Chapter II: Engravings (12)

And M. Vaudoyer adds: “The rounded arch is the determinate and invariable form; the pointed arch is the free and indefinite form which lends itself to unlimited modifications. If, then, the Pointed style has no longer the austerity of the Norman, it is because it belongs to that second phase of all civilisation, in which elegance and richness replace the strength and the severity of primordial types.”

It was, moreover, at this period that architecture, like all the other arts, left the monasteries to pass into the hands of lay architects organised into confraternities, who travelled from place to place, and thus transmitted the traditional types; the result of this was that buildings raised at very great distances from each other presented a striking analogy, and often even a complete similitude to each other.

There has been much discussion not only on the origin of the pointed arch, but also as to the beauty and excellence of its form. According to some it was suggested by the sight of many arches interlaced, and only constituted one of those fantastical forms which an art in quest of novelty adopts; others, among whom is M. Vaudoyer, attribute to it the most remote origin, by making it result quite naturally in the first attempts at building in stone,--“from a succession of courses of stone so arranged that each overhung the other;” or else in wooden constructions, “from the greater facility there was in forming with beams a pointed rather than a perfectly rounded arch;” others consider the adoption of the Pointed style, as we said above, as nothing but a proof of the religious independence succeeding the rigid faith of earlier days. A third opinion, again, is that of M. Michiels, who looks on the Pointed style as in some sort an inevitable result of the boldness of the Norman, and who considers the Gothic, of which it is the characteristic, as “expressing the spirit of a period when religious feeling had attained its most perfect maturity, and Catholic civilisation produced its sweetest and most agreeable fruits.”

Whatever may be the merits of these different opinions, into the discussion of which we need not enter, it is now generally assumed that the Pointed style, properly so called, sprang up first within the limits of the ancient Ile-de-France, whence it propagated itself by degrees towards the southern and eastern provinces.

M. Michiels, agreeing on this point with the celebrated architect Lassus, points out that it would be as difficult to attribute the creation of this style to Germany as to Spain. It was in the thirteenth century that the finest Gothic buildings appeared in France; while in Germany, except the churches built, as it were, on the French frontier, we find nothing at that period but Norman churches (Fig. 306); and it is reasonable to suppose that, if we owed the general adoption of the pointed arch to Spain, the introduction of it would have been gradually made through that part of the country situated beyond the Loire, where, however, the Norman style continued to be in great favour when it was almost entirely abandoned in the north of France.

A century sufficed to bring the Pointed style to its highest perfection. Notre-Dame (Fig. 307) and the Sainte-Chapelle, in Paris; Notre-Dame, Chartres; the cathedrals of Amiens (Fig. 308), Sens, Bourges, Coutances, in France; those of Strasbourg, Fribourg, Altenberg, and Cologne, in Germany, the dates of whose construction succeed each other at intervals from the first half of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century, are so many admirable specimens or types of this art, which we may here call relatively new.

To know to what marvellous variety of combinations and effects, by merely modifying it in height and breadth from its original type, this pointed arch, which, taken by itself, might appear the simplest of forms, can attain, one must have passed some time in dividing into the different parts of which it is composed, by an accurate examination of its _tout ensemble_, such an edifice as Notre-Dame, Paris, or as the Cathedral of Strasbourg; the first of which attracts attention by the sustained boldness of its lines, strong as they are graceful; the second, by its perfectly bold independence, seeming, as it does, to taper away as by enchantment, in order to bear to a surprising height the evidence of its incomprehensible temerity.

We must rise in thought above the edifice to grasp the plan of its first conception; we must, from below, study it on all sides to perceive

View of the principal Façade before the restoration executed by Messrs. Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc.]

with what art its various parts are arranged, grouped, placed at certain intervals from each other; we must seek to discover the contrivance by virtue of which the immense _évidage_ (sloping) of numerous buttresses, the height of the towers, the retiring of the laterals, and the curve of the apse are harmonised; we must enter the church and stand in its nave, with its interminable delicate ribs--how many clusters of small columns extend above the slender pillars!--we must contemplate the beautiful fancies of the rose-windows, which by their many-coloured glass sober down the glare of the light passing through them; we must gain the summit of those towers, those spires, and from them command the dizzy extent of aërial

(Eleventh Century.)]

