Palæography / Notes upon the History of Writing and the Medieval Art of Illumination

by Bernard Quaritch

The Visigothic script had certainly not yet come into existence when the kingdom of Alaric had its capital at Toulouse in the fifth century. After the Franks had driven the Goths southward, and the monarchy was established in Spain (incorporating the Suabians, who had held a separate state in Portugal), we may suppose that the Visigothic hand was derived from that of the Ostrogoths, and used in the service of the Gothic monarchs until their dynasty was destroyed by the Saracenic conquest in 713. From that time onwards to the twelfth century it was employed in all the Christian lands of Spain, although, as in Italy, the Carolingian script began to be introduced in the ninth century. The two kinds of writing went on side by side, the Carolingian always gaining ground as time went on, until in the thirteenth century Spain fell into line with the other countries of Europe in adopting a sort of French "angular gothic."

The Carolingian Renewal

The renewal of art and learning in Gaul in the second half of the eighth century is ascribed to the patronage of Karl the Great and his descendants. He was a man of extraordinary gifts, and few figures of equal majesty have ever appeared on the stage of history. King of the Franks and the Lombards, Roman Emperor of the West, a great conqueror, a wise statesman, and a man of learning, he has left his name even in the annals of palæography. It can hardly have been in the beautiful Roman handwriting which is called after him that he transcribed the Frankish ballads or set down the rules of Frankish grammar, as he is said to have done. He was fond of practising with his pen, but, as Eginhart says, the study was begun too late in life to be cultivated with success. He had excellent taste, however, and bestowed generous rewards upon the calligraphers who worked for him. His usual home was at Aachen, and his palace there contained a library and a scriptorium, in which scribes were always busy. A greater school of calligraphy was in the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours, directed by the famous Alcuin, under the Emperor's patronage. It was at Tours, undoubtedly, that the Carolingian writing reached the stage at which it became the model for all succeeding time, and Alcuin was almost certainly the man who introduced the Irish-Saxon fashion of decorative ornament, as practised in York when he resided there with Archbishop Egbert. A great deal of the learning which (with some latitude of phraseology) has been attributed above to the Emperor, was due to the frequent lectures upon all branches of science which Alcuin was in the habit of delivering when he and his patron were together—usually at Aachen. Karl did not spend much of his leisure time in the France which regards him as her own prince. He is believed to have founded the University of Paris, but he did not regard the city on the Seine as equal to Rome or Arles. It was not included in the twenty-one metropolitan cities of his empire.

Wherever the movement arose which produced the beauty of Carolingian work, we can have no difficulty in declaring it to have been in central or Southern France, not in the Rhenish territories. That contemporary calligraphers would have followed the lead was to be expected, whether they worked at Aachen or at Metz, or at Trier or elsewhere; but the real perfection of the style must have been attained in those parts of France which were most nearly connected with Provence. The uncials of Carolingian work were imitated from Roman work of the fifth century, the capitals from Roman inscriptions of the empire, and the minuscules were improved from the two contemporary Italian scripts in which they were found, that is the Papal Roman and the Gotho-Lombard. The art was cultivated (and we may allow that it had been so cultivated for many years before Alcuin's arrival) so carefully that a fine æsthetic sense had arisen, and every letter of all three kinds was drawn with an elegant simplicity and truth which the world has never ceased to admire. The letters are upright and wholly without angularities, and are quite free from the mannerisms by which in the two Gothic hands of the time certain unessential portions of the outline were dwelt upon and made over-prominent, to the deterioration of the graphic form. Fine as the writing is in the time of the great Emperor, it is still finer throughout the half century or so which followed his death, in all the Gallic centres.

At the same time, the decoration of manuscripts, otherwise remarkable for their calligraphical excellence, with illuminated initials, border ornamentation, and miniatures resembling in character those of the Anglo-Saxon school but infused to a greater degree with the feeling and the style of late classical art, render the Carolingian French school of the ninth century one of the most splendid in the history of palæography.

The scripts of Spain and Italy lived on for centuries uncorrected in certain peculiarities by the example of Carolingian writing, but gradually drawing nearer, and visibly improved in manner. This was brought about by the introduction into both countries of pure Carolingian work, practised simultaneously with the native styles, and constantly increasing in influence. In England the Carolingian type won but little ground, notwithstanding the Romanising tendencies of Winchester and Canterbury and the Southern monasteries in general. It was not till the tenth century that certain signs of Carolingian influence are seen in the writing of Latin charters, and it was only in the twelfth century that the handwriting of Northern France and of England began to take an identical character. In Germany, of course, Carolingian writing was an inheritance, but it was never cultivated with the same elegance as in France. The letters began gradually to slope and grow narrow, and to take small projections at the extremities which by and bye became medieval gothic forms.

A Review at the standpoint of the Ninth Century

The middle ages began with the establishment of barbarian monarchies over the area of the Roman empire of the west; and with the middle ages began the final and the most important chapter in the history of manuscripts. The study of manuscripts, for most persons, is confined to the period between the twelfth century and the sixteenth; since it is not given to everyone to make pilgrimages to the museums scattered over Europe, for the purpose of looking at the earlier and rarer examples of writing. Besides, the chief interest of the study lies rather in the decoration than the calligraphy of manuscripts; and it was not till the fourteenth century that the production of such work became so large and general as to leave a sufficient number of specimens readily accessible to modern inspection. The history of illuminated manuscripts begins in Ireland in the sixth century, that first phase being the application to written books of a system of Oriental decorative ornament which had previously been confined to architectural work. It spread into England in the seventh century, a little later into Gaul and Germany, and a new phase began in the eighth century by a happy combination of Romanesque pictorial design with the more purely decorative features of barbaric art. In the ninth century England and central France were easily ahead of all the other barbarian states. In Germany, in Aquitaine, in Spain, and in Northern Italy, the same system was followed, but with a prevailing stamp of barbarism, especially in the design of the human figure, which affords a striking contrast to the refined luxury of Carolingian art and the more sober splendour of English work. The only parallel was in Byzantium and Alexandria, where a similar combination had led to a nearly similar effect, with this difference however, that the decorative illumination was a far less prominent feature than the pictorial designs. Roman Italy and Roman Provence still kept aloof from the new movement. The classical traditions which survived there permitted the production of MSS. written in gold, and perhaps also illustrated with pictures, such as had constituted the splendour of books in the first five centuries; but the immixture of decorative patterns from architectural design, which formed the art of illumination, was a thing of alien character to the taste of the older school. Examples of course were produced both in Rome itself and in Provence of the new mode of illumination, but they are to be ascribed to the barbarian element which was encroaching there as elsewhere, and which finally triumphed.

Byzantine Work

The traditions of classical art, which had begun to grow weaker in Byzantium even before the seventh century, had faded away when the Eastern Emperor lost all hold upon Italy. Not Athens, nor Rome, but Memphis, seemed to inspire the later æstheticism of Byzantine art; and the Greek emperors, from the ninth century onwards, appeared to be the successors rather of a line of Ptolemies than of Cæsars. When we contrast the sculptures of ancient Greece, the designs upon Græco-Roman coins, and the pictures in Pompeii, with the work of Byzantine illuminators, we are inevitably reminded that the word Greek is rarely appropriate in connexion with MSS. There is very little of true Greek in the artistic features of Thraco-Græcian or Ægypto-Græcian work; and it is not to real Greeks or to real Romans that we owe the handsome Roman and the handsome Hellenic type in which the texts of the ancient classics are now printed.