Chapter II: Part I: What Illuminating Was (1)

In the following pages an attempt has been made to concentrate into limited dimensions that which has generally been treated very voluminously. Few authors, who have tried both, will feel inclined to deny, that it is a much more difficult task to compress a great subject into a little book successfully, than it is to expand a little subject into a great book. Where materials of the highest interest, historically, artistically, and intellectually, abound, the danger is lest suppression and condensation may not break the links essential to bind a perspicuous narrative together. I must, therefore, on these grounds claim the indulgence of the reader, who may, I trust, be induced by the very imperfections of my story, to recur to the pages of those more copious and learned writers on the subjects, who have bestowed upon its elucidation long lives of exemplary and pertinacious industry.

Before, however, entering on my theme, it is my duty to point out to the reader, that although, for popular convenience and simplicity, it has been deemed expedient to divide the history of the Art of Illuminating from the theory of its use and practice, I have considered that each of the subdivided parts would be made more valuable by association, and by being made mutually suggestive and illustrative--by being, in fact, cast as two parts of one work, rather than as two separate works. I have not, therefore, hesitated to refer in this, the "Historical Manual," to the historical interest of plates contained in the technical, nor in the "Technical Manual" to the technical interest of plates contained in the historical. Much, indeed, of the matter contained in both should be considered as common to the two. Thus the ancient technical processes are no less historically interesting, than they may be likely, by a judicious revival of such as may be worthy, to prove practically valuable in the present day. Again, whatever proficiency a student may attain in the manipulation of his or her drawing, gilding, or painting, it will be in vain to hope to be enabled to produce a work of art which shall be satisfactory to the educated eye and taste, until a very considerable acquaintance has been made with the peculiarities of the various styles in which our forefathers delighted. No originality can ever be permanently agreeable which does not discard the precise conventional form of a period, which is but a mode or transient fashion, in favour of the principles which pervade all synchronous works of art, and which, transmute them as we may, must ever remain permanent through all time. Historically we should remember that miniature ornament of every period reflects on a diminished scale, and frequently in a highly concentrated form, the leading spirit which may have pervaded the greater revolutions of monumental art. Owing to the license which the diminished scale afforded, the imagination of the artist in these works was restricted by none of those material impediments which, in the execution of the major monuments of art, protracted the realization of the changing fashions of the day, frequently until long after the period when the original impulse may have been communicated to the art in which those variations were possibly but transient fluctuations.

Thus it is that in these relics of the past may frequently be traced artistic impulses destined to find no other embodiment than the form in which they are presented to us in the pages of a manuscript. The copiousness, then, of such documentary illustrations of the invention of remote periods is one of the most valuable features of the teaching they should convey to us. No revival nowadays of any historical style by the architect can be satisfactory which is not based upon a knowledge, not of the purely architectural features of the period alone, but of the condition and characteristics of all those decorative details which distinguished it as a living reality from the effete and denuded relic which may now only present itself for our information. Thus even the Saxon and Romanesque styles of architecture may, through the architect's careful attention to the decorative features exhibited to us in the pages of ancient illuminated books, be revived, not in their rude and structural nudity, but as glowing with those colours, and decorated with those forms, which we may observe as peculiarly affected in the ornamental and pictorial embellishments of the best artists of the days when those styles were the only ones popularly adopted. And not only are the beautiful ornaments and decorative features of illuminated manuscripts valuable as supplying us with correct information as to the system of embellishment regarded by the best artists of each period as harmonizing most perfectly with the structural styles prevalent in their days; but in the measure of their permanent beauty they are no less valuable to us as indications of what is excellent for all time.

Thus, then, they may be used, either as enabling us to restore the most brilliant features of the historic styles with an accuracy to be acquired from no other sources of information, or they may be regarded as providing us with materials for that more extended system of eclectic selection which must afford the only basis of perfection and originality in any styles which we may desire now or hereafter to originate; and the origination and perfection of which we may desire to bequeath to succeeding generations, as testimonies that, in the nineteenth century, there lived men as capable of the creation of beauty as any whose happiest inventions are to be found in the pages of these ancient and most precious volumes.

In opening this historical sketch, I need scarcely recall the facts, that not only was that which we know as the earliest type of writing the most pictorial, but that it was also embellished with colour from the most remote ages. A glance at the pages of Rosselini or Lepsius will suffice to convince us that the monumental hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were almost invariably painted with the liveliest tints; and when similar hieroglyphics were executed on a reduced scale, and in a more cursive form upon papyri, or scrolls made from the leaves of the papyrus, the common flowering rush of the Nile, illumination was also employed to make the leading pages more attractive to the eye. Nor was such illumination peculiar to hieroglyphic characters; it prevailed also, but not to the same extent, in the hieratic and demotic modes of writing. Of such papyri notable specimens may be seen in the British Museum; the most wonderful in existence, however, is the remarkably interesting and graphic illustration of the funeral of a Pharaoh, preserved in the Royal Museum at Turin.

