Gertrude Burford Rawlings

The books of the Middle Ages are a special subject in themselves, since they include all the illuminated manuscripts of Ireland, England and the Continent. We can therefore do little more than indicate their historical place in the story of books.

We have only to look at a mediÆval illuminated manuscript to understand how books were regarded in those days, and with what lavish expenditure of time and skill the quaint characters were traced and the ornaments designed and executed. And having looked, we gather that books, being rare, were appreciated; and being sacred, were reverenced; and that it was deemed a worthy thing to make a good book and to make it beautiful. Sometimes the monkish artist's handiwork had a result not foreseen by him, for we read that when St Boniface, the Saxon missionary who gave his life to the conversion of Germany, wrote to ask the Abbess Eadburga for a missal, he desired that the colours might be gay and bright, “even as a glittering lamp and an illumination for the hearts of the Gentiles.” It is easy to imagine how the brilliant pages would attract the colour-loving barbarians, and prepare the way for friendly advances.

It is probable that the custom of ornamenting books with drawings was derived from the Egyptians by the Greeks, and from the Greeks by the Romans, among whom decorated books were common, although they are known to us chiefly by means of copies preserved in Byzantine and Italian manuscripts of a more recent period. These, and a few examples dating from the time of Constantine, exhibit a style evidently derived from classical models.

A survey of mediÆval books properly begins with the early Irish manuscripts, which stand at the head of a long and glorious line stretching, chronologically, from the seventh century of our era to the fifteenth. Although it is not known where the art was born to which these wonderful productions of Celtic pen-craft owe their origin, it is Ireland, nevertheless, which has provided us with the earliest and finest examples of this work, the marvels of skill and beauty which, summed up, as it were, in the Book of Kells, the Book of Durrow, and others, set the Irish manuscripts beyond imitation or rivalry.

Most of these books are Psalters, or Gospels, in Latin, while the remainder consist of missals and other religious compilations, and of them all the Book of Kells is the most famous. It was written in the seventh century, and probably indicates the highest point of skill reached by the Irish artist-scribes, or as regards its own particular style of ornamentation, by any artist-scribes whatever. It is a book of the Gospels written (in Latin) on vellum, and the size of the volume, of the writing, and of the initial letters is unusually large. The leaves measure 13½ x 9½ inches. The illustrations represent various incidents in the life of Christ, and portraits of the Evangelists, accompanied by formal designs. Ornamentation is largely introduced into the text, and the first few words of each Gospel are so lavishly decorated and have initial letters of such size that in each case they occupy the whole of a page.

The book just described was preserved at Kells until the early part of the seventeenth century. It then passed into Archbishop Ussher's possession, and finally into the library of Trinity College, Dublin, where it is now treasured.

Of course it is impossible to give here a reproduction of a page of this marvellous book in its proper size and colours. Our illustrations, however, may convey a little idea of the accuracy and minuteness of the work, which, it is hardly necessary to say, was done entirely by hand, and will serve as a text for a brief summary of the chief features of Irish book art. The design here shown is composed of a diagonal cross set in a rectangular frame, having in each angle a symbol of one of the four Evangelists. The colours in this design, as reproduced by Professor Westwood in his Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts, principally consist of red, dark and light mauve, green, yellow, and blue-grey. The animals depicted are quaint, but not ridiculous, and the figure of St Matthew, in the upper angle of the cross, though stiff and ungraceful, is less peculiar than other figures in the book. The Irish artist was always more successful in designing and executing geometrical systems of ornamentation than in representing living figures.

The interlacing, which forms a large part of the design under consideration, is a characteristic of Celtic work. The regularity with which the bands pass under and over, even in the most complicated patterns, is very remarkable, and errors are rarely to be detected. The spirals which occupy the four panels at the ends and sides of the frame are also typical of this school of art. The firmness and accuracy of their drawing testify to the excellent eyesight as well as to the steady hand and technical skill of the artist.

The prevailing feature of Celtic ornament as shown in illuminated manuscripts is the geometrical nature of the designs. The human figure when introduced into the native Irish books is absurdly grotesque, for its delineation seems to have been beyond the artist's skill, or, more correctly, to have lain in another category, and to have belonged to a style distinct from that in which he excelled. At a later period, figure drawing became a marked characteristic of English decorated manuscripts, and English artists attained to a high degree of skill in this branch of their art.

