The Middle Ages may be called the epoch of writing par excellence.
Stone, bronze, wooden rune-staves, waxed tablets, papyrus, could be
written upon with one instrument or another; but all these--even the
last, tender and brittle as it was--were but makeshift materials for
writing on; and it was not until parchment and vellum, and at last
rag-paper, became common, that the true material for writing on, and
the quill pen, the true instrument for writing with, were used. From
that time till the period of the general use of printing must be
considered the age of written books. As in other handicrafts, so also
in this, the great period of genuine creation (once called the Dark
Ages by those who had forgotten the past, and whose ideal of the
future was a comfortable prison) did all that was worth doing as an
art, leaving makeshifts to the period of the New Birth and the
intelligence of modern civilisation.
Byzantium was doubtless the mother of mediæval calligraphy, but the
art spread speedily through the North of Europe and flourished there
at an early period, and it is almost startling to find it as we do in
full bloom in Ireland in the seventh century. No mere writing has been
done before or since with such perfection as that of the early Irish
ecclesiastical books; and this calligraphy is interesting also, as
showing the development of what is now called by printers "lower-case"
letter, from the ancient majuscular characters. The writing is, I must
repeat, positively beautiful in itself, thoroughly ornamental; but
these books are mostly well equipped with actual ornament, as
carefully executed as the writing--in fact, marvels of patient and
ingenious interlacements. This ornament, however, has no relation in
any genuine Irish book to the traditional style of Byzantium, but is
rather a branch of a great and widespread school of primal decoration,
which has little interest in the representation of humanity and its
doings, or, indeed, in any organic life, but is contented with the
convolutions of abstract lines, over which it attains to great
mastery. The most obvious example of this kind of art may be found in
the carvings of the Maoris of New Zealand; but it is common to many
races at a certain stage of development. The colour of these Irish
ornaments is not very delightful, and no gold appears in them.
[Example: "The Book of Kells," Trinity College, Dublin, &c.]
This Irish calligraphy and illumination was taken up by the North of
England monks; and from them, though in less completeness, by the
Carlovingian makers of books both in France and even in Germany; but
they were not content with the quite elementary representation of the
human form current in the Irish illuminations, and filled up the gap
by imitating the Byzantine picture-books with considerable success
[Examples: Durham Gospels, British Museum, Gospels at Boulogne, &c.],
and in time developed a beautiful style of illumination combining
ornament with figure-drawing, and one seat of which in the early
eleventh century was Winchester. [Example: Charter of foundation of
Newminster at Winchester, British Museum.] Gold was used with some
copiousness in these latter books, but is not seen in the
carefully-raised and highly-burnished condition which is so
characteristic of mediæval illumination at its zenith.
It should be noticed that amongst the Byzantine books of the earlier
period are some which on one side surpass in mere sumptuousness all
books ever made; these are written in gold and silver on vellum stained
purple throughout. Later on again, in the semi-Byzantine-Anglo-Saxon or
Carlovingian period, are left us some specimens of books written in
gold and silver on white vellum. This splendour was at times resorted
to (chiefly in Italy) in the latter half of the fifteenth century.
The just-mentioned late Anglo-Saxon style was the immediate forerunner
of what may be called the first complete mediæval school, that of the
middle of the twelfth century. Here the change for the better is
prodigious. Apart from the actual pictures done for explanation of the
text and the edification of the "faithful," these books are decorated
with borders, ornamental letters, &c., in which foliage and forms
human, animal, and monstrous are blended with the greatest daring and
most complete mastery. The drawing is firm and precise, and it may be
said also that an unerring system of beautiful colour now makes its
appearance. This colour (as all schools of decorative colour not more
or less effete) is founded on the juxtaposition of pure red and blue
modified by delicate but clear and bright lines and "pearlings" of
white, and by the use of a little green and spaces of pale pink and
flesh-colour, and here and there some negative greys and ivory
yellows. In most cases where the book is at all splendid, gold is very
freely used, mostly in large spaces--backgrounds and the like--which,
having been gilded over a solid ground with thick gold-leaf, are
burnished till they look like solid plates of actual metal. The effect
of this is both splendid and refined, the care with which gold is laid
on, and its high finish, preventing any impression of gaudiness. The
writing of this period becoming somewhat more definitely "Gothic,"
does not fall short of (it could not surpass) that of the previous
half-century.