Extraordinary dexterity was acquired in a conventional mode of expressing complicated forms by a few rapid touches, and the life and spirit with which familiar scenes are represented, and ornaments executed, in both the early and late papyri, are truly remarkable. The precise extent to which the Greeks and Romans were indebted to the Egyptians for the origination and use of alphabetic symbols, the learned have not yet agreed upon. They have, however, concurred in recognizing the fact that Egypt certainly supplied the principal materials by means of which writing was ordinarily practised. The primitive books of the ancients were no other than rolls formed of papyri, prepared in the following manner:--Two leaves of the rush were plastered together, usually with the mud of the Nile, in such a fashion that the fibres of one leaf should cross the fibres of the other at right angles; the ends of each being then cut off, a square leaf was obtained, equally capable of resisting fracture when pulled or taken hold of in any direction. In this form the papyri were exported in great quantities. In order to form these single leaves into the "scapi," or rolls of the ancients (the prototypes of the rotuli of the Middle Ages), about twenty were glued together end to end. The writing was then executed in parallel columns a few inches wide, running transversely to the length of the scroll. To each end of the scrolls were attached round staves similar to those we use for maps. To these staves, strings, known as "umbilici," were attached, to the ends of which bullæ or weights were fixed. The books when rolled up, were bound up with these umbilici, and were generally kept in cylindrical boxes or capsæ, a term from which the Mediæval "capsula," or book-cover, was derived. The mode in which the students held the rolls in order to read from them is well shown in a painting in the house of a surgeon at Pompeii. One of the staves, with the papyrus rolled round it, was held in each hand, at a distance apart equal to the width of one or more of the transverse columns of writing. As soon as the eye was carried down to the bottom of a column, one hand rolled up and the other unrolled sufficient of the papyrus to bring a fresh column opposite to the reader's eye, and so on until the whole was wound round one of the staves, when, of course, the student had arrived at the end of his book. Eumenes, king of Pergamus, being unable to procure the Egyptian papyrus, through the jealousy of one of the Ptolemies, who occupied himself in forming a rival library to the one which subsequently became so celebrated at Pergamus, introduced the use of parchment properly "dressed" for taking ink and pigments; and hence the derivation of the word "pergamena" as applied to parchment or vellum; the former substance being the prepared skin of sheep, and the latter of calves.[1]

The sheets of parchment were joined end to end, as the sheets of papyrus had been, and when written upon, on one side only, and in narrow columns across the breadth of the scroll, were rolled up round staves and bound with strings, to which seals of wax were occasionally attached, in place of the more common leaden bullæ.

The custom of dividing books into pages is said by Suetonius to have been introduced by Julius Cæsar, whose letters to the Senate were so made up, and after whose time the practice became usual for all documents either addressed to, or issuing from, that body, or the emperors. As that form subsequently crept into general use, the books were known as "codices;" and hence the ordinary term as applied to manuscript volumes. All classes of books, the reeds for writing in them, the inkstands, and the "capsæ" or "scrinia," the boxes in which the "scapi" or rolls were kept, are minutely portrayed in ancient wall-paintings and ivory diptychs. The inkstands are generally shown as double, no doubt for containing both black and red ink, with the latter of which certain portions of the text were written.[2]

Nearly two thousand actual rolls were discovered at Herculaneum, of course in a highly-carbonized condition, and of them some hundreds have been unrolled. None appear to have been embellished with illumination;[3] so that for proof of the practice of the art in classical times, we are thrown back upon the classical authors themselves. The allusions in their writings to the employment of red and black ink are frequent. Martial, in his first epistle, points out the bookseller's shop opposite the Julian Forum, in which his works may be obtained "smoothed with pumice-stone and decorated with purple." Seneca mentions books ornamented "cum imaginibus." Varro is related by Pliny to have illustrated his works by likenesses of more than seven hundred illustrious persons. Pliny again informs us that writers on medicine gave representations in their treatises of the plants which they described. Martial dwells on the editions of Virgil, with his portrait as a frontispiece. The earliest recorded instance of the richer adornments of golden lettering on purple or rose-stained vellum, is given by Julius Capitolinus in his life of the Emperor Maximinus the younger. He therein mentions that the mother of the emperor presented to him, on his return to his tutor (early in the 3rd century), a copy of the works of Homer, written in gold upon purple vellum. Whether derived from Egypt or the East, this luxurious mode of embellishment appears to have been popular among the later Greeks, a class of whose scribes were denominated "writers in gold." From Greece it was, no doubt, transplanted to Rome, where, from about the 2nd century, it, at first slowly, and ultimately rapidly, acquired popularity. St. Jerome, indeed, writing in the 4th century, in a well-known passage in his preface to the Book of Job, exclaims:--"Habeant qui volunt veteres libros vel in membranis purpureis auro argentoque descriptos vel uncialibus, ut vulgo aiunt, literis, onera magis exarata quam codices; dummodo mihi meisque permittant pauperes habere scedulas, et non tam pulchros codices quam emendatos."[4]

This almost pathetic appeal of the great commentator was scarcely necessary to assure us that such sumptuous volumes were executed for the rich alone, since the value of the gold and vellum, irrespective of the labour employed, must necessarily have taken them, as he indicates, altogether out of the reach of the poor. Evidence indeed is not wanting, that many of the Fathers of the Church laboured with their own hands to supply themselves with writings, which no golden letters or purpled vellums could make more valuable to them or their primitive followers: thus, Pamphilus, the martyr, who suffered in the year 309, possessed, in his own handwriting, twenty-five stitched books, containing the works of Origen. St. Ambrose, St. Fulgentius, and others, themselves transcribed many volumes, precious to themselves and most edifying to the faithful. Whatever ornaments or pictures these volumes contained, no doubt reproduced the style of art fostered, if not engendered, in the Catacombs.