Bright colours were employed in the Irish manuscripts, but gold and silver are conspicuous by their absence, and did not appear in the manuscripts of these islands until Celtic art had been touched by continental influence.

The tradition that the Book of Kells was written by the great St Columba himself, reminds us that at this period nearly all books were the handiwork of monks and ecclesiastics, and in all monasteries the transcribing of the Scriptures and devotional works was part of the established order of things. Columba, we know, was a famous scribe, and took great pleasure in copying books. He is said to have transcribed no less than three hundred volumes, and all books written by him were believed to be miraculously preserved from danger by water. As an instance of this, Adamnan relates the following story:—

“A book of hymns for the office of every day in the week, and in the handwriting of St Columba, having slipt, with the leathern satchel which contained it, from the shoulder of a boy who fell from a bridge, was immersed in a certain river in the province of the Lagenians (Leinster). This very book lay in the water from the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord till the end of the Paschal season, and was afterwards found on the bank of the river” uninjured, and as clean and dry as if it had never been in the water at all. “And we have ascertained as undoubted truth,” continues Adamnan, “from those who were well informed in the matter, that the like things happened in several places with regard to books written by the hand of St Columba;” and he adds that the account just given he received from “certain truthful, excellent, and honourable men who saw the book itself, perfectly white and beautiful, after a submersion of so many days, as we have stated.”

By Irish missionaries the art of book writing was taught to Britain, chiefly through the school of Lindisfarne, where was produced the famous Lindisfarne Gospels, or Book of St Cuthbert. This magnificent work, which is one of the choicest treasures of the British Museum, was as highly esteemed by its contemporaries as by ourselves, though perhaps not for quite the same reasons. Tradition has it that when Lindisfarne was threatened by the Northmen and the monks had to fly, they took with them the body of St Cuthbert, in obedience to his dying behest, and this book. They attempted to seek refuge in Ireland, but their boat had scarcely reached the open sea when it met a storm so violent that through the pitching of the little vessel the book fell overboard. Sorrowfully they put back, but during the night St Cuthbert appeared to one of the monks and ordered him to seek for the book in the sea. On beginning their search, they found that the tide had ebbed much further than it was wont to do, and going out about three miles they came upon the holy book, not a whit the worse for its misadventure. “By this,” says the old historian, “were their hearts refreshed with much joy.” And the book was afterwards named in the priory rolls as “the Book of St Cuthbert, which fell into the sea.”

This notable volume is an excellent example of Celtic book art in the beginning of its transition stage, a stage which marks the approach to the two schools which were the result of the combination of Celtic and continental influences in the hands of intelligent and skilful Anglo-Saxon scribes—the Hiberno-Saxon and the English schools. It contains the four Gospels written in Latin, and arranged in double columns, each Gospel being preceded by a full-page formal design of Celtic work and a full-page portrait of the Evangelist. The conjunction of these two distinct styles of ornament forms one of the chief points of interest in the book. The formal designs of interlaced, spiral, and key patterns, so characteristic of Celtic work, show its near kinship to the Irish books, while the portraits prove an almost equally close connection with Roman and Byzantine models. There is reason to believe that the classical element is due to the influence of an Italian or Byzantine book or books brought to Lindisfarne by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his friend Adrian, an Italian abbot, when the archbishop visited the island for the purpose of consecrating Aidan's church.

The Lindisfarne Gospels accompanied St Cuthbert's body to Durham in 995, but rather more than a century later was restored to Lindisfarne, and remained there until the monastery which had replaced St Aidan's foundation was dissolved at the Reformation. It is then lost sight of until it reappears in the famous Cotton Library, with which it is now possessed by the nation.

