Edward Maunde Thompson

“ Thus, in the finest examples of the Carolingian illuminated MSS., Celtic interlaced patterns stand side by side with the designs of classical origin; and, at the same time, it is interesting to observe that the older native Merovingian style of ornament makes its presence felt, now and again, in this or that detail. But with all the artistic effort bestowed upon it, it must be conceded that Carolingian illumination, as presented in the MSS., is not always pleasing. Indeed, it is often coarse and monotonous, and there is a tendency to conceal inferiority under a dazzling abundance of gold. ”

“ But in an inquiry into the history of the documents of the middle ages in Europe we do not begin with primitive forms. Those ages inherited the documentary system which had been created and developed by the Romans; and, imperfect and limited in number as are the earliest surviving charters and diplomas of European medieval history, they present themselves to us fully developed and cast in the mould and employing the methods and formulae of the earlier tradition. ”

“ A great change passes over the face of things. The large, bold style gives place to the minute. Volumes decrease in size; the texts are written in close-packed characters; the large and simple is superseded by the small and decorated. The period has arrived when book ornamentation becomes more settled and accurately defined within limits, and starts on the course of regulated expansion which was to run for three hundred years down to the close of the 15th century. ”

“ But it was not only with the evangelisation of heathen Germany that Boniface had now to do. His powers of organisation and reform were to be utilised in favour of the Frankish church. While, however, his successes beyond the Rhine were undisputed, at the Frankish court he found himself thwarted by the nobles who were in possession of church property, and by the easy-living bishops, more given to fighting and hunting than to the cure of souls. ”

“ The most interesting extant case of an opisthograph papyrus is the copy of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens in the British Museum, which is written on the back of a farmer’s accounts, of the end of the 1st century—but only for private use. It being the rule, then, to confine the writing to one side of the material, that is, to the inner surface of the made-up roll, that surface was more carefully prepared and smoothed than the other; and, further, the joints of the several sheets were so well made that they offered no obstacle to the action of the pen. ”

“ Where the Flemish artist was content with single flowers gracefully placed, the German filled his borders with straggling plants and foliage and with large flourished scrolls.
Italian illumination, which had developed so rapidly in the 14th century, now advanced with accelerated pace and expanded into a variety of styles, more or less local, culminating in the exquisite productions of the classical renaissance in the latter half of the 15th century. As in the other national styles of France and Flanders, the Italian miniaturist quickly abandoned the conventional for the natural landscape ”

“ It is interesting, too, to observe that in our own time the teaching in schools of a particular type of handwriting which finds favour in clerical examinations for the public service has not been without its influence on the general handwriting of the people.
Classifying, then, the writing of the papyri into the three groups—the Ptolemaic, the Roman, and the Byzantine—the next step is to determine, by a closer examination of the documents, the changes which characterize the several centuries traversed by those groups. ”

“ Before Iyéyasu, then, ‘the emperor,’ Adams was brought and examined as to his country and the cause of his coming. He was then kept in prison for nearly six weeks, and, although kindly treated, lived in dread of death, expecting to be led out to undergo the native punishment of crucifixion. Indeed the Portuguese of Nagasaki tried to persuade the Japanese that the Dutch were pirates and deserved to be executed; but Iyéyasu, with the fairness which always distinguished his dealings with foreigners, refused to punish men who had done him no wrong. ”

“ Turning to the French border, we find towards the close of the 14th century that the early ivy-leaf pendant has now invaded all the margins and that the page is set in a conventional frame throwing off on every side sprigs and waving scrolls of the conventional ivy foliage, often also accompanied with very delicate compact tracery of minute flower-work filling the background of the frame. Nothing can be more charming than the effect of such borders, in which the general design is under perfect control. ”

“ On the other hand, early cursive documents on vellum are scarce, for it must be borne in mind that, even allowing for the loss of such documents attributable to the perishable nature of that material in the humid climates of Europe, papyrus and waxen tablets were also the usual writing materials of the Greeks and Romans. The importance of the survival of Greek cursive papyri to so late a period is very great, for it enables us to trace the development of the Greek literary minuscule handwriting of the 9th century in a direct line from the cursive script of the papyri centuries earlier. ”