Roman illuminated manuscripts would appear, therefore, to have been mainly divisible into two classes; firstly, those in which the text, simply but elegantly written in perfectly-formed, or rustic (that is, inclined) capitals, mainly in black and sparingly in red ink, was illustrated by pictures, usually square, inserted in simple frames, generally of a red border only; and secondly, the richer kind, in which at first gold letters, on white and stained vellum grounds, and subsequently black and coloured letters and ornaments on gold grounds, were introduced. The first of these appears to have been the most ancient style, and to have long remained popular in the Western Empire, while the second, which, as Sir Frederick Madden has observed, no doubt came originally to the Romans from the Greeks, acquired its greatest perfection under the early emperors of the East.

Of both styles there are still extant some invaluable specimens, which, although not of the finest periods of art, may still be regarded as typical of masterpieces which may have existed, and which fire or flood, Goth or Vandal, may have destroyed. Before proceeding, however, to an enumeration of any of these, it may be well to define certain terms which must be employed to designate the peculiarities of character in which the different texts were written, some slight knowledge of which is of great assistance in arriving at a proximate knowledge of the dates at which they may have been executed. Such a definition cannot be more succinctly given than in the following passage, extracted from Mr. Noel Humphrey's interesting work "On the Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing:"--[5]

"Nearly all the principal methods of ancient writing may be divided into square capitals, rounded capitals, and cursive letters; the square capitals being termed simply _capitals_, the rounded capitals _uncials_, and the small letters, or such as had changed their form during the creation of a running hand, _minuscule_. Capitals are, strictly speaking, such letters as retain the earliest settled form of an alphabet; being generally of such angular shapes as could conveniently be carved on wood or stone, or engraved in metal, to be stamped on coins. The earliest Latin MSS. known are written entirely in capitals, like inscriptions in metal or marble.

"The uncial letters, as they are termed, appear to have arisen as writing on papyrus or vellum became common, when many of the straight lines of the capitals, in that kind of writing, gradually acquired a _curved_ form, to facilitate their more rapid execution. However this may be, from the 6th to the 8th, or even 10th century, these uncials or partly-rounded capitals prevail.

"The modern minuscule, differing from the ancient cursive character, appears to have arisen in the following manner. During the 6th and 7th centuries, a kind of transition style prevailed in Italy and some other parts of Europe, the letters composing which have been termed _semi-uncials_, which, in a further transition, became more like those of the old Roman cursive. This manner, when definitively formed, became what is now termed the minuscule manner; it began to prevail over uncials in a certain class of MSS. about the 8th century, and towards the 10th its general use was, with few exceptions, established. It is said to have been occasionally used as early as the 5th century; but I am unable to cite an authentic existing monument. The Psalter of Alfred the Great, written in the 9th century, is in a small Roman cursive hand, which has induced Casley to consider it the work of some Italian ecclesiastic."

To return from this digression on the character of ancient handwriting, to the examples still extant of the two great sections into which the manuscripts of classical ages may be divided, I would observe, that, first in importance and interest of the first class may certainly be reckoned the Vatican square Virgil with miniatures, which has been referred by many of the best palæographers to the 3rd century. It is written throughout in majuscule Roman capitals, which, although MM. Champollion and Sylvestre[6] describe them as of an "elegant but careless form," appeared to me, when I examined the volume minutely in 1846,[7] to exhibit great care and regularity. The miniatures, many engravings from drawings traced from which are given in D'Agincourt's "Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments,"[8] are altogether classical, both in design and in the technical handling of the colours, which are applied with a free brush, and apparently in the true antique manner, _i.e._, with scarcely any previous or finishing outline. These miniatures have also been engraved by Pietro Santo Bartoli, but not with his usual accuracy of style. A complete set of coloured tracings made by him are in the British Museum (Lansdowne Coll.), but they even are not quite satisfactory. The Terence of the Vatican, which is without miniatures, is in a somewhat similar writing, and belongs to about the same period. The third in importance of the ancient Vatican manuscripts of this class, is in the rustic instead of elegant capital lettering, and is supposed to be of the 5th century; certainly not later. It is a Virgil, decorated throughout with pictures executed in apparent imitation of the square Virgil, but in a much more barbarous and lifeless style.[9] From an entry of the 13th century contained in the volume,[10] and from our knowledge of its having been long and at a remote period, preserved in France, it would appear to have belonged to the Parisian monastery of St. Denis, if not to the Saint himself.

So far as antiquity, irrespective of merit in point of illumination is concerned, the most remarkable ancient Roman manuscript[11] existing belongs to the curious class known as "Palimpsests," or books from which the colouring matter of an original writing has been discharged, in order to prepare the vellum for receiving an altogether different text, the latter being generally written at right angles to the former.[12] This precious document is the celebrated treatise "de Republicâ," by Cicero, written in uncial characters, evidently in an Augustan period, and was discovered by Cardinal Angelo Mai, under a copy of St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, made previous to the 10th century.