The English school of illumination had its chief seat at Winchester. Its work is characterised by its figure drawing, and while the foliage ornament introduced, together with the gold which was largely used in the Winchester manuscripts, indicate continental influence, the interlaced and other patterns are derived from the Irish school. Of this class of manuscript the Benedictional of Æthelwold, in the Duke of Devonshire's library, may serve as a typical example. It was written for Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, by his chaplain Godemann, towards the end of the tenth century. Were it practicable to offer the reader a reproduction of one of its pages, it would be seen that it exactly illustrates what has just been said. Its figure drawing and foliated ornamentation are among its most striking features.

The Norman Conquest opened up the English school of art more widely to continental influence, with the result that towards the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries the English manuscripts were unsurpassed by any in Europe. As a typical specimen of the illuminations of this period, we may with propriety select one which has been described by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson as “the very finest of its kind,” and “probably unique in its combination of excellence of drawing, brilliance of illumination, and variety and extent of subjects.” It is a Psalter dating from the fourteenth century, and known as Queen Mary's Psalter, because a customs officer of the port of London, who intercepted it as it was about to be taken out of the country, presented it to the Queen in 1553. This magnificent book is now in the British Museum.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a large number of Bibles and Psalters were written, and made up the greater part of the book-output of the larger monasteries, to which we are indebted for all our fine pieces of manuscript work. Indeed, most of the decorated manuscripts of this period are occupied with the Scriptures, services, liturgies, and other matters of the kind, and on such the best work was lavished. Later, however, the growing taste for romances and stories induced a corresponding tendency to decorate these secular manuscripts too, and some very fine work of this class was produced, especially in France. The books of the chronicles of England and of France, written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were also largely adorned with painted miniatures. Nearly all the writing of Europe was done in the religious houses. In most of the larger monasteries there was a scriptorium, or writing-room, where Bibles, Psalters, and service books, and patristic and classical writings were transcribed, chronicles and histories compiled, and beautiful specimens of the illuminator's art carefully, skilfully, and lovingly executed.

Books, however, were not only written in the monasteries, but read as well. The rule of St Benedict insisted that the steady reading of books by the brethren should form part of the daily round. Archbishop Lanfranc, also, in his orders for the English Benedictines, directed that once a year books were to be distributed and borrowed volumes to be restored. For this purpose, the librarian was to have a carpet laid down in the Chapter House, the monks were to assemble, and the names of those to whom books had been lent were to be read out. Each in turn had to answer to his name, and restore his book, and he who had neglected to avail himself of his privilege, and had left his book unread, was to fall on his face and implore forgiveness. Then the books were re-distributed for study during the ensuing year. This custom was generally followed by all the monasteries of Lanfranc's time.

Richard Aungervyle, Bishop of Durham, born in 1281 at Bury St Edmund's, and therefore usually known as Richard de Bury, gives a vivacious picture of the attitude of a book-lover of the Middle Ages in his Philobiblon, or Lover of Books. He there sings the praises of books, and voices their lament over their ill-treatment by degenerate clerks and by the unlearned. He also tells how he gathered his library, which was then the largest and best in England. Philobiblon is written in vigorous and even violent language, and is worth quoting.

Books, according to this extravagant eulogy, are “wells of living water,” “golden urns in which manna is laid up, or rather, indeed, honeycombs,” “the four-streamed river of Paradise, where the human mind is fed, and the arid intellect moistened and watered.” “You, O Books, are the golden vessels of the temple, the arms of the clerical militia, with which the missiles of the most wicked are destroyed, fruitful olives, vines of Engedi, fig-trees knowing no sterility, burning lamps to be ever held in the hand.”

Then the books are made to utter their plaint because of the indignity to which they are subjected by the degenerate clergy. “We are expelled from the domiciles of the clergy, apportioned to us by hereditary right, in some interior chamber of which we had our peaceful cells; but, to their shame, in these nefarious times we are altogether banished to suffer opprobrium out of doors; our places, moreover, are occupied by hounds and hawks, and sometimes by a biped beast: woman, to wit…; wherefore this beast, ever jealous of our studies, and at all times implacable, spying us at last in a corner, protected only by the web of some long-deceased spider, drawing her forehead into wrinkles, laughs us to scorn, abuses us in virulent speeches, points us out as the only superfluous furniture in the house, complains that we are useless for any purpose of domestic economy whatever, and recommends our being bartered away forthwith for costly head dresses, cambric, silk, twice-dipped purple garments, woollen, linen, and furs.”

