History of Illuminated Manuscripts |
BIBLE ART REVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL ART |
History of Illuminated Manuscripts (600-1200)Contents Illuminated
Books (c.600-800) Medieval Book
Painting Series Oldest Gospel Illuminations |
CHRISTIAN CELTIC-STYLE
ART |
DESIGNS OF THE CELTS |
Illuminated Religious Texts: 600-800 CE Small Christian communities, independent of Rome, clung to the very margins of the known world at the monasteries founded in Ireland by St Patrick in the mid fifth century. In 563 St Columba and twelve companions set sail for Iona, north-west of Scotland, where he founded the famous island monastery. St Augustine arrived in Britain from Rome in 597, sent by Pope Gregory the Great to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. The monks who came carried a silver cross and a likeness of Jesus Christ painted on a panel, and these images must have been extremely important to them as they preached to a people who could not understand Latin, nor read in any language. They also brought many books, for Christianity appeared to offer literacy and civilization, and books were essential props, tangible proof of their message. In fact, to the early monks, books were quite as important as any of their relics or vestments. The books they brought with them were soon being copied at the new monasteries which they founded up and down the country. It was these religious centres, as well as their successors and those established later by the Augustinian, Benedictine, Cistercian, and Franciscan Orders, whose scriptoriums were responsible for the stunning illustrations and calligraphic art contained within medieval illuminated manuscripts. |
The Prophets and the Beast for the Abyss (1000-1020) Ottonian art. From The Bamberg Apocalypse illuminated by artist-monks at the Reichenau Abbey in Germany. |
However when the first Celts converted to the Christian religion and founded their monasteries, they needed copies of liturgical texts and Gospel books to study, and to preach with. As a rule, they made such copies from texts brought from Eastern Christendom, notably the Byzantine and Coptic (North African) churches. But with such a rich Irish heritage of decoration and ornamentation (albeit in metalwork and stonework), Celtic medieval artists could do much more than merely copy Eastern texts. Thus Eastern influence combined with the traditional flowing style of Celtic art, to produce the "carpet pages" and highly illuminated Gospel texts which represent the high-point of Christian celtic achievement. In addition, Irish Biblical manuscripts reveal traces of many other influences from countries outside the Christian world, including Egypt, Ancient Greece, Syria, Ancient Persia and Armenia. That said, Celtic illuminators seem to show a complete disregard for realism but a deep understanding of geometrical designwork. If Classical and the Byzantine art styles were both principally picture-based or pictorial, Celtic book illustration is purely abstract: indeed, all representative art in Celtic manuscripts is taken directly from the Byzantine style, mostly copied from examples in the monasteries' libraries. Celtic designs are curvilinear, flowing, circular and endlessly repetitive, although no detail or motif is ever repeated exactly. |
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Examples The Book of Durrow is not a large book - it is only nine by six inches - but it is filled with wonderfully luxuriant embellishments, coloured with lemon yellow, warm red, and a deep copper green. It contains especially fine carpet pages, whole page abstract, multi-coloured designs of amazing complexity at which the Irish excelled. The historian, Cambrensis, described these illuminations as 'so delicate and subtle ... so full of knots and links with colours so fresh and vivid ... as to be the work of Angels .... ' After the Synod of Whitby in 664, at which the Irish and British declared joint allegiance to the Roman Church, and settled their differences over their contradictory methods of calculating Easter, the styles of the two areas became more closely associated. In about 635, the monks of Iona sent St
Aidan and his colleagues to found the monastery at Lindisfarne on Holy
Island, an inhospitable island off the Northumbrian coast. There the Lindisfarne
Gospels were made, a book which took about two years to complete
and is the work of a single scribe, who also did the illuminations. It
is a work of outstanding beauty and sophistication, and was possibly meant
as a showpiece to display with the body of St Cuthbert, the saintly hermit
whose life is so well documented by the Venerable Bede, and who around
this time was reburied at Lindisfarne in an elaborate shrine. The book
contains a colophon on its last leaf. A colophon was the text which the
scribe used to finish the work, much as we might use 'The End' today.
