Another splendid relique of this artist consists of a large miniature of the crucifixion, executed for Gregory XIII.; it was brought from the Vatican during the campaigns in Italy, in the time of the French Revolution, by the Abbé Celotti. He was called the Michael Angelo of painters, and died in 1578, at the advanced age of eighty. His last days were spent in peace, as Vasari tells us "he does not study or do anything, but seek the salvation of his soul by good works, and a life spent wholly apart from mundane affairs." Godefroy and Dutillet were two distinguished French illuminators of the sixteenth century, and Johan Banzel of Ulm, is the one with whom Vasari concludes his anecdotes of painting. This list is scanty enough, and there can be no doubt that hundreds of names have sunk in the oblivion of the times; devotees to this beautiful art, and victims to the negligence with which the art-historians of the times treated their labors; they slumber in their unknown graves, but their works exist to the admiration and speculation of modern times. We have given a very cursory and rapid review of the rise and development of this most beautiful art; the most beautiful thing that mediaeval Christianity has bequeathed to us. We have endeavored also to give a few names of such of our countrymen who excelled in its exercise, and it only remains to say a few words upon its use, as a work of refined piety, before we proceed to glean a few historical lessons as to the doctrinal development of the church, to be drawn from these art expressions of different periods, for there is nothing upon which a nation or a community stamps the characteristics of its individuality more clearly than upon its art.
These illuminations have a great historical value, as evidences of the life of the times. Were it not for them the past as a life would be lost to us. We should be almost ignorant of the modes and manners of existence of our ancestors. We might have descriptive representations of the deeds they did, but their customs, their habits, their amusements, and their interior existence would have been lost to us forever. It is that which enables us to put as it were a soul into history, to revive a past life in our minds, to resuscitate it, and make it live again before us; all this, but for the preservation of illuminated MSS., would have been irretrievably lost. It is from them alone we can see the customs of the domestic life of our ancestors, their habits at home, at table, in the field, in society, for those pictures, though executed to represent a life of Eastern and Biblical incident, have this peculiarity about them, that the paraphernalia of the scenes are in keeping with the times of their execution; so that unconsciously these monks, when decorating their psalters and their missals, have handed down to us the very best illustration of the written history of their times. [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: I know of no better evidence of the value of these MSS. than the excellent and valuable work compiled by Mr. Thomas Wright, a great authority on Saxon antiquities, called The Domestic Manners and Sentiments of the Middle Ages in England. The work is compiled principally from these sources, the illustrations are copied from ancient MSS., and it contains a repertoire of nearly all that can be gleaned from them, forming a picture of the life of Saxons, Normans, and early English, as it was sketched by themselves—a most valuable work, both for the historian and general reader.]
We have hitherto reviewed this labor as a work of art, but we must not forget its higher and nobler motive. Art may be kindled by the fire of ambition or the love of gain, but the motive which inspired the monastic illuminator was a far higher one. Whatever we may think of what we sometimes call the folly of spending years in illustrating a gospel or a psalter, we must be driven to the conclusion that as these monks were situated, it was a work of devotion. No other feeling could prompt them to give their lives to such a labor, because it was labor unrequited. In our times, or in fact in all times, men will accomplish marvels for money, but these men were paid nothing for their labor, not even the flattery of admiration. In the [{314}] early periods of the art, it is true that in one or two cases an illuminator was made an abbot or a bishop, but those cases were so exceptional that scarcely half a dozen instances could be found in history of such honor being conferred upon an obscure monastic artist. The works over which they spent their long days and longer nights were sent into the church for use; gems of art they were, but exhibited to no public admiration, to no applauding critics; there they lay hidden in monastic libraries, in church vestries, in convent chests, to moulder in obscurity for the amusement and commercial speculation of an after age, when the life they embellished had died out in the world, and it should become impossible to ascertain the names of the men whose busy fingers were plied with such magic skill. Nothing but devotion could have prompted such labor as that, and how are we to say that in the eyes of the Almighty the devotion which could spend years lovingly over the embellishment of a gospel, to illustrate it with the choicest productions of genius, and to