After this terrible picture of feminine ignorance and malevolence, it is refreshing to turn to the achievements of the pious Diemudis, by way of contrast. Diemudis was a nun of Wessobrunn in Bavaria, who lived in the eleventh century. Nuns are not often referred to as writers, but of this lady it is recorded that she wrote “in a most beautiful and legible character” no less than thirty-one books, some of which were in two, three, and even six volumes. These she transcribed “to the praise of God, and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of this monastery.”

Although the greater part of the book-writing of this time was done in the monasteries and by monks and ecclesiastics, there were also secular professional writers, a class who had followed this occupation from very early days. They consisted of antiquarii, librarii, and illuminators, though sometimes the functions of all three were performed by one person. They were employed chiefly by the religious houses, to assist in the transcription and restoration of their books, and by the lawyers, for whom they transcribed legal documents. The antiquarii were the highest in rank, for their work did not consist merely of writing or copying, but included the restoration of faulty pages, the revision of texts, the repair of bindings, and other delicate tasks connected with the older and more valuable books which could not be entrusted to the librarii or common scribes. On the whole, the production of books was more of an industry in those days than we should believe possible, unless we admit that the Dark Ages were not quite as dark as they have been painted. “There was always about us in our halls,” says Richard de Bury, who no doubt was a munificent patron of all scribes and book-workers, “no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and generally of all such persons as were qualified to labour in the service of books.”

Books of a great size were frequently monuments of patience and industry, and sometimes half a lifetime was devoted to a single volume. Books therefore fetched high prices, though they were not always paid for in money. In 1174 the Prior of St Swithun's, Winchester, gave the Canons of Dorchester in Oxfordshire, for Bede's Homilies and St Augustine's Psalter, twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of St Birinus' conversion of the Saxon King Cynegils. A hundred years later a Bible “fairly written,” that is, finely written, was sold in this country for fifty marks, or about £33. At this period a sheep cost one shilling. In the time of Richard de Bury a common scribe earned a halfpenny a day. About 1380 some of the expenses attending the production of an Evangeliarium, or book of the liturgical Gospels, included thirteen and fourpence for the writing, four and threepence for the illuminating, three and fourpence for the binding, and tenpence a day for eighteen weeks, in all fifteen shillings, for the writer's “commons,” or food.

The book-writers or copyists became, later, the booksellers, very much as they did in old Rome. Sometimes they both wrote and sold the books, and sometimes the sellers employed the writers to write for them, or the writers employed the sellers to sell for them. Publishers as yet did not exist. Practically the only method of publication known consisted of the reading of a work on three days in succession before the heads of the University, or other public judges, and the sanctioning of its transcription and reproduction. The booksellers were called “stationers,” either because they transacted their business at open stalls or stations, or perhaps from the fact that statio is low Latin for shop; and since they were also the vendors of parchment and other writing-materials, the word “stationer” is still used to designate those who carry on a similar trade to-day. As early as 1403 there was already formed in London a society or brotherhood “of the Craft of Writers of Text-letter,” and “those commonly called ‘Limners,’” or Illuminators, for in that year they petitioned the Lord Mayor for permission to elect Wardens empowered to see that the trades were honourably pursued and to punish those of the craft who dealt disloyally or who rebelled against the Wardens' authority. This petition was granted. By 1501 the Company of Stationers was established, and it is highly probable that this was only the Brotherhood of Text-writers and Limners under the more general designation.

The well-known names of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, Ave Maria Lane, and Creed Lane still remain to show us where the London stationers who sold the common religious leaflets and devotional books of the day had their stalls, close to St Paul's Cathedral, and in some cases even against the walls of the Cathedral itself, and where, too, the makers of beads and paternosters plied their trade. And Londoners at least will not need to be reminded that at this very moment Paternoster Row is almost entirely inhabited by sellers of books, religious and otherwise. There is also a queer open-air stall on the south side which serves to carry on the ancient tradition of the place.