“ In the spring of 1387 he joined forces with the king of Portugal, who now married Philippa, Lancaster's daughter by his first marriage, and the combined army invaded Castile. But it met with little success, and under the heat of the climate sickness broke out among the troops. The conquests of the previous year were lost, and Lancaster himself fell ill, and was eventually forced to quit Spain and retire to Bayonne. However, he succeeded better by diplomacy than by war. The Duke of Berry had made overtures for the hand of Catharine, his daughter by his present wife, Constance. ”

“ But if space of any appreciable value is to be saved in a page of writing, a system is necessary for eliminating letters from the body of the word as well as curtailing the termination, that is, a system of contraction as well as abbreviation; and, in addition, the employment of arbitrary signs, analogous to shorthand, will serve still further to condense the text. An elaborate system of contraction of this nature was naturally only fully developed after very long practice. Both in Greek and in Latin MSS. from the 9th to the 15th century such a system was in full force. ”

“ Flowers, insects, birds and other natural objects now frequent the border, the origin of which is finally forgotten. It ceases to be a connected growth wandering round the page; it becomes a flat frame of dull gold or colour, over which isolated objects, flowers, fruits, insects, butterflies, are strewn, painted with naturalistic accuracy and often made, by means of strong shadows, to stand out in relief against the background. ”

“ No nation can have advanced far on the path of civilization before discovering the necessity for documentary evidence both in public and in private life. The laws, the constitutions, the decrees of government, on the one hand, and private contracts between man and man, on the other, must be embodied in formal documents, in order to ensure permanent record. ”

“ John of Castile, alarmed at the prospect of another future rival to his throne, hastened to open negotiations for the marriage of his son Henry with Catharine. A treaty was signed. Constance resigned her claim to the Castilian crown in favour of her daughter, who was taken by her mother to Spain in the following spring, and was married in September. Lancaster laid aside his assumed title of king of Castile, and received payment of two hundred thousand crowns to defray the cost of his expedition, and an annuity was settled upon him and his duchess for their lives. ”

“ The rigid exactness of the 13th century is replaced by flowing lines, just as the stiff, formal strokes of the handwriting of that century was exchanged for a more cursive and easy style. The art of each individual country now developed a national type of its own, which again branched off into the different styles of provincial schools. For example, in the eastern counties of England a very fine school of illumination, the East Anglian, was established in the first half of the century and produced a series of beautiful MSS., such as the Arundel Psalter (No. 83) in the British Museum. ”

“ But, when we now speak of autographs and autograph collections, we use such terms in a restricted sense and imply documents or signatures written by persons of some degree of eminence or notoriety in the various ranks and professions of life; and naturally the only early autographs in this sense which could be expected to survive are the subscriptions and signatures of royal personages and great officials attached to important public deeds, which from their nature have been more jealously cared for than mere private documents. ”

“ The quarrel between the king and Archbishop Theobald in 1148 gave the next occasion for Hugh to come forward; he this time sided with the archbishop, and received him in his castle of Framlingham, but joined with others in effecting a reconciliation. Five years later, in 1153, when Henry of Anjou landed to assert his claim to the throne, Bigod threw in his lot with the rising power, and held out in Ipswich against Stephen’s forces, while Henry, on the other side, laid siege to Stamford. Both places fell, but in the critical state of his fortunes Stephen was in no position to punish the rebel. ”

“ The leading feature is a wealth of foliage with twining and interlacing branches, among which human and animal life is freely introduced, the whole design being thrown into relief by brilliant colours and a generous use of gold. The figure drawing both in miniatures and initials is stiff, the figures elongated but bold, and with sweeping lines in the draperies; and a tendency to represent the latter clinging closely to the limbs is a legacy of the tradition of the later classical style. ”

“ Neither series, however, it is to be remembered, has a style of writing peculiar to itself. While the extant literary works are, as a rule, written with more or less formality, no doubt by professional scribes for the book market, not a few of even the more valuable of them are copies in the ordinary cursive hands of the day. Conversely, while we find non-literary documents generally written in ordinary cursive hands, whether by official scribes or by private individuals, yet occasionally we meet with one produced in the formal style more proper to literary examples. ”

“ Illumination in the 15th century enters on a new phase. The balance is no longer evenly maintained between the relative values of the miniature and the border as factors in the general scheme of decoration. The influence of a new sentiment in art makes itself felt more and 15th Century. more; the flat treatment of the miniature gradually gives place to true laws of perspective and of figure-drawing, and to the depth and atmospheric effects of modern painting. ”