| No weariness. |
No weariness.The importance of this fact is very clearly seen when we compare one of the earlier monastic manuscripts with one of the fifteenth century French or Flemish Books of Hours, executed by a professional secular scribe. Thus in the older manuscripts the firmness of line and delicate, crisp touch never relaxes, and the artist's evident sense of power and the joy in his manual dexterity lasts without diminution from the first to the last page of his book.
| Variety of labour. |
Variety of labour.Additional beauty is given to the mediaeval manuscripts by the fact that each scribe commonly did much important work in the preparation of his inks and pigments; in some cases even to the beating out of the gold leaf he was about to use in his miniatures and borders[[211]]. No colours bought of a dealer in a commercial age could ever equal in beauty or in durability the pigments that an illuminator made or at least prepared for his own use. And his command over the materials of his art would greatly enhance his pleasure in using them, to say nothing of the relief given by the variety of his labours.
| Varied schemes of ornament. |
Varied schemes of ornament.All these influences, combined with others which it might be wearisome to dwell upon, combined to make the manuscripts of the pre-commercial period works of the most unvarying perfection of technique, unspeakably rich in the varied wealth of fancy shown in their decorative schemes, as well as in the minute detail of each part. The illuminated ornament in one place is concentrated into a gem-like miniature within the narrow limit of a small initial letter. At another place it spreads out into the splendour of a full-page picture, which swallows up most of the text, and covers the whole page with one mass of burnished gold and brilliant colour. Or again, springing from its roots in an illuminated capital, it grows over the margin and frames the text with a mass of richly designed and exquisitely graceful foliage.
Every possible scheme of decoration is to be found in these manuscripts; but in all cases the illuminator is careful to make his painted ornament grow out of and form, as it were, an integral part of the written text, which thus becomes not merely a book ornamented with pictures, but is a close combination of writing and illumination, forming one harmonious whole in a united scheme of decorative beauty[[212]].
| Monastic Scriptoria. |
Monastic Scriptoria.The Scriptoria of Monasteries. As I have previously mentioned, it was more especially the Benedictine monasteries[[213]] that were the centres for the production of mediaeval manuscripts[[214]]. I will therefore describe the usual arrangements of the Scriptorium in a Benedictine House.
In early times, in the eighth and ninth centuries for example, the Scriptorium and library appear usually to have been a separate room, near or over the Sacristy, and adjoining the Choir of the church[[215]].