The Ambrosian Library at Milan contains a codex of Homer, of equal antiquity with the Cicero, with fifty-eight pictures, much in the style of the Vatican square Virgil. This important MS. has been commented upon by the same distinguished antiquary.[13]

The Vienna Roman calendar, supposed to have been executed in the 4th century, and embellished with eight allegorical figures of the months, is both an early and very important specimen of Roman illumination, not only on account of the elegance and dexterous execution of these figures, but because it is the most ancient manuscript in which anything like ornament, independent of pictured illustration of the author's text, is introduced. Of little less note in the history of art, is the celebrated Dioscorides of the same imperial library, the date of which is fixed by the fact of its being enriched with a very graceful portrait of the Empress Juliana Anicia, for whom it is known to have been written at the commencement of the 6th century. Both Lambecius[14] and D'Agincourt give various facsimiles (omitting colour) of the fine illustrations which decorate this remarkable volume.

Another 5th century Virgil of remarkable purity in the text, although without miniatures, is the well-known "Medicean" of the Laurentian Library at Florence. The Paris Prudentius, in elegant rustic capitals of the 6th century, is another fine codex of the same type. There are, in addition to those already cited, various other early texts of the classics contained in the different public libraries of Europe; and it is singular to remark, that (so far as I have been able to ascertain) none of them are embellished with those richer decorations, which appear to have been reserved after the end of the 5th century, for the great text-books of the Christian, and more particularly of the Eastern Church. Of these sacred volumes, that which is generally supposed to be the oldest complete version of the Bible in Greek,[15] is the Codex Alexandrinus of the British Museum, attributed, by consent of all the best Palæographers, to the commencement of the 5th century. It is without gold altogether, and has no other illumination than the occasional contrast of red and black inks, and a line slightly flourished, at the close of each book.[16] The next fragment of the Scriptures, in point of probable date, is the once celebrated Cottonian Genesis, or at least its ghost; for unfortunately a few charred and shrunken fragments are all that have been saved from the disastrous fire which destroyed so many of Sir Robert Cotton's precious volumes in 1731. In its original state, as we know from several collations made previous to the fire, it contained, on 165 pages, no less than 250 miniatures, each about four inches square. Astle[17] has given a facsimile of a page, which, on comparison with the existing shrivelled fragments, proves that in their present state they are just about one half their original size. The paintings are in all respects antique, and correspond in general character with contemporary secular miniatures. Dr. Waagen[18] remarks that "only the hatched gold upon the borders, the glories, and the lights on the crimson mantle indicate the commencement of Byzantine art." The great rival to the "Codex Cottonianus Geneseos" is the "Codex Vindobonensis Geneseos," which consists of twenty-six leaves with eighty-eight miniatures. It forms one of the four great lions of the Vienna Imperial Library. These two remarkable versions of Genesis are supposed to be of nearly equal date, and correspond as to the character of the truly antique miniatures very fairly; the fact, however, of the text of the English version being in black ink with very regularly-formed letters, while that of the Vienna one is, for the most part, written in gold and silver, and in less evenly-distributed characters, induces a fair presumption in favour of the greater antiquity of the Cottonian fragments. In the more gorgeous details of the Vienna Genesis, coupled with its square and unadorned classic pictures, we may thus clearly recognize the transition from our first or Latin class of ancient illumination, to our second or purely Byzantine style. We especially designate this class as "Byzantine," because as art in illumination, as in all other branches, declined in the seven-hilled city, it rose in the seat of empire founded in the East by the first great Christian emperor. It is true that ideal art degenerated almost contemporaneously in the capitals of both empires; but in decorative art, at least, there can be no question but that Byzantium gained, as Rome lost, ground. The former no doubt drew fresh inspiration from her close intercourse with the Persian and other nations of the East, while the latter was content to produce little, and that little in slavish reminiscence of the past. Italy no doubt fed the earliest monastic libraries of Western Europe with the quantities of texts of ancient authors we know them to have contained; but we may fairly assume those texts to have been but rarely illustrated, since the original styles of illumination produced in those countries to which the classic volumes travelled, would unquestionably have betrayed an antique influence more strongly than they did, had the means of deriving that influence been brought copiously within their reach.

I proceed now to a slight notice of the second class of ancient codices, that on which the ultimate splendour of the Byzantine school was founded. Fortunately, time has spared to our days several brilliant specimens of the richest of these quasi-classic manuscripts. Of such, the principal are, as Sir Frederick Madden observes,[19] "the celebrated Codex Argenteus of Ulphilas, written in silver and gold letters on a purple ground, about A.D. 360, which is, perhaps, the most ancient existing specimen of this magnificent mode of caligraphy; after it, may be instanced the copy of Genesis at Vienna," already mentioned, the Psalter of St. Germain des Prés, at Paris, and the fragment of the New Testament in the Cottonian Library, Titus C. xv., all executed in the 5th and 6th centuries.