(Twelfth Century.)]

space, and the landscape stretching out around them below; we must follow attentively with our eye the strikingly bold outlines which the turrets, the ornamented gables, the _guivres_, the tops of the bell-towers trace upon the sky. This done, we should yet have paid but a brief tribute of attention to these prodigious edifices. What, then, if we wished to devote sufficient time to the ornamentation of the details (Figs. 309 to 312)? if we desired to obtain a tolerably exact idea of the people from the statues which swarm from the porch to the pinnacle, and of the _flora_ and _fauna_, real or ideal, that give movement to every projection or animate every wall? if one counted on success in finding out the key to all the crossings and intersections of the lines, of the well-adjusted conceptions which, while they deceive the eye, contribute to the majesty or the solidity of the whole? if, finally, we were most careful not to lose any one of the multifarious thoughts that have been fixed in the stones of the gigantic edifice? The mind becomes confused; and certainly the effect produced by so much imagination and so much enterprise, by so much skill and taste, wonderfully elevates the soul, which searches with more love after the Creator when it sees such a work proceeding from the hands of the creature.

When you approach the Gothic church, when you stand beneath its lofty roof, it is as if a new country were receiving you, possessing you, casting around you an atmosphere of subduing reverie in which you feel your wretched servitude to worldly interests vanishing away, and you become conscious of more solid, more important ties, springing up in you. The Deity whom our finite nature can figure to ourselves seems in fact to inhabit this immense building, to be willing to put himself in direct communion with the humble Christian who approaches to bow down before Him. There is nothing in it of the human dwelling-place--all relating to our poor and miserable existence is here forgotten; He for whom this residence was constructed is the Strong, the Great, the Magnificent, and it is from a paternal condescension that He receives us into His holy habitation, as weak, little, miserable. It is the ideal of the faith which is realised; all the articles of the belief in which we have been brought up are here embodied before our eyes; it is, lastly, the chosen spot where the meeting of mortal nothingness and Divine Majesty is quietly accomplished.

The Christianity of the Middle Ages had then been able to find in the Gothic style a tongue as tractable as it was energetic, as simple as it was ingenious, which, for the pious excitement of souls, was to declare to the senses all its ineffable poetry. But as the unbounded faith, of which it was the faithful organ, was on the next dawn of its most ardent aspirations about to decline, so this splendid style was almost as soon to lose its vigour, and to exhaust itself in the unrestrained manifestation of its power.

Springing into existence with the warm enthusiasm of the first Crusades, the Pointed style seems to follow in its different phases the decline of faith in the time of these adventurous enterprises. It began by a sincere outburst, and was produced by a bold, unshackled genius; then a factitious or reflected ardour gave birth to elaborateness and mannerism; then the fervent zeal and the artistic sentiment dwindled away: this is the decadency.

Gothic art raised itself in less than a century to its culminating point; within two centuries more it was to reach the fatal point where it would begin to decline. The thirteenth century saw it in all its glory, with the edifices we have mentioned; in the fourteenth it had become the Florid or _Rayonnant_ Gothic, which produced the churches of St. Ouen at Rouen, and of St. Etienne at Metz. “Then,” says M. A. Lefèvre, one of the latest historians of architecture, “no more walls; everywhere open screen-work supported by slender arcades; no more capitals, rows of foliage imitated directly from nature; no more columns, lofty pillars ornamented with round or bevelled mouldings. As yet, however, there was nothing weakly in its extreme elegance; slim and delicate without being gaunt, the Florid style did not in the least disfigure the churches of the thirteenth century, which it bounded and decorated.

“But after the _Rayonnant_ Gothic came the _Flamboyant_, which, always under the pretext of lightness and grace, denaturalises the ornaments, the forms, and even the proportions of the architectural members. It effaces the horizontal lines which used to give two stories to the windows of the nave, fills up the nave with irregular compartments, _cœurs_, _soufflets_, and _flammes_; suppresses the angles of the pillars and sharpens the mouldings; leaves even to the most massive supports nothing but an undulating, vanishing, impalpable form, where shadow cannot fix itself; changes the lancet-arches into braces, or into flat-arched vaults more or less depressed, and the florid ornamentation of the pinnacles into whimsical scrolls. It reserved all its riches for accessory or exterior decorations, stalls, pulpits, hanging key-stones, running friezes, rood-screens, and bell-towers. Visible decadency of the whole corresponds with great progress in details.” (Fig. 313.)

