Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
Uploaded by bulldawg on Oct 27, 2011
This essay discusses medieval illustrated manuscripts, tracing the development of the script, and discussing the techniques of manufacturing the parchment that was used for these works. It further discusses the types of letters used, punctuation, and other syntactical issues. It also discusses the purposes for which these books were made, and the religious nature of the times and those who made them
I Introduction
Illustrated manuscripts are some of the most beautiful artworks ever created by man, and yet they were never designed as such; instead, they grace the pages of books made by hand. In some cases, the illustrators who made these magnificent volumes were commissioned to do other, more traditional works, but in general, these were religious books, handcrafted by monks.
This paper examines illustrated manuscripts in detail, and discusses the reasons why they were made.
II Books and Writing in the Ancient World
We tend to think of books in the form we have them today: pages bound between two covers, run off on a printing press (or more recently, perhaps read on-line). But there were books and libraries in the Roman world as well. Although they had scrolls rather than books in the form we know them (flat pages bound is called “codex”), they did in fact have a systematic way of recording information.
There was an organized “book production system” in Rome at the time of Caesar and Cicero. The “book trade used slaves to make multiple copies of books; at that time the first public libraries were established in Rome.” (Bischoff, p. 181). In the Middle Ages, as we know, monks made copies of books but obviously the practice didn’t start with them. Neither did the lettering they used.
The earliest example we have of Latin script is a letter written by a slave in approximately the middle of the first century BC. The Latin alphabet, according to Bischoff, is popularly thought to have been adopted from the Greek after mediation by the Etruscans, who modified it considerably. The letters in the Latin alphabet are familiar to us today, but the form (shape) is slightly different. Because lettering originally was incised into wax tablets, the earliest letters tended to be composed of grooves of equal width. As time passed and new writing materials, such as the papyrus of the Egyptians, were developed, the script changed as...