The first-named of these contains, on about 160 leaves, a considerable portion of the four gospels, and is now preserved in the Royal Library of Upsal, in Sweden. It is the earliest version of any part of the sacred writings in the Moesogothic or ancient Wallachian dialect.[20] The second of Sir Frederick Madden's notabilities has been alluded to as of transition character. The third, the Psalter of St. Germain des Prés, is ascribed by M. Champollion Figeac, who has given a portion of it in coloured facsimile in the "Moyen Age et la Renaissance"[21] to the 6th century. It is unquestionably a beautiful specimen of gold writing on purple; but neither in the size of the letters nor in the ample spacing of the lines, will it bear comparison with the, no doubt, earlier example, the Cottonian, Titus C. xv. Our greatest authority upon all matters connected with early illuminated versions of the Holy Scriptures, Mr. Westwood, remarks, in speaking of this last-named manuscript, that "Codices purpureo-argentei are much rarer than those in golden writing, the latter material being used not only on purple, but also on white vellum; whereas the silver letters would not easily be legible except on a dark ground. The writing is in very large and massive Greek uncials; the words denoting God, Father, Jesus, Lord, Son, and Saviour, being, for dignity's sake, written in golden letters. The colour of the stain has faded into a dingy reddish purple, and the silver is greatly tarnished and turned black. This fragment is stated by Horne to be one of the oldest (if not the most ancient) manuscripts of any part of the New Testament that is extant, and is generally acknowledged to have been executed at the end of the 4th, or, at the latest, at the beginning of the 5th century."

The Vienna gold, silver, and purple Gospels, the lettering of which corresponds closely with that last described, may be regarded as certainly next in importance, and are of about equal antiquity. In none of these relics of magnificence are we enabled to trace the Eastern or Persian influence, which unquestionably imported a previously unknown originality and character into the art of Byzantium during the reign of Justinian the Great, A.D. 527 to 565. It is, no doubt, true, as Dr. Waagen remarks,[22] that "the style of painting up to his time, both in conception, form, and colour, was much the same as that which has been preserved to us in the paintings at Pompeii; while the spirit of Christianity, operating upon the artistic Greek nature, stimulated it anew to beautiful and original inventions. In a few single instances this style of art was maintained until the 10th century; but, generally speaking, a gradual degeneracy ensued, which may be dated from Justinian's period. The proportions of the figures gradually became exaggerated, elongated, the forms contracted with excessive meagreness, the motives of the drapery grew paltry, appearing either in narrow parallel folds stiffly drawn together, or so overladen with barbaric pearls and jewels as to exclude all indication of form. The flesh assumed a dark tone, the other colours became heavy, gaudy, and hard; while in glories, hatchings, and grounds, gold was called into requisition. In these qualities, united to a gloomy and ascetic character of heads, consist the elements of the Byzantine school." But, on the other hand, it is ever to be remembered that the mortification of the old flesh was but a symptom of the more active life beneath it, sloughing off the Pagan tradition, and gradually replacing it by that new and healthy Christian vigour which, for many centuries, nourished and aided the northern and western nations of Europe in their efforts to organize those national styles of Christian Art which are commonly designated as Gothic.[23]

To return to Justinian, and his direct influence on the change of style which took place during his reign, it may be noted as a curious fact, that the year in which the great Church of Sta. Sophia was commenced was the very year in which he concluded an eternal peace with Chosroes Nushirvan, king of Persia. In one or two reigns antecedent to his, Greek artists had been employed in Persia, and there had been a friendly communication between the two countries. It may be therefore assumed, that when Justinian proposed to build this structure in so short a time, he not only enlisted the ability of those about him, but that he recalled those straying Greeks who had gone to seek their fortunes in other countries. He most likely, indeed, employed not only his own subjects, but foreigners; and in that way probably a considerable portion of what no one can fail to recognize as Oriental Art, was mixed with that known as Byzantine. Certain it is that in many of the mosaic ornaments of Sta. Sophia a very marked Oriental character is still to be traced.

On a close comparison of these mosaics[24] with the unique Eusebian Canons on an entirely gold ground, two leaves of which, painted on both sides, are preserved in the British Museum (Addit. No. 5111),[25] the student will certainly, I think, be induced rather to agree with Sir Frederick Madden, in ascribing them to the 6th century, than with Dr. Waagen, who considers that they "can scarcely be older than the 9th century." To the practical illuminator, these fragments are of far higher importance than all the others to which we have as yet alluded, since, while of equal archæological interest, they constitute the earliest specimens from which really decorative illumination can be studied.[26]

Another illustration of the Eastern influence brought to bear upon Christian manuscripts of the age of Justinian, is furnished by the celebrated Syriac Gospels of the 6th century, written in the year 586 (one-and-twenty years after the emperor's death), by Rabula, a scribe in the monastery of St. John, in Zagba, a city of Mesopotamia, and now preserved in the Laurentian Library at Florence. Mr. Westwood regards this as "so important a manuscript in respect to the history of the arts of illumination and design in the East," and by reflection in the West, that he is induced[27] to give an elaborate description of its embellishments, from which the following is a short extract:--

"The first illumination represents Christ and the twelve apostles seated in a circle, with three lamps burning beneath a wide arch supported by two plain columns, with foliated capitals, and with two birds at the top. The second illumination represents the Virgin and Child standing within a double arch, the columns supporting which are tessellated, and the upper arch with several rows of zigzags, and peacocks standing at the top. The third represents Eusebius and Ammonius standing beneath a kind of tent-like canopy, supported by three columns, with undulated ornament, two peacocks with expanded tails standing at the top. The nineteen following plates are occupied by the tables of the Eusebian Canons, arranged in columns, between pillars supporting rounded arches, generally enclosed between larger and more ornamented columns supporting a large rounded arch, on the outsides of which are represented various groups of figures illustrating scriptural texts, plants, and birds. In some of these, however, the smaller arches are of the horseshoe character. The capitals are, for the most part, foliated; but in one or two they are composed of human faces, and a few of birds' heads. The arches, as well as the columns by which they are supported, are ornamented with chevrons, lozenges, nebules, quatrefoils, zigzags, flowers, fruit, birds, &c.; many of which singularly resemble those found in early Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, especially in the columns supporting the Eusebian Canons in the purple Latin Gospels of the British Museum (MS. Reg. I. E. 6). There is, however, none of the singular interlacing of the patterns so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon and Irish manuscripts."