The churches of St. Wulfran, Abbeville; of Notre-Dame, Cléry-sur-Loire; of St. Riquier; of Corbeil; and the cathedrals of Orleans and of Nantes, may be cited as the principal specimens of the _Flamboyant_ style, and as the last notable manifestations of an art which thenceforward diverged more and more from its original inspiration. The middle of the fifteenth century is generally fixed as the limit beyond which the handsome Gothic buildings that still rose were no longer, in any degree, the normal productions of their period, but were felicitous copies or imitations of works already consecrated by the history of the art.

A remark may here be made showing to what extent religious feeling predominated in the Middle Ages; it is that at the very moment when the Norman and Gothic architects were designing and producing so many marvellous habitations for the Deity, they seemed to bestow scarcely any attention on the construction of comfortable or luxurious dwellings for man, even those destined for the most exalted personages of the State. In proportion as this sentiment of original faith lost its intensity, Art occupied itself more and more with princely and lordly habitations. The middle class was the last favoured by this progress, and the feeling of their position as citizens had taken the place of a zeal exclusively pious; so we find the “town-halls” absorbing the splendour and elegance of which private houses remained destitute; these being generally built of wood and plaster, and in the heart of the towns, so close together that they seemed to be disputing for light and air.

Everywhere, during the Middle Ages, rose the church--the home of peace; but everywhere also towered up at the same time the castle, that characterised the permanent state of war in which feudal society lived, delighted, and gloried.

“The castles of the richest and most powerful nobles,” says M. Vaudoyer, “consisted of irregular, uncomfortable buildings, pierced with a few narrow windows, standing within one or two fortified enclosures, and surrounded by moats. The donjon, a large high tower, generally occupied the centre, and other towers, more or less numerous, flanked the walls, and served for the defence of the place.” (Fig. 314). “These castles,” adds M. Mérimée, “generally present the same characteristics as the ancient _castellum_; but a certain ruggedness, a striking quaintness in plan and execution, bear witness to a personal will, and that tendency to isolation which is the instinctive sentiment of the feudal system.”

In most of the buildings destined for the privileged classes, it seems as if it were deemed unnecessary that care should be taken to secure harmony of form. The decorative style of the period showed itself chiefly in the interior of some of the principal apartments, the habitable quarters of the lord of the castle and of his family. There were vast fireplaces with enormous chimney-corners surmounted by projecting mantelpieces; the vaulted roof was ornamented with pendents of various devices, and with painted or carved escutcheons. Narrow closets, contrived in the walls, served as sleeping places. The embrasures of the windows pierced in the excessively thick walls formed so many little chambers, raised a few steps above the floor of the room to which they admitted light. Stone seats ran along each side of these embrasures. Here the inmates of the tower generally sat when the cold did not oblige them to draw near to the fireplaces. (Figs. 315 and 316.)

(Thirteenth Century.)]

With the exception of these slight sacrifices made to the comforts of life, everything in the castle was arranged, contrived, and disposed with a view to strength and resistance; and yet it cannot be denied that, unintentionally, the builders of these silent (_taciturnes_) edifices have many a time--aided often, it is true, by the picturesque sites which encircle their works--attained to a majesty of height and a grandeur of form truly extraordinary.

If the Norman church expresses with gentle severity, and the Gothic church with sumptuous fancy, the important and sublime doctrines of the Gospel, we must equally allow that the castle, in some sort, loudly proclaims the stern and uncivilised notions of the feudal authority of which it was at once the instrument and the symbol.

(From a Miniature taken from a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.)]

Placed, in most cases, on natural or artificial eminences, it is not without a sort of eloquent boldness that the towers and the donjons shoot into the air, succeed each other at intervals, command and support each other. It is frequently not without a sort of fantastic grace that the walls scale the rising ground, making an infinity of the strangest bends, or coiling themselves about with the supple ease of a serpent.

Evidently, if the castle raises its gloomy head high into the air, it has no other object in doing so than to secure to itself the advantages of distance and height; but not the less on that account does it stand out on the sky a grand object. The masses of its walls unsymmetrically pierced with sombre loop-holes present an abrupt and naked appearance; but the monotony of their lines is picturesquely broken by the projection of overhanging turrets, by the corbels of the machicolated arches, and by the embrasures of the battlements.