From this time a very gradual change--during which we have to note
somewhat more of delicacy in drawing and refinement of colour--brings
us to the first quarter of the thirteenth century; and here a
sundering of the styles of the different peoples begins to be obvious.
Throughout the twelfth century, though there is a difference, it is
easier to distinguish an English or French book from a German or
Italian by the writing than by the illumination; but after 1225 the
first glance on opening the book will most often cry out at you,
German, Italian, or French-English. For the rest, the illuminations
still gain beauty and delicacy, the gold is even more universally
brilliant, the colour still more delicious. The sub-art of the
rubricator, as distinguished from the limner and the scribe, now
becomes more important, and remains so down to the end of the
fifteenth century. Work of great fineness and elegance, drawn mostly
with pen, and always quite freely, in red and blue counterchanged, is
lavished on the smaller initials and other subsidiaries of the pages,
producing, with the firm black writing and the ivory tone of the
vellum, a beautiful effect, even when the more solid and elaborate
illumination is lacking. During this period, apart from theological
and philosophical treatises, herbals, "bestiaries," &c., the book most
often met with, especially when splendidly ornamented, is the Psalter,
as sung in churches, to which is generally added a calendar, and
always a litany of the saints. This calendar, by the way, both in this
and succeeding centuries, is often exceedingly interesting, from the
representations given in it of domestic occupations. The great initial
B (Beatus vir qui non) of these books affords an opportunity to the
illuminator, seldom missed, of putting forth to the full his powers of
design and colour.
The last quarter of the thirteenth century brings us to the climax of
illumination considered apart from book-pictures. Nothing can exceed
the grace, elegance, and beauty of the drawing and the loveliness of
the colour found at this period in the best-executed books; and it
must be added that, though some work is rougher than other, at this
time there would appear, judging from existing examples, to have been
no bad work done. The tradition of the epoch is all-embracing and
all-powerful, and yet no single volume is without a genuine
individuality and life of its own. In short if all the other art of
the Middle Ages had disappeared, they might still claim to be
considered a great period of art on the strength of their ornamental
books.
In the latter part of the thirteenth century we note a complete
differentiation between the work of the countries of Europe. There are
now three great schools: the French-Flemish-English, the Italian, and
the German. Of these the first is of the most, the last of the least,
importance. As to the relations between England and France, it must be
said that, though there is a difference between them, it is somewhat
subtle, and may be put thus: of some books you may say, This is
French; of others, This is English; but of the greater part you can
say nothing more than, This belongs to the French-English school. Of
those that can be differentiated with something like certainty, it may
be said that the French excel specially in a dainty and orderly
elegance, the English specially in love of life and nature, and there
is more of rude humour in them than in their French contemporaries;
but he must be at once a fastidious and an absolute man who could say
the French is better than the English or the English than the French.
The Norwich Psalter, in the Bodleian Library; the Arundel, Queen
Mary's, and Tennison Psalters, in the British Museum, are among the
finest of these English books: nothing can surpass their fertility of
invention, splendour of execution, and beauty of colour.
This end of the thirteenth century went on producing splendid psalters
at a great rate; but between 1260 and 1300 or 1320 the greatest
industry of the scribe was exercised in the writing of Bibles,
especially pocket volumes. These last, it is clear, were produced in
enormous quantities, for in spite of the ravages of time many
thousands of them still exist. They are, one and all, beautifully
written in hands necessarily very minute, and mostly very prettily
illuminated with tiny figure-subjects in the initials of each book.
For a short period at the end of this and the beginning of the next
century many copies of the Apocalypse were produced, illustrated
copiously with pictures, which give us examples of serious Gothic
designs at its best, and seem to show us what wall-pictures of the
period might have been in the North of Europe.
The fourteenth century, the great mother of change, was as busy in
making ornamental books as in other artistic work. When we are once
fairly in the century a great change is apparent again in the style.
It is not quite true to say that it is more redundant than its
predecessor, but it has more mechanical redundancy. The backgrounds to
the pictures are more elaborated; sometimes diapered blue and red,
sometimes gold most beautifully chased with dots and lines. The
borders cover the page more; buds turn into open leaves; often
abundance of birds and animals appear in the borders, naturalistically
treated (and very well drawn); there is more freedom, and yet less
individuality in this work; in short the style, though it has lost
nothing (in its best works) of elegance and daintiness--qualities so
desirable in an ornamental book--has lost somewhat of manliness and
precision; and this goes on increasing till, towards the end of the
century, we feel that we have before us work that is in peril of an
essential change for the worse. [In France "Bibles Historiaux," i.e.,
partial translations of the Bible, very copiously pictured, were one
of the most noteworthy productions of the latter half of the century.
