ENGLISH ILLUMINATION FROM THE TENTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Organisation of the Monastic scriptoria—Professional outsiders: lay artists—The whole sometimes the work of the same practitioner—The Winchester Abbeys of St. Swithun's and Hyde—Their vicissitudes—St. Alban's—Westminster—Royal MS. 2 A. 22—Description of style—The Tenison Psalter—Features of this period—The Arundel Psalter—Hunting and shooting scenes, and games—Characteristic pictures, grotesques, and caricatures—Queen Mary's Psalter—Rapid changes under Richard II.—Royal MS. 1 E. 9—Their cause.
In a former chapter we left our native schools of illumination at work on such MSS. as the Devonshire and Rouen Benedictionals, and with the reputation of being the best schools of the kind in Christendom. Mention also is made elsewhere in dealing with monastic art of the usages of the scriptoria. Such usages, of course, could only obtain in houses where scribes themselves were to be had. Hence we should discover, were it not otherwise known, that writing and illumination, even in the monastic age, were not confined absolutely to the cloister.
With respect to the secular scribes, who sometimes worked in the monastery, sometimes at their own homes, in those days when the monastic orders still did most of the book-production, there were three classes of specialists. These were the Librarii or ordinary copyists; the Notarii or law-scribes, whose business lay in copying deeds, charters, and such-like instruments, and taking notes in the courts; and Paginators or Illuminatores. It sometimes happened, as we have said, that in some monastery or other, no monastic was found qualified to undertake any of these duties. It then fell to the prior or abbat to seek the assistance of professional outsiders. The paging and rubrication, putting in initials in the spaces left by the common scribe, and, if needed, the addition of pictures or marginal drawings and ornaments, caricatures, heraldic illustrations, etc., were the proper work of the illuminator, but it often happened that the same man had to do the whole work from the commencement to the finish. The Chronicon Trudonense tells us: “Graduale unum propria manu formavit, purgavit, pinxit, sulcabit, scripsit, illuminavit, musiceque notavit syllabatim.” Several of our old English chronicles, of which the MSS. exist in the British Museum and elsewhere, seem to be of this description.
Reference has been made to the scriptoria at Winchester, i.e. at St. Swithun's and the New Minster. It is the latter foundation which is usually referred to in speaking of Winchester work. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity or the New Minster was founded in the first year of his reign by King Edward, son of Alfred, no doubt in obedience to his father's wish, if not absolutely in the terms of his will. Its first charter is dated 900 (for 901) and the second in 903. In the latter document the abbey is spoken of as dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to St. Peter, and is amply endowed under the Augustinian Rule. In 965, not without trouble and resistance, it was converted into a Benedictine abbey. In 968 Ethelgar, who had been trained at Glastonbury and Abingdon, became abbat, and from this time the New Minster became famous for both discipline and the production of MSS. As we walk along the High Street of Winchester now we find the story in moss-grown stones or other memorials how, among other methods, William the Norman punished the monks for their English warlike proclivities by walling them up nearly close to their church with the walls of his royal palace. In the old time, when the two monasteries stood side by side—St. Swithun's is close behind the New Minster—“so closely packed together,” says the old chronicler,[37] “were the two communities of St. Swithun and St. Peter that between the foundation of their respective buildings there was barely room for a man to pass along. The choral service of one monastery conflicted with that of the other, so that both were spoiled, and the ringing of their bells together produced a horrid discord.” The result of this was, first the above-mentioned hemming in of the younger establishment and eventually its migration to another site in Hyde Meadow. Here while the monastic buildings suffered much through fires and other disasters, the Rule remained until 1538, when it was surrendered into the King's hands, and the abbat, prior, and nineteen monks, the last survivors of this once-famous foundation, were pensioned.
[37] Dugdale, Monasticon.
The scriptorium at St. Alban's, to which the fame of book production in the Middle Ages very largely reverted, was not founded until nearly three centuries after the foundation of that abbey. The library began with twenty-eight notable volumes, and eight Psalters, a book of collects, another of epistles, and Evangelia legenda per annum, two Gospel-books bound in gold and silver and set with gems, together with other necessary volumes for ordinary use. Almost every succeeding abbat contributed something to the library shelves. Geoffrey, the sixteenth abbat, a Norman who once had a school at Dunstable, and who was both a popular and liberal ruler, enriched the library with a Missal bound in gold, another incomparably illuminated and beautifully written, and also a Psalter richly illuminated, a Benedictional, and others. His successor, Ralph Gubiun, also gave a number of MSS. Robert de Gosham, the next abbat, gave “very many” books, which he had caused to be written and sumptuously bound for the purpose. And Abbat Simon, who followed in 1166, created the office of historiographer to the abbey, repaired and enlarged the scriptorium, and kept two or three of the cleverest writers constantly employed in transcription, and ordained that for the future every abbat should maintain at least one suitable and capable scribe. Among the many choice MSS. added by Abbat Simon was a beautiful copy of the Bible specially written with the greatest care and exactness. In addition he presented the library with all his own precious collection. Another liberal benefactor was John de Cell, a man of vast learning in grammar and poetry, and also a practitioner in medicine. Being unfit for household management, he committed the secular affairs of the abbey to his prior Reymund, by whose zeal many noble and valuable books were transcribed for the library. And so grew in magnitude and importance the great collection which supplied Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris with materials for their famous histories. St. Alban's, indeed, was at one period perhaps the most noted of all the English centres of book production. To dilate on other centres, such as Westminster, Exeter, Worcester, Norwich, or York, would lead us too far afield for a mere handbook like the present. Enough has been said to give a good idea of what our English abbats and priors were in the habit of doing for art and letters.
PSALTERIUM CUM CANTICIS
A.D. 1240
Brit. Mus. Roy. MS. 2, A. xxii, fol. 14