A vast amount of civilisation still exists for him who recalls the past in the multitude of ruins which were the witnesses of bloody feudal divisions; and we must add to the system of isolated castles that often commanded the most deserted valleys, the apparatus of strength and defence of cities and towns--gates, ramparts, towers, citadels, &c., immense works which, although inspired solely by the genius of strife and dissension, did not fail nevertheless, in many instances, to combine harmony and variety of detail with the general grandeur of the whole.

(From an Engraving of the Seventeenth Century.)]

We may cite, as examples of architecture purely feudal, the castles of Coucy (Fig. 317), Vincennes (Fig. 318), Pierrefonds, the old Louvre, the Bastille, the Tour de Nesle (Fig. 319), the Palais de Justice, Plessis-les-Tours, &c.; and as specimens of the fortified town in the Middle Ages, Avignon and the city of Carcassonne. Let us add that Aigues-Mortes, in Provence; Narbonne, Thann (Haut-Rhin), Vendôme, Villeneuve-le-Roi, Moulins, Moret (Fig. 320), Provins (Fig. 321), afford yet again the most characteristic remains of analogous fortifications.

While the nobles, jealous and suspicious, sheltered themselves in the shadow of their donjons built with many strategical contrivances and of substantial materials; while the large and small towns were surrounded with deep moats, high walls, impregnable towers, the most primitive simplicity presided over the construction of private dwellings. Stone hardly ever, and brick but seldom, figured among the number of the materials employed. Sawed or squared timbers serving as ribs, mud or clay filling up the interstices, were all that was at first required for the erection of houses as small as they were comfortless, and following each other in irregular lines along the narrow streets. The beams of the corbels, it is true, began to be adorned with carvings and paintings, the façades with panes (glass) of different colours; but we must reach the last half of the fifteenth century before we see the resources of architecture applied to the erection and ornamentation of private houses. Moreover, faith was already growing weak; and no longer was it possible to direct all the resources of an entire province to the honour of the Deity by the erection of a church; the use of gunpowder, by revolutionising the art of war, came to lessen, if it did not annihilate, the vast strength of walls; the decline of feudalism itself had commenced; and, lastly, the enfranchisement of corporations gave rise to a perfectly new order of individuals who took their place in history. We must refer to this period the house of Jacques Cœur, Bourges; the Hôtel de Sens, Paris (Fig. 322); the Palais de Justice, Rouen; and those town-halls in which the belfry was then considered as a sort of palladium, in whose shade the sacred rights of the community sheltered themselves. It is in our (French) northern towns--St. Quentin, Arras, Noyon; and in the ancient cities of Belgium--Brussels (Fig. 323), Louvain, Ypres, that these edifices assume the most sumptuous character.

In Germany, where for a time it reigned almost exclusively, Gothic art established the cathedrals of Erfurt, of Cologne, Fribourg, and of Vienna; then it died away in the growth of the _Flamboyant_ style. In England, after having left some magnificent examples of pure inspiration, it found its decline in the attenuated meagreness and the complicated ornamentation of the style called _Perpendicular ogival_. If it penetrated also into Spain, it was to contend with difficulty against the mighty Moorish school, which had too many imposing _chefs-d’œuvre_ in the past to surrender without resistance the country of its former triumphs (Fig. 324). In Italy it clashed not only with the Latin and Byzantine schools, but also with a style that, just beginning to form itself, was soon to dispute with it the empire of taste, and to dethrone it in that very land which had been its cradle. The cathedrals of Assisi, of Siena, of Milan, are the splendid works in which its influence triumphed over local traditions and over the _Renaissance_ that was preparing to follow; yet we must not think that it succeeded even there in rendering itself absolutely the master, as it had done on the Rhenish or British territories. Sacrifices were made in its favour; but these sacrifices did not amount to an entire immolation.

Saint-Pol, built in the reign of Charles V. (Fourteenth Century.)]

When we use the word _Renaissance_, we seem to be speaking of a return to an age already gone by, of the resurrection of a period that had passed away. It is not strictly in this sense that the word must be understood in the present instance.

Inheriting from of old the artistic temperament of Greece, rather than spontaneously creating of herself any style, Italy, among all the nations of Europe, was the country which had most successfully resisted the profound

darkness of barbarism, and the first on which the light of modern civilisation shone.

