The Norman Conquest opened up the English school of art more widely to continental influence, with the result that towards the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries the English manuscripts were unsurpassed by any in Europe. As a typical specimen of the illuminations of this period, we may with propriety select one which has been described by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson as “the very finest of its kind,” and “probably unique in its combination of excellence of drawing, brilliance of illumination, and variety and extent of subjects.” It is a Psalter dating from the fourteenth century, and known as Queen Mary's Psalter, because a customs officer of the port of London, who intercepted it as it was about to be taken out of the country, presented it to the Queen in 1553. This magnificent book is now in the British Museum.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a large number of Bibles and Psalters were written, and made up the greater part of the book-output of the larger monasteries, to which we are indebted for all our fine pieces of manuscript work. Indeed, most of the decorated manuscripts of this period are occupied with the Scriptures, services, liturgies, and other matters of the kind, and on such the best work was lavished. Later, however, the growing taste for romances and stories induced a corresponding tendency to decorate these secular manuscripts too, and some very fine work of this class was produced, especially in France. The books of the chronicles of England and of France, written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were also largely adorned with painted miniatures.
Nearly all the writing of Europe was done in the religious houses. In most of the larger monasteries there was a scriptorium, or writing-room, where Bibles, Psalters, and service books, and patristic and classical writings were transcribed, chronicles and histories compiled, and beautiful specimens of the illuminator's art carefully, skilfully, and lovingly executed.
Books, however, were not only written in the monasteries, but read as well. The rule of St Benedict insisted that the steady reading of books by the brethren should form part of the daily round. Archbishop Lanfranc, also, in his orders for the English Benedictines, directed that once a year books were to be distributed and borrowed volumes to be restored. For this purpose, the librarian was to have a carpet laid down in the Chapter House, the monks were to assemble, and the names of those to whom books had been lent were to be read out. Each in turn had to answer to his name, and restore his book, and he who had neglected to avail himself of his privilege, and had left his book unread, was to fall on his face and implore forgiveness. Then the books were re-distributed for study during the ensuing year. This custom was generally followed by all the monasteries of Lanfranc's time.
Richard Aungervyle, Bishop of Durham, born in 1281 at Bury St Edmund's, and therefore usually known as Richard de Bury, gives a vivacious picture of the attitude of a book-lover of the Middle Ages in his Philobiblon, or Lover of Books. He there sings the praises of books, and voices their lament over their ill-treatment by degenerate clerks and by the unlearned. He also tells how he gathered his library, which was then the largest and best in England. Philobiblon is written in vigorous and even violent language, and is worth quoting.
Books, according to this extravagant eulogy, are “wells of living water,” “golden urns in which manna is laid up, or rather, indeed, honeycombs,” “the four-streamed river of Paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the arid intellect moistened and watered.” “You, O Books, are the golden vessels of the temple, the arms of the clerical militia, with which the missiles of the most wicked are destroyed, fruitful olives, vines of Engedi, fig-trees knowing no sterility, burning lamps to be ever held in the hand.”
Then the books are made to utter their plaint because of the indignity to which they are subjected by the degenerate clergy. “We are expelled from the domiciles of the clergy, apportioned to us by hereditary right, in some interior chamber of which we had our peaceful cells; but, to their shame, in these nefarious times we are altogether banished to suffer opprobrium out of doors; our places, moreover, are occupied by hounds and hawks, and sometimes by a biped beast: woman, to wit …; wherefore this beast, ever jealous of our studies, and at all times implacable, spying us at last in a corner, protected only by the web of some long-deceased spider, drawing her forehead into wrinkles, laughs us to scorn, abuses us in virulent speeches, points us out as the only superfluous furniture in the house, complains that we are useless for any purpose of domestic economy whatever, and recommends our being bartered away forthwith for costly head dresses, cambric, silk, twice-dipped purple garments, woollen, linen, and furs.”
After this terrible picture of feminine ignorance and malevolence, it is refreshing to turn to the achievements of the pious Diemudis, by way of contrast. Diemudis was a nun of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, who lived in the eleventh century. Nuns are not often referred to as writers, but of this lady it is recorded that she wrote “in a most beautiful and legible character” no less than thirty-one books, some of which were in two, three, and even six volumes. These she transcribed “to the praise of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of this monastery.”
Although the greater part of the book-writing of this time was done in the monasteries and by monks and ecclesiastics, there were also secular professional writers, a class who had followed this occupation from very early days. They consisted of antiquarii, librarii, and illuminators, though sometimes the functions of all three were performed by one person. They were employed chiefly by the religious houses, to assist in the transcription and restoration of their books, and by the lawyers, for whom they transcribed legal documents. The antiquarii were the highest in rank, for their work did not consist merely of writing or copying, but included the restoration of faulty pages, the revision of texts, the repair of bindings, and other delicate tasks connected with the older and more valuable books which could not be entrusted to the librarii or common scribes. On the whole, the production of books was more of an industry in those days than we should believe possible, unless we admit that the Dark Ages were not quite as dark as they have been painted. “There was always about us in our halls,” says Richard de Bury, who no doubt was a munificent patron of all scribes and book-workers, “no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and generally of all such persons as were qualified to labour in the service of books.”
Books of a great size were frequently monuments of patience and industry, and sometimes half a lifetime was devoted to a single volume. Books therefore fetched high prices, though they were not always paid for in money. In 1174 the Prior of St Swithun's, Winchester, gave the Canons of Dorchester in Oxfordshire, for Bede's Homilies and St Augustine's Psalter, twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of St Birinus' conversion of the Saxon King Cynegils. A hundred years later a Bible “fairly written,” that is, finely written, was sold in this country for fifty marks, or about £33. At this period a sheep cost one shilling. In the time of Richard de Bury a common scribe earned a halfpenny a day. About 1380 some of the expenses attending the production of an Evangeliarium, or book of the liturgical Gospels, included thirteen and fourpence for the writing, four and threepence for the illuminating, three and fourpence for the binding, and tenpence a day for eighteen weeks, in all fifteen shillings, for the writer's “commons,” or food.