I have dwelt thus in detail upon these Greek pictorial and decorative features, because there can be no doubt that the exportation of books so adorned, by the early missionaries, who carried Christianity and a degree of civilization to the Northern and Western countries, supplied the original types from which, however barbaric the imitations, the first attempts were made to rival, in the extreme West, the arts and spiritual graces of the East. On this plea, I hope I may be pardoned for dwelling yet further upon some of the leading distinctions between the Byzantine and Latin (that is, between the Eastern and Western) modes of working out religious conceptions, which were, that in the Western or Latin mode symbolism was universal; the art of the Catacombs was followed distinctly, though frequently remotely, developing itself in mythical and sentimental forms, and systems of parallelism between type and prototype. In the Greek Church, the exposition of faith, through art, took a more tangible form. Symbolism was avoided on all possible occasions, and the direct representation of sacred themes led to a partial transfer to the representation of the adoration due to the thing represented. Iconoclasm was the reaction to this abuse. In the advanced periods of Greek art, this realistic tendency led to a painful view of the nature of religion, more particularly in connection with the martyrdom of saints, and the physical sufferings of our Saviour and his followers, which are frequently represented in the most positive and repellent forms.

Long, however, before Byzantine Art had time to deviate much from its ancient traditions, and even while it maintained an easy supremacy over the Western empire, the Lombard kingdom, and all the Visi- and Moeso-Gothic and Frankish races, a formidable competitor for the leadership in the Art of Illumination had sprung up in the extreme West, in the island homes of the Celtic races.

It is not necessary now to prove, what historians have freely admitted, that Ireland was certainly christianized for a long time previous to the date of the mission of Augustine to England. The disputes which arose between the followers of that saint and the Irish priests, so soon as they clearly apprehended the nature of the supremacy claimed by the Church of Rome, assure us of their early isolation in the Christian world. Even in their, at first entire, and ultimately partial, rejection of the Vulgate text of the Gospels, and their retention of the older versions, from which no doubt their formulas of faith were derived, they steadily maintained their Ecclesiastical freedom from the dogmatism of Rome. As their creed was independent, so was their Art original; nothing resembling it can be traced previous to it.

Before proceeding to examine the precise form assumed by this "original art," it may be well to remind the student that, with the exception of a few manuscripts decorated in the style of the Laurentian Syriac Gospels and the British Museum golden fragments, the general character of the decoration of all writings, previous to the origination of the Celtic style in Ireland, had been limited to the use of different-coloured, golden, and silver inks, on stained purple and white vellum grounds, to the occasional enlargement of, and slight flourishing about, initial letters; to the introduction of pictures, generally square, or oblong, enclosed in plain, or slightly bordered, frames; and, occasionally, to the scattering about, throughout the volumes, of a few lines and scrolls. Let us now see--in the words of Mr. Westwood, who has done more than any previous writer had done to vindicate the honour of the Irish school of caligraphy[28]--what features of novelty it was mainly reserved for that school to originate. "Its peculiarities,"[29] he states, "consist in the illumination of the first page of each of the Sacred Books,--the letters of the first few words, and more especially the initial, being represented of a very large size, and highly ornamented in patterns of the most intricate design, with marginal rows of red dots; the classical Acanthus being never represented. The principles of these most elaborate ornaments are, however, but few in number, and may be reduced to the four following:--1st. One or more narrow ribbons, diagonally but symmetrically interlaced, forming an endless variety of patterns. 2nd. One, two, or three slender spiral lines, coiling one within another till they meet in the centre of the circle, their opposite ends going off to other circles. 3rd. A vast variety of lacertine animals and birds, hideously attenuated, and coiled one within another, with their tails, tongues, and top-knots forming long narrow ribbons irregularly interlaced. 4th. A series of diagonal lines, forming various kinds of Chinese-like patterns. These ornaments are generally introduced into small compartments, a number of which are arranged so as to form the large initial letters and borders, or tessellated pages, with which the finest manuscripts are decorated. The Irish missionaries brought their national style of art with them from Iona to Lindisfarne in the 7th century, as well as their fine, large, very characteristic style of writing; and as these were adopted by their Anglo-Saxon converts, and as most of the manuscripts which have been hitherto described are of Anglo-Saxon origin, it has been the practice to give the name of Anglo-Saxon to this style of art. Thus several of the finest facsimiles given by Astle as Anglo-Saxon, are from Irish manuscripts; and thus Sylvestre, who has copied them (without acknowledgment), has fallen into the same error; whilst Wanley, Casley, and others, appear never to have had a suspicion of the existence of an ancient school of art in Ireland."