At the period of this new dawn of genius, Italy had only to ransack the ruins its first magnificence had bequeathed it to find among them examples it might follow; moreover, it was the time when the active rivalry of its republics caused all the treasures of ancient Greece to flow into it. But while it derived inspiration from these abundant manifestations of another age, it never entertained the idea of abandoning itself exclusively to a servile imitation; it had--and in this consists its chief title to glory--while giving a peculiar direction to the revivals of the antique, the good sense to remain under the poetic influence of that simple and congenial art which had consoled the world during the whole continuance of that protracted infancy of a civilisation which was at last advancing with rapid strides towards perfect manhood.

From the twelfth century, Pisa gave an impetus to the art by building its Duomo, its Baptistery, its Leaning Tower, and the cloisters of its famous Campo Santo; so many admirable works forming an era in the history of modern art, and in a brilliant manner opening the career on which so many distinguished men were to enter, rivalling each other in invention, in science, and in genius. In these monuments the union of Oriental taste with the traditions of ages gone by created an originality as grand as it was graceful. “It is,” as M. A. Lefèvre points out, “the Antique without its nudity, the Byzantine without its heaviness, the fervour of the Western Gothic without its ghastliness” (_effroi_).

In 1294 the magistrates of Florence passed the following decree, charging the architect, Arnolfo di Cambio, to convert into a cathedral the church, till then of little importance, of Santa Maria de’ Fiori:--“Forasmuch,” they said, “as it is in the highest degree prudent for a people of illustrious origin to proceed in their affairs in such manner that their public works may cause their grandeur and wisdom to be acknowledged, the order is given to Arnolfo, master-architect of our town, to make plans for repairing the Church of Santa Maria with the greatest and most lavish magnificence, so that the skill and prudence of men may never invent, nor ever be able to undertake, anything more important or more beautiful.”

Arnolfo applied himself to his task, and conceived a plan which the shortness of human life did not allow him to carry out; but Giotto succeeded

him, and to Giotto succeeded Orcagna, and to Orcagna, Brunelleschi, who designed and almost completed that Duomo, of which Michael Angelo said it would be difficult to equal, and impossible to surpass, it.

Arnolfo, Giotto, Orcagna, Brunelleschi--does it not suffice to cite these great names for us to form an idea of the movement going on at this period? and which was soon to produce Alberti, Bramante, Michael Angelo, Jacques della Porta, Baldassare Peruzzi, Antonio and Juliano de Sangallo, Giocondo, Vignola, Serlio, and even Raphael, who, when he liked, was as mighty an architect as he was a marvellous painter. It was in Rome that these princes of the art congregated together, as the splendours of St. Peter’s (Fig. 325), to mention only one of their grand creations, still attest; so, it is from this city that henceforward light and example are to come.

In the style which this masterly phalanx created, the Latin rounded arch 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

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.

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.

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

(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.”

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

At all periods of history we find mention made of certain celebrated manuscripts. We will not go so far back as the Greek traditions relating to the works of Homer, of which some copies were ornamented with a richness that has, probably, never been surpassed. In the fifth century St. Jerome possessed twenty-five parts of the works of Origen, which Pamphilus the Martyr had copied with his own hand. St. Ambrose, St. Fulgentius, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, men as learned as they were pious, applied themselves to reproducing with their own hands the best ancient texts. A copyist by profession was called _scriba_, _scriptor_; the place in which they generally worked was called _scriptorium_. The capitularies against bad copyists were frequently renewed. “We ordain that no scribe write incorrectly,” we find in the collection of Baluze. We read in the same collection, in 789, “There shall be good Catholic texts in all monasteries, so that prayers shall not be made to God in faulty language.” In 805, “If the Gospels, the Psalter, or the Missal are to be copied, only careful middle-aged men are to be employed; verbal errors may otherwise be introduced into the faith.” There were, moreover, _correctors_ who rectified the work of the copyists, and attested the work, on the volumes, by the words _contuli_, _emendavi_ (“I have collated, I have revised”). A copy of Origen’s works has been mentioned, corrected by the hand of Charlemagne himself, to whom is also attributed the introduction of full stops and commas.

The same care presided over the preparation of royal charters and diplomas; the referendaries or chancellors drew them up and superintended their despatch; the principal officers of the crown intervened, as guarantors or witnesses to them, and these acts were read publicly before they were signed and sealed. Notaries and witnesses guaranteed the authenticity of private charters.