offer up to it all that was beautiful and good in thought, fancy, and execution—how are we to say that such an offering may not have been, under the circumstances in which they were placed, as acceptable in the eyes of God as the limited devotion of modern life, with its mechanical modes, its periodical days of worship, amid long intervals of sin? The devotion of modern times may sometimes manifest itself in the erection of hospitals and churches, but we are not always sure that such deeds are free from the taint of ostentation of wealth or jealousy of hated heirs—to flaunt the one or to balk the others; but the devotion which found vent in missal-painting and copying the scriptures by hand in the dark ages must have been pure; for we cannot, even by the most prejudiced investigation, discover any sordid or ambitious motive for it. Where there is no payment we may rest assured that labor is a labor of love. The best proof of the fact is the difficulty to get people to illuminate missals now. It was an exquisitely beautiful art, and ought not to have died out so completely. Latterly however, in the church, to the scandal of vigilant Protestants, there has been a sort of attempt at a revival of mediaevalism; it has become the vogue to appeal to the fathers to sing mediaeval hymns, and to decorate the corners of prayer-books and the interiors of churches with mediaeval art; but it has proved to be more a revival of mediaeval forms than mediaeval devotions. It has also become fashionable to study illumination—an elegant amusement for an idle hour—and many have tried it as an art, but it has failed both as an art and a work; as an art, even in these days of art excellence, it has failed, and as a work, it has not been pursued with that avidity to bring success, because the modern stimulant is wanting—it pays not; it is lifeless, automaton-like, a dead body galvanized, missal-painting without devotion. [Footnote 85] But in our admiration of the genius and piety of these monastic artists we must not overlook one great fact, that this art is not only a representation of the interior life of the nation, a representation of its manners, customs, and modes of existence, but it is also a reflection of the state of the church at each successive period. Chroniclers may differ in their accounts, historians may quarrel with each other, but the history which a church rights in its art and literature, in it's sculpture, painting, and poetry, is traced, as it were, by the events themselves, and graven by the very fingers of time.
[Footnote 85: It must be borne in mind that the author of this paper is a Protestant, and we believe a minister of the Church of England. —Ed. C. W.]
We take up a manuscript supposed to be written about the year 900. [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 86: Cotton MSS.—Tiberius, A H. ]
It is an evangeliarum. It contains a picture of St. Matthew, with his left hand resting upon a desk, and his right holding a pen. On the next page is the word "Liber," the beginning of the gospel written on a crimson ground in letters outlined in vermilion and gold; at page 72 there is a picture of St. Mark; all the evangelists are delineated, but no other figures. In a Psalter, [Footnote 87] written in the year 1000, the same simplicity prevails. It is written in capital letters, with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. The title-page contains the figure of Christ in the act of blessing, but the principal picture, which occupies a whole page, is a representation of David in his youth, playing on a lyre-shaped psalter, accompanied by six smaller figures, below which are two others dancing. In another Psalter [Footnote 88] of the same period there is a picture of the crucifixion, with Mary, the mother of Jesus, on the one side, and St. John the Baptist on the other. A Psalter of the year 1000, [Footnote 89] very fully illuminated, is a fine specimen of the purely Biblical nature of the illustrations of that period. The calendar at the beginning contains a representation of three persons at a table, and two kneeling attendants. On page 7 is a youthful Christ, holding a large scroll, upon which the word "vita" is written; also God the Father, as creator of the world, in the Mosaic type; the figure is hidden up to the face by a globe, and from the mouth issue two blue lines, representing streams of water, over one of which a dove hovers—one of the oldest specimens of this conception of the Almighty. Another representation, on the next page, is the figure of David tearing open the lion's jaws; then the temptation of our Saviour—the devil is represented as having a beaked nose and claws. On page 10 is the washing of the disciples' feet, with an angel descending from heaven with a cloth. Page 14, Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene. On page 18, the Last Judgment, in which Christ is most prominent, holding in one hand a horn, and in the other a cross; below him is the Book of Life open, and at his side are two large angels blowing trumpets. Page 30 contains David playing on the psalter; and on page 114 there is a large figure of Christ, holding in his left hand the Book of Life, in his right a sceptre, with which he is piercing the jaws of a lion beneath his feet, and a dragon at his side is biting the lion (see Psalm xci. 13).