The monks of Iona, under the great Irish saint and scribe Columba, or Columbkill, and their Anglo-Saxon disciples at Lindisfarne, under his friend St. Aidan, together with the Irish monks at Glastonbury, spread Celtic ornament in England, from whence it had, to a great extent, retired with the expulsion of the ancient British. St. Boniface, the principal awakener of Germany to Christianity, carried with him his singularly-ornamented book of Gospels, which is still preserved as a relic at Fulda. Similar evidence of the transmission of the Art prevalent during the early centuries of the Church in Ireland, to other lands, by means of the missionaries who left her shores, is to be found in the books of St. Kilian, the apostle of Franconia, still preserved at Wurtzburg; in those of St. Gall, now in the public library of St. Gall, in the canton of Switzerland which still bears his name; and in the very important series, of which Muratori has given an interesting catalogue, connected with the monastic institution founded by St. Columbanus, at Bobbio, in Italy, and now principally in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Many of these pious men were themselves scribes, and their autograph copies of the Holy Gospels are still in existence, with the name of the writers, in some cases, identifying the volumes, and absolutely fixing their date. Thus we have the Gospels of St. Columba, the Leabhar Dhimma, or Gospels of St. Dhimma MacNathi, and the MacRegol Gospels in the Bodleian Library. All of these are anterior to the 9th century, and are distinguished by an elaborate style of ornament unlike any other European type. The extent of influence exercised by these eminent men and the "Episcopi Vagantes," or missionaries, is strongly insisted upon by M. Libri, unquestionably one of the most eminent and correctly-informed bibliographers of the present day. Speaking of the latitudinarianism of some among these Christian men, he observes, "No doubt certain pious but narrow minds hoped to open the door to ecclesiastical literature only; but the exclusion sometimes pronounced against the classics was never general amongst writers who, even in their rudeness, always showed themselves imitators of antiquity. Thus we find that the celebrated manuscript of Livy, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, belonged to Sutbert, an Irish monk, one of those wandering bishops who, towards the close of the seventh century, had gone to preach Christianity, and, as it would seem also, to teach Roman history in Belgium. One cannot help remarking, that the most celebrated of these pious missionaries, St. Columbanus, laid the foundations at Luxeuil in France, at St. Gall in Switzerland, and at Bobbio in Italy, of three monasteries which afterwards became famous for their admirable manuscripts, in many of which the influence of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon schools can be recognized at a glance. The library of St. Gall is too celebrated to require mention. The Bobbio manuscripts are known everywhere by the discoveries which have been made in the _palimpsests_ which once belonged to that collection. As for the manuscripts of Luxeuil, they have been dispersed; but the specimens of them which are to be found in the Libri collection, joined to what has been published on the subject by Mabillon, O'Conor, and others, prove unanswerably that in this abbey, as well as in that of Stavelot in Belgium, and other ancient monasteries on the Continent, a school of writing and _miniature_ had sprung up as remarkable for the beauty of its caligraphy, as for the care applied to reproduce the forms of the Anglo-Irish schools."[30]

In delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing comparable to these early Irish manuscripts, and those produced in the same style in England. When in Dublin, some years ago, I had the opportunity of studying very carefully the most marvellous of all--"The Book of Kells;" some of the ornaments of which I attempted to copy, but broke down in despair. Of this very book, Mr. Westwood examined the pages, as I did, for hours together, without ever detecting a false line, or an irregular interlacement. In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying-glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements, of a slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground. No wonder that tradition should allege that these unerring lines should have been traced by angels.[31] However "angelic" the ornaments may be, but little can be said in favour of the figure subjects occasionally introduced. In some manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, in pose and motive it is generally obvious that some ancient model has been held in view; but nothing can be more barbaric than the imitation; while in the other specimens, such as the so-called autograph Gospels of St. Columba, or Columbkill, who died A.D. 594, two years before the advent of St. Augustine--the Book of St. Chads, or the Gospels of MacRegol--no such evidence of imitation is to be met with, and the figures are altogether abortive.

I was enabled some years ago, by the kindness of the Rev. J. H. Todd, the learned librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, to compare the so-called autograph Gospels of St. Columba, with the Book of Kells, which is traditionally supposed to have belonged to that saint, and remained strongly impressed with the superior antiquity of the former to the latter. The one may have been his property, and the other illuminated in his honour after his death, as was the case with the Gospels of St. Cuthbert. In none of them, at any period, were shadows represented otherwise than by apparent inlayings under the eyes and beside the nose; and yet, at the same time, the ornaments were most intricate, and often very beautiful, both in form and colour. The purple stain is frequently introduced, and is of excellent quality; but gold appears, so far as I have been able to observe, only in the Durham Book, and in that even most sparingly.[32] It is the most celebrated production of the Anglo-Hibernian monastery of Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aidan and the Irish monks of Iona, or Icolumkille, in the year 634.

St. Cuthbert, who was made bishop of Lindisfarne in 685, was renowned as well for his piety as for his learning; he died in 698, and, as a monument to his memory, his successor, Bishop Eadfrith, caused to be written this noble volume, generally called the Durham Book, and known also as St. Cuthbert's Gospels, now in the British Museum. This manuscript, surpassed in grandeur only by the Book of Kells, in the same style, was greatly enriched by Æthelwald, bishop of Lindisfarne, who succeeded Eadfrith in 721, and caused St. Cuthbert's book to be richly illuminated by the hermit Bilfrith, who prefixed an elaborate painting of an Evangelist to each of the four Gospels, and also illuminated the capital letters at the commencement of each book. The bishop caused the whole to be encased in a splendid binding of gold, set with precious stones; and in 950, a priest named Aldred rendered the book still more valuable by interlining it with a Saxon version of the original manuscript, which is the Latin text of St. Jerome.