As long as printing did not exist in France, the corporation of scribes, copyists of charters, and copyists of manuscripts, which counted among them booksellers, was very numerous and very influential, since it was composed of graduates of the university that patronised them and placed them among the number of its indispensable agents. He who desired to become a bookseller had to give proof of his instruction and of his ability; he was obliged to take an oath “not to commit any deception, fraud, or evil thing which might damage or prejudice the university, its scholars and frequenters, nor to rob nor speak ill of them.” Besides which he was compelled to deposit a sum of fifty francs (_livres parisis_) as caution-money.

The rules imposed on scribes and on booksellers were always very strict, and this severity was only too justly occasioned by the abuses that existed, and by the scandalous disorder of the people who exercised these professions. In the year 1324 the university published this order:--“There will be admitted only people of good conduct and morals, sufficiently acquainted with the book trade, and previously approved by the university. The bookseller may not take a clerk into his service till that clerk has sworn, before the university, to exercise his profession according to the ordinances. The bookseller must give to the university a list of the works which he sells; he must not refuse to let a manuscript to whomsoever may wish to make a copy of it, on payment of the indemnity fixed by the university. He is forbidden to let out books that have not been corrected, and those students who find an incorrect copy are requested to denounce it publicly to the rector, so that the bookseller who has let it out may be punished, and that the copy may be corrected by _scholares_ (learned men or scholars). There shall be every year four commissioners chosen to fix the price of books. One bookseller shall not sell a work to another bookseller before he has exposed the work for sale during four days. In any case the seller is obliged to register the name of the purchaser, to describe him, and to state the price for which the book was sold.”

From century to century this legislation underwent variations, according to the ideas of the times: and when the printing-press came, in the middle of the fifteenth century, to change the face of the world, the corporation of _scribes_ rose at first against the new art which was to ruin them. “But at last,” says Champollion-Figeac, “they submitted, and temporary measures were recommended to the public authorities for the defence of an ancient order of things which could not long resist the new.”

Now let us go back to the first centuries of the Middle Ages, to resume the question from a palæographic point of view.

The languages and literature of modern Europe are all Greek or Latin, Sclavonic or Gothic; these four great families of peoples and of languages have existed in spite of the vicissitudes of politics. Such is the basis whereon must be found all the researches by which we are to establish the origin and nature of the writing peculiar to each literature.

The Greeks of Constantinople taught writing to the Sclavonic race, and with it the Christian faith. The most ancient Greek writing (we speak of the Christian era only) was the _capital_ writing, regular and well-proportioned; as it became general it was simplified more and more. After this sort of writing, examples of which are found only on stone or bronze, we come to the writing called, although we do not know why, _uncial_,[53] which, was the first step towards the Greek _cursive_ (flowing).

_Uncial_ writing was employed, in Greek manuscripts, up to the ninth century; we may observe the transition from the _uncial_ to the _half-uncial_, and from the _half-uncial_ to the _minuscule_.[54] In the tenth century manuscripts in minuscule became very abundant--the tachygrapher’s (ταχὑς, quick, and γρἁφω, I write), or the partisans of quick writing, gained the day; the caligraphers (καλὁς, beautiful, and γρἁφω I write) desired to follow their example. These employed a great deal of time in painting the initials of running letters: the new method, which produced more in the same space of time, easily got into favour; the caligraphers abandoned the uncial and adopted the minuscule characters connected together, which combined good forms with greater facility of execution. Thenceforward, the uncial was no longer employed except for the titles or headings of books.

Among the fine specimens of this epoch which have been preserved, we may mention, in the Imperial Library of Paris, a Book of the Gospels, called Cardinal Mazarin’s, and the Commentaries of Gregory Nazianzus; at the Laurentinean Library, Florence, are a Plutarch and a Book of the Gospels, written with gold ink in large and massive minuscule cursive characters; and lastly, a book of ecclesiastical offices, belonging also to the Imperial Library in Paris, and which bears this superscription in Greek:--“Pray for Euthymus, a poor monk, priest of the monastery of St. Lazare. This volume was finished in the month of May, Convocation S, in the year 6515,” a date which, according to the computation of the Greek Church, corresponds to the month of May of the year 1007 of the Christian era.