Societies similar to that of the Text-Writers and Limners of London also existed on the Continent, and especially at Bruges, in which city literature and book-production flourished under the patronage of Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, who himself gave constant employment to numerous writers, copyists, translators, and illuminators in the work of building up his famous library. The members of the Guild of St John the Evangelist in Bruges represented no less than fifteen different trades or professions connected with books and writing. They included:

• Booksellers,
• Printsellers,
• Painters of vignettes,
• Painters,
• Scriveners and copiers of books,
• Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses,
• Illuminators,
• Printers,
• Bookbinders,
• Curriers,
• Cloth shearers,
• Parchment and vellum makers,
• Boss carvers,
• Letter engravers,
• Figure engravers.

Of course, the printers here mentioned would at first be block-printers only, as will be shown presently. And it is worth noticing that in all this long list, which cannot be called at all exclusive, there is no mention of authors.

The mediÆval booksellers were not all permitted to ply their trade in their own way. Since the supply of books for the students depended on them, the Universities of Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere deemed it their duty to keep them under control, having in view the maintenance of pure texts and the interests of the students, at whose expense the booksellers were not to be permitted to fatten. By the rules of the University of Paris the bookseller was required to be a man of wide learning and high character, and to bind himself to observe the laws regarding books laid down by the University. He was forbidden to offer any transcript for sale until it had been examined and found correct; and were any inaccuracy detected in it by the examiner, he was liable to a fine or the burning of the book, according to the magnitude of his error. The price of books was also fixed by the University, and the vendor forbidden to make more than a certain rate of profit on each volume. Again, the bookseller could not purchase any books without the sanction of the University, for fear that he might be the means of disseminating heretical or immoral literature. Later, it was made obligatory on him to lend out books on hire to those who could not afford to buy them, and to expose in his shop a list of these books and the charges at which they were to be had. The poor booksellers, thus hedged about with restrictions, often joined some other occupation to that of selling manuscripts in order to make both ends meet, but when this practice came to the notice of the University they were censured for degrading their noble profession by mixing with it “vile trades.” But presumably no such rules as the above hampered the booksellers of non-university towns, such as London.

The control assumed by the Universities over the book trade presently extended to interference with original writings and a censorship of literature. With the introduction of printing and the consequent increase of books and of the facilities for reproducing them this censorship was taken up by the Church.

Ecclesiastical censorship, however, was not the outcome of the Universities' assumption of control over the book trade. It sprang from the jealousy of the clergy, who opposed the spread of knowledge among the people—some, perhaps, because they knew that knowledge in ignorant hands is dangerous, and others because they feared their own prestige might suffer. This feeling existed before printing, though printing brought it to a head. For instance, in 1415 the penalty in this country for reading the Scriptures in the vernacular was forfeiture of land, cattle, body, life, and goods by the offenders and their heirs for ever, and that they should be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the Crown, and most errant traitors to the land. They were refused right of sanctuary, and if they persisted in the offence or relapsed after a pardon were first to be hanged for treason against the King and then burned for heresy against God. Thus the clergy upheld and encouraged a censorship of the press. As early as 1479 Conrad de Homborch, a Cologne printer, had issued a Bible accompanied by canons, etc., which was “allowed and approved by the University of Cologne,” and in 1486 the Archbishop of Mentz issued a mandate forbidding the translation into the vulgar tongue of Greek, Latin, and other books, without the previous approbation of the University. Finally, in 1515, a bull of LeoX. required Bishops and Inquisitors to examine all books before they came to be printed, and to suppress any heretical matter.

The Vicar of Croydon, preaching at St Paul's Cross about the time of the spread of the art of printing, is said to have declared that “we must root out printing or printing will root out us.” But an ecclesiastical censorship over the English press was not established until 1559, when an Injunction issued by Queen Elizabeth provides that, because of the publication of unfruitful, vain, and infamous books and papers, “no manner of person shall print any manner of boke or paper … except the same be first licenced by her maiestie … or by .vi. of her privy counsel, or be perused and licensed by the archbysshops of Cantorbury and Yorke, the bishop of London,” etc. The Injunction extended also to “pampheletes, playes, and balletes,” so that “nothinge therein should be either heretical, sedicious, or vnsemely for Christian eares.” Classical authors, however, and works hitherto commonly received in universities and schools were not touched by the Injunction.