In such an essay as the present, it is quite impossible to convey any idea of the minute, but extremely interesting varieties of type adopted in Byzantine manuscripts; it must suffice to state, in general terms,—that the dispersion of many of the most skilful Greek artists, by the iconoclastic emperors (commencing with Leo the Isaurian, A.D. 726), gave a great impetus to the arts of design in those countries in which they took refuge, and no doubt contributed specially to the improvements effected under Charlemagne,—that on the abandonment of such religious persecutions, in the middle of the 9th century, a fresh start appears to have been taken,[[58]]—and that from the date of that revival, which may be specially noted under the reign of Basil the Macedonian, until about the year 1200, many very noble and dignified pictures[[59]] were executed. From the last-named era, until the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, although the treatment of figure-subjects became more and more weak and mannered, much beautiful ornament was painted upon gold grounds, and the influence originally communicated to Arabian art from the Eastern Empire, was reflected back upon its later productions from the contemporary schools of Saracenic and Moorish decoration.[[60]] It is scarcely necessary to remark, that in all these inflexions of style the Russian, Syrian, and Armenian illuminators closely followed the example set them by the Byzantine scribes and painters.
Returning from the East to the extreme west of Europe, it is worthy of note how entirely the primitive Saxon styles, which wrought so important an influence upon the rest of Europe, were lost in the country from which they had been mainly promulgated. The successive social and political changes wrought by the ascendancy of the Danes, and ultimately of the Normans, put an almost total stop to Saxon illumination; and so complete was the abandonment of the Saxon character, that Ingulphus, in describing the fire which destroyed the noble library of his abbey at Croyland, in the year 1091, after dwelling on the splendour of the "chirographs written in the Roman character, adorned with golden crosses and most beautiful paintings," and especially "the privileges of the kings of Mercia, the most ancient and the best, in like manner beautifully executed with golden illuminations, but written in the Saxon character," goes on to state: "All our documents of this kind, greater and less, were about four hundred in number; and in one moment of a most dismal night, they were destroyed and lost to us by this lamentable misfortune. A few years before, I had taken from our archives a good many chirographs, written in the Saxon character, because we had duplicates, and in some cases triplicates, of them; and had given them to our cantor, Master Fulmar, to be kept in the cloister, to help the juniors to learn the Saxon character, because that letter had for a long while been despised and neglected by reason of the Normans,[[61]] and was now known only to a few of the more aged; that so the younger ones, being instructed to read this character, might be more competent to use the documents of their monastery against their adversaries in their old age."
| Historical Manual. | Plate No IV. |
| XIITH Century. | |
From British Museum, Reg I. C. VII.
| Historical Manual. Outline for coloring. | Plate No V. |
| XIITH Century. | |
From British Museum, Reg I. C. VII.
The Normans, a warlike but unlettered race, did but little for the first century after the Conquest, to restore the taste for learning which they and the Danes had displaced. While English progress in illumination was thus comparatively paralyzed, in France and Germany new styles, corresponding with those known in architecture as Romanesque, rapidly sprang into popularity. Of the leading decorative features of such styles, as well as of the corresponding alphabets and initial letters, we have endeavoured to give some elegant reductions in plates [4], [5], and [6] of this manual, and in plates [4], [5], and [6] of its technical companion. The illustrations in the former have been taken from the British Museum, "Reg. 1, C. VII.," a folio MS., of bold rather than beautiful execution, but containing throughout many well-designed initial letters and ornaments. The volume comprises the vulgate version of the books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, and it is believed by Sir Frederick Madden, no doubt the most competent judge in this country, to have been executed about the middle of the 12th century. The materials for the plates in the Technical Manual, Nos. [4], [5], and [6] have been gleaned from a manuscript of rather later date, preserved in the Harleian Collection, Nos. 2803 and 2804. There can be little doubt that the numerous ornaments which decorate this great Bible were the work of German industry, for, independently of the evidences of style offered by the writing and illumination, an entry in the volume informs us that it once belonged to the church of the Blessed Virgin, in one of the suburbs of Worms. All of the ornaments in this series of illustrations show a manifest disposition on the part of their designers to break away from the rigidity of pure convention into a class of foliation, which, if not directly copied from nature, at least recalls the general aspect of her germinating, growing, and, finally, luxuriant forms of vegetation. The combination, with reminiscences of Carlovingian knotted ends to the initial letters, of foliated ornament, during the 12th century, may be frequently found developed, in Germany especially, into a fresh luxuriant, and complete system. The complicated conventionality of foliage shown in many Teutonic manuscripts, and greatly encouraged by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, A.D. 1152 to 1190, was never entirely abandoned by the Germans in their ornament; and at the end of the 13th and early part of the 14th centuries, when France and England were successfully imitating nature, they continued to cling to that peculiarly crabbed style of crinkled foliation, which they reluctantly abandoned only in the 17th century.
With the accession of the Plantagenets, in 1154, and especially through the marriage of Henry II. with Eleanor of Guienne, French influence acquired a marked predominance in English illumination; and for about one hundred years from that date, the progress of style in England and France was parallel and almost identical. Gradually, in each, the Romanesque features disappeared, and by the middle of the 13th century, the fulness of mediæval illumination, as reflecting the perfection of Gothic architecture, was attained. The rapid growth of the Dominican and Franciscan orders during the first half of the century, and their eagerness to dispel the drowsiness into which the old well-to-do monastic establishments were fast slipping, gave a new life to all arts, including, of course, that of the transcription and illumination of the sources of learning, and in those days, consequently, of power.