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

by Bernard Quaritch

In the minuscule writing of Greek, which is usually supposed to have come into use about the end of the eighth century, there never was the same calligraphical character as the uncials of an earlier time had exhibited, nor the same desire to attain symmetrical beauty as was shown over and over again in the manuscripts of Western Europe. The best writing of Greek minuscules belongs to the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, in which a sufficient amount of practice had been gained to ensure regularity of form. A specimen of such writing, executed towards the end of the tenth century, probably in Cyprus, will be found in [Plate 6]. From the eleventh century to the sixteenth all minuscule writing in Greek looks like a free cursive written without any calligraphical ambition, and it became more and more ungraceful as time went on. The value of Greek MSS., however, depends more upon their contents than upon their beauty, and frequently the roughest-looking piece of work may command an interest far greater than attaches to the splendid penmanship of the west.

The recently discovered "Gospel of Peter" is in a curious primitive minuscule hand, which the editor of the facsimile, Oscar von Gebhardt, ascribes hesitatingly to the eighth or ninth century, as had already been done by H. Omont. It would not be surprising if other scholars were to assign it to the seventh century, and thereby throw back the age of Greek minuscule writing to a century or more behind the date usually fixed for it. The mingling in that curious Christian document of many uncial forms, with a set of minuscular letters that betray a want of familiarity with set minuscules, seems to prove that the book is older than the eighth century. This observation is made, not from any desire to be critical, but simply in order to show that the question of age, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, is a thing which is still not finally settled.

The Tenth Century

The Irish school of writing, after its triumphs of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, lost much of its home-life in the midst of the struggles with the Norsemen. In England and on the continent its influence was still felt for some time longer; even in the thirteenth century many of the Psalters produced by English illuminators have the initial letter B decorated in the style adopted from the Irish six centuries before. Irish MSS. of any age are excessively rare; even the comparatively worthless transcripts of the eighteenth century are in no inconsiderable request.

The English school continued to blend its Irish style of writing with the illustrative pictures and borders which may have been entirely of native production in the eighth century, as was seemingly the fact, or may have originated from the artistic tendencies of Frankish Gaul, as has already been surmised. They were, in any case, influenced to some degree by examples of late Roman work, introduced by the Italian missionaries who came to convert the Saxons of South England after the Angles of the north had been converted by the Irish monks of Iona. It was really this English phase of decorative art which blossomed into Anglo-Norman in the twelfth century.

The French schools were still Carolingian and splendid, but their pre-eminence was not maintained after the breaking up of the empire of Charles the Great. The revolutions of the ninth century led to the making of nations. France ceased to be the Gallo-Roman province of a Frankish monarchy. A French language and a French nation emerged into existence in the tenth century, but the grand ornamental and calligraphic work of the Franco-Gallic time was no longer equalled. The Caroline writing, which attained its greatest beauty about the middle of the ninth century, gradually lost its elegant boldness, tending towards angularity and crampness when the eleventh century had begun.

Scandinavian Writing

The Scandinavian countries have not yet been alluded to specifically. The immense quantity of Runic monuments found in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, of all ages, and in England, of and after the Norse period, proves that Runic writing was almost exclusively Scandinavian. There is now no question as to the actual origin of the Runic alphabets. They came into existence, as already said, by reason of the necessities of the amber-traffic between the coast of the Baltic and the Crimea long before the time of Christ; but what has survived belongs to the monuments of the North. The real age of the extant runes does not probably exceed the fifth century. That they were prized as national characteristics seems to be proved by their continued use among the Northmen, even after they had come into collision with a superior civilisation in the British isles.

Christianity was not so easily adopted in Scandinavia as in some other countries. From the time of the first mission to its ultimate triumph at least two centuries elapsed, and the result might have been still further delayed if it had not been for the example of two royal proselytes, Olaf Trygvason and St. Olaf, who belong to the first half of the eleventh century. With the first introduction of Christianity, the Norse people also received the script which they had found in use in England. The colonisers of Iceland, in the ninth and tenth centuries, carried with them the language and the writing of Scandinavia; and it was probably the remoteness of that island from Norway which has caused the preservation in it, down to the present day, of the old Norse tongue (little modified by age) and the Anglo-Saxon letters of the tenth century.

In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the influence of North Germany prevailed in time over old national tradition, and the gothic hand of the thirteenth century took the place of the special alphabet. By the time of the Reformation the writing in Scandinavia had been wholly Teutonised (with some exceptions too slight to need mention). The most remarkable part of the change was the exclusion of the th letter from the script of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This tendency, which had for centuries been in growth, had the remarkable effect of practically confining the old Norse literature to Iceland, and of making it the apparent home of all the poems and Sagas which Norway had produced. It was at least the home of most of the literary men who in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries wrote for the delight of their kinsmen, in both Norway and Iceland. The great literary activity in Iceland, at that time and afterwards, produced a large quantity of MSS., usually written on vellum, and rudely decorated with painted initials; but of those which remained in the country most have perished. A relatively considerable number were, however, carried to Denmark in the sixteenth and later centuries, and have been preserved in museums. Very few yet remain in circulation, unsecured by public appropriation.