Sometimes it included the scribe's name, the date, and the name of the
person for whom the book was made. The Lindisfarne colophon was written
in about 970, and mentions four participants in the physical making of
the book. Illuminated
Religious Texts: 800-1100 CE Examples It was at Rheims, one of the great royal
monasteries, that the famous Utrecht Psalter (now in Utrecht University
Library) was made. In this Psalter the artists illustrated the Psalms
almost line by line, using monochrome line drawings. A copy of the Utrecht
Psalter found its way to Canterbury, where it was copied several times
over the next 200 years. The earliest of these copies is called the Harley
Psalter and dates from around 1000. In it the flowing line drawings
have become multi-coloured, a characteristic which was to become typical
of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Illuminated Religious Texts: 1100-1350 CE At this time, the very splendid English
monasteries would all have had quite large libraries. We do not know which
books they all had, though some of the great foundations kept detailed
records which have survived. Of course every monastery would have had
at least one Bible, probably more - and sometimes bound in up to four
huge volumes. At least one Bible would have been kept in a place accessible
by all the monks; they were far too big to be carried around for private
use, and in any case a manuscript book was too precious to be carried
about. In addition a monastery library might have contained separate books
from the Bible each containing a commentary (or 'gloss'); works by churchmen
such as St Augustine, Bede, and St Jerome on such subjects as the Psalms;
perhaps classical texts such as Livy or Virgil. These works would have
helped to build up libraries which were regarded at the time as storehouses,
complete with all the information about the world it was possible to have.
There would also have been service books of all kinds, from psalters to
books of music. The latter, smaller in format, would have been used on
a day-to-day basis and copies have not survived in the same way as the
great Bibles have. Books which did not fall to pieces in daily use were
largely destroyed at the time of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries
in 1532, when the liturgy underwent extensive change. Literacy was still not widespread by the end of the twelfth century, and very little was written that did not have some sort of religious context. The importance of the great religious foundations cannot be over-emphasized - the Benedictines, the Cluniacs, the Cistercians, the Carthusians headed a highly spiritual population. St Benedict (c. 480- 547), who is the founding father of Western monastic life, and of the monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy, had directed members of his Order to read, to make books, and to study. (The oldest surviving copy of his rules for monks is dated 700 CE and is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.) By 1200 there were over 500 monasteries in England, all in need of books. There must have been a thriving business in book production. Gothic Book Painting The finest Gothic illuminated manuscripts include (from France) the Ingeborg Psalter, Psalter of St Louis, Bible Moralisee; (from England) the Amesbury Psalter and Queen Mary's Psalter; (from Germany) Minnesanger Manuscript, the Mainz Gospels and the Bonmont Psalter; (from Bohemia) the Passional of Abbess Kunigundathe and the Velislav Bible; (from Italy) Lucan's Pharsalia. The greatest Gothic book illuminators include: Jean Pucelle, best-known for The Belleville Breviary (1323-26, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) and the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux (1324-28, The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art); as well as Niccolo da Giacomo, Matthew Paris and W de Brailes. The last Medieval manuscript illuminations were the courtly and more decorative International Gothic illuminations, produced by painters like Jacquemart de Hesdin (c.1355-1414), the Limbourg Brothers (Pol, Herman, Jean) (fl.1390-1416) and Jean Fouquet (1420-81). Illuminations were also produced on the Indian subcontinent. Note, in particular, the Gujarat school of illuminated manuscripts, renowned for its kalpasutras - holy texts of the Jainist faith, executed, like Pali manuscripts, on palm leaves. See: Post-Classical Indian Painting for more. |
For information about the early
cultural history of Monastic Ireland, see: Irish
Art Guide. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IRISH AND CELTIC ART |