the same manner. In valuable manuscripts, great use was made of golden
ink, especially when the parchment was dyed purple; but red ink was
almost always employed for capital letters or for the titles of books,
and for a long time after the invention of printing the volumes still
had the _rubrics_ (_ruber_, red) painted or beautifully executed with
the pen.
The greater number of rich manuscripts, even when they contained the
text of some ancient secular author, were destined to be presented to
the treasuries of churches and abbeys, and these offerings were not made
without great display: the book, whatever its contents might be, was
placed on the altar, and a solemn mass was celebrated on the occasion;
moreover, an inscription at the end of the work mentioned the homage
which had been paid for it to God and to the saints in paradise.
We must not forget that in this time of almost universal ignorance, the
Church was the only depository of literature and science; she sought
after those heathen authors who could instruct her in eloquence that
might be employed in advancing the faith, almost as much as she sought
for sacred books; it was not rare even to see Christian zeal exalting
itself so far as to find prophets of the Messiah in writers very
anterior to the doctrines of Christ. Thus the best Greek and Latin
manuscripts of profane authors are the work of monks, as were the Bibles
and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. The rules of the most
ancient brotherhoods recommended the monks who could write and who
wished to please God to re-copy the manuscripts, and those who were
illiterate to learn to bind them. “The work of the copyist,” said the
learned Alcuin to his contemporaries, “is a meritorious work, which is
profitable to the soul, while the work of the ploughman is profitable
only to the belly.”