The Bible taken in the tent of the French King at the battle of
Poitiers, now in the British Museum, is a fine example.] The
differentiation, too, betwixt the countries increases; before the
century is quite over, England falls back in the race [though we have
in the British Museum some magnificent examples of English
illumination of the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the
fifteenth centuries, e.g., "The Salisbury Book;" a huge Bible (Harl.
i., e. ix.) ornamented in a style very peculiarly English. The
Wyclifite translation of the Bible at the Museum is a good specimen of
this style], and French-Flanders and Burgundy come forward, while
Italy has her face turned toward Renaissance, and Germany too often
shows a tendency toward coarseness and incompleteness, which had to be
redeemed in the long last by the honesty of invention and fitness of
purpose of her woodcut ornaments to books. Many most beautiful books,
however, were turned out, not only throughout the fourteenth, but even
in the first half of the fifteenth century. ["The Hours of the Duke of
Berry" (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), and the "Bedford Hours," in
the British Museum, both French, are exceedingly splendid examples of
this period.]
The first harbinger of the great change that was to come over the
making of books I take to be the production in Italy of most
beautifully-written copies of the Latin classics. These are often very
highly ornamented; and at first not only do they imitate (very
naturally) the severe hands of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but
even (though a long way off) the interlacing ornament of that period.
In these books the writing, it must be said, is in its kind far more
beautiful than the ornament. There were so many written and pictured
books produced in the fifteenth century that space quite fails me to
write of them as their great merits deserve. In the middle of the
century an invention, in itself trifling, was forced upon Europe by
the growing demand for more and cheaper books. Gutenberg somehow got
hold of punches, matrices, the adjustable mould, and so of cast
movable type; Schoeffer, Mentelin, and the rest of them caught up the
art with the energy and skill so characteristic of the mediæval
craftsman. The new German art spread like wildfire into every country
of Europe; and in a few years written books had become mere toys for
the immensely rich. Yet the scribe, the rubricator, and the
illuminator died hard. Decorated written books were produced in great
numbers after printing had become common; by far the greater number of
these were Books of Hours, very highly ornamented and much pictured.
Their style is as definite as any of the former ones, but it has now
gone off the road of logical consistency; for divorce has taken place
between the picture-work and the ornament. Often the pictures are
exquisitely-finished miniatures belonging to the best schools of
painting of the day; but often also they are clearly the work of men
employed to fill up a space, and having no interest in their work save
livelihood. The ornament never fell quite so low as that, though as
ornament it is not very "distinguished," and often, especially in the
latest books, scarcely adds to the effect on the page of the miniature
to which it is a subsidiary.
But besides these late-written books, in the first years of printing,
the rubricator was generally, and the illuminator not seldom, employed
on printed books themselves. In the early days of printing the big
initials were almost always left for the rubricator to paint in in red
and blue, and were often decorated with pretty scroll-work by him; and
sometimes one or more pages of the book were surrounded with ornament
in gold and colours, and the initials elaborately finished in the same
way.
The most complete examples of this latter work subsidiary to the
printed page are found in early books printed in Italy, especially in
the splendid editions of the classics which came from the presses of
the Roman and Venetian printers.
By about 1530 all book illumination of any value was over, and thus
disappeared an art which may be called peculiar to the Middle Ages,
and which commonly shows mediæval craftsmanship at its best, partly
because of the excellence of the work itself, and partly because that
work can only suffer from destruction and defacement, and cannot,
like mediæval buildings, be subjected to the crueller ravages of
"restoration."
HERE END THE NOTES ON EARLY WOOD-CUT BOOKS BY WILLIAM MORRIS. OF THIS
BOOK THERE HAVE BEEN PRINTED ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY COPIES BY CLARKE
CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS: FINISHED THIS TWENTIETH DAY OF FEBRUARY,
MDCCCCII. SOLD BY CLARKE CONWELL AT THE ELSTON PRESS, PELHAM ROAD, NEW
ROCHELLE, NEW YORK
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained
as printed.