Want of space alone prevents our following Simeon of Durham in his touching narrative of the circumstances which attended the translation of this volume, together with the body of the much-loved saint, to Durham Cathedral, in which both were long and profoundly venerated. The peculiar importance of this volume in the history of Illumination, consists in its clearly establishing, by its coincidence with earlier examples, the class of caligraphy practised by that primitive Church[33] and people, to whom Gregory the Great despatched St. Augustine, at the end of the 6th century. With the mission, which reached its destination, and effected the conversion of Ethelbert and of many of his subjects, in the year 597, Gregory forwarded certain sacred volumes, of which the following were long preserved with the greatest veneration:--A Bible in two volumes; two Psalters; two books of the Gospels; a book of Martyrology; apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and expositions of certain Epistles and Gospels.

The first--the Bible--which was beautifully written on purple and rose-coloured leaves, with rubricated capitals, was certainly in existence in the reign of James I. Mr. Westwood ("Palæographia Sacra," 1843-45) looks upon the magnificent purple Latin Gospels of the British Museum (Royal Library, 1 E 6) as "no other than the remains of the Gregorian Bible." In this, with the utmost respect for his opinion, I cannot concur, since the fragment exhibits far too many genuine Saxon features to have been possibly executed in the Eastern or Western empires previous to the date of the mission of St. Augustine. That it may have been produced in this country, in imitation of the more classical original, by the immediate followers of the saint, is, I consider, highly probable.

The second--the two Psalters--have disappeared. Several learned men have indeed looked upon the British Museum Cottonian MSS. Vesp. A 1, as one of these celebrated books, but, as I venture to think, erroneously; for it is difficult to believe that ornaments, so entirely of the Anglo-Irish school of Lindisfarne, as those which decorate this volume, could have been executed at Rome during either the 6th or even the 7th century. Nothing is more probable than that, out of the forty persons who are believed to have constituted Augustine's mission, several should have been skilled, as most ecclesiastics then were, in writing and in the embellishment of books; and in any school, established by St. Augustine for the multiplication of those precious volumes, without which ministrations and teachings in consonance with Roman dogmas could not be carried on in the new churches and monastic institutions founded among the converts, it is most likely that the native scribes, on their conversion, should be employed to write and decorate the holy texts, with every ornament excepting those of a pictorial nature. In the execution of these, they could scarcely prove themselves as skilful as the followers of St. Augustine would, from their retention of some classical traditions, be likely to be. Thus, and thus only, as I believe, can we account for the singular combination of semi-antique with Saxon writing, and of Latin body-colour pictures, executed almost entirely with the brush, and regularly shadowed (such as David with his Attendants, in the frontispiece to the Vespasian A 1 Psalter), with ornaments of an absolutely different character, such as the arch and pilaster which form the framework for this very picture of King David. Another argument, which weighs greatly in my mind against the probability of such a Psalter as Vespasian A 1 being a prototype, is the fact, that the Utrecht and Harleian Psalters, to both of which I shall have occasion again to allude, in their pictorial illustrations, present us with evident copies, in outline, of some classic coloured original; just, in fact, of such a manuscript of the Psalms as the celebrated Vatican Roll[34] is of the book of Joshua. What more likely than that one of the venerated Psalters brought from Rome should have been such a manuscript, and should have been the very one copied in the case of the Utrecht Psalter, in the "rustic capitals" of the original, and in the later Harleian replica in the current Saxon uncial?

As respects the third class of Augustinian books--the Gospels--the case is far different; for the accredited and traditional originals are, in every respect, such as would be likely to have been produced at Rome or at Constantinople, but most probably the former, during the pontificate of Gregory the Great. Fragments of the most important of these Gospels are preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. They are written in black ink generally, with occasional lines in red, in the ancient manner. Two pages only of illuminations are left, though it is evident that the volume once contained a large and complete series. The most important of these represents St. Luke, clad in tunic and toga, seated under just such a triumphal arch as is frequently to be met with in the Roman Mosaics of the 5th and 6th centuries.[35] The second illuminated page comprises a series of small square pictures, framed round with the simple red line of the oldest Latin manuscripts.

The other Augustinian fragmentary Gospel is to be found among the Hatton manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: it is without any other illumination than the contrast of red and black ink, and a few ornaments about some of the initial letters. The evidence, upon which it may be assumed that these volumes were either brought to this country by St. Augustine, or formed some of the "codices multos,"[36] sent by Gregory the Great to the mission on its establishment, rests not only upon the antiquity and purely Latin character of the fragments, but on the fact that both Gospels contain entries in Saxon of upwards of one thousand years old, connecting them with the library of the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury; and, furthermore, they correspond with the description given by a monk of that monastery, who, writing in the reign of Henry V., dwells upon the "primitie librorum totius Ecclesie Anglicane" preserved in that library, as the very Gospels in the version of St. Jerome, brought to England by St. Augustine himself.

The Martyrology, the apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and the Expositions which completed the series, cannot be now identified.