Part 31 (1/2)

Books often brought excessive prices in the middle ages. In 1174, Walter, Prior of St. Swithin's at Winchester, and afterwards abbot of Westminster, purchased of the monks of Dorchester in Oxfords.h.i.+re Bede's Homilies and St. Austin's Psalter, for twelve measures of barley, and a pall on which was embroidered in silver the history of Birinus converting a Saxon king.

About 1400, a copy of John de Meun's Roman de la Rose was sold before the palace-gate at Paris for forty crowns, or 33_l._ 6_s._ 6_d._

In Edward the Third's reign, one hundred marks (equal to 1000_l._) were paid to Isabella de Lancaster, a nun of Ambresbury, for a book of romance, purchased from her for the king's use.

Warton mentions a book of the Gospels, in the Cotton Library, as a fine specimen of Saxon calligraphy and decorations. It is written by Eadfrid, Bishop of Durham, in the most exquisite manner. Ethelwold his successor did the illuminations, the capital letters, the picture of the cross, and the Evangelists, with infinite labour and elegance; and Bilfred, the anchorite, covered the book, thus written and adorned, with silver plates and precious stones. It was finished about 720.

The encouragement given in the English monasteries for transcribing books was very considerable. In every great abbey there was an apartment called ”The Scriptorium;” where many writers were constantly busied in transcribing not only the Service Books for the choir, but books for the Library. The Scriptorium of St. Alban's Abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there, about 1080. Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium. That at St.

Edmundsbury was endowed with two mills. The t.i.thes of a rectory were appropriated to the Cathedral convent of St. Swithin, at Winchester, _ad libros transcribendos_, in the year 1171.

Nigel in the year 1160 gave the monks of Ely two churches, ad libros faciendos.

When the library at Croyland Abbey was burnt in 1091, seven hundred volumes were consumed which must have been thus laboriously produced.

Fifty-eight volumes were transcribed at Glas...o...b..ry during the government of one Abbot, about the year 1300. And in the library of this monastery, the richest in England, there were upwards of four hundred volumes in the year 1248.

But whilst there is sufficient cause to admire the penmen of former days, in the mere transcription of books, shall we not marvel at the beauty with which they were invested; the rich and brilliant illuminations, the finely tinted paintings, the magnificent and laborious ornament with which not merely every page, but in many ma.n.u.scripts almost every line was decorated! They, such as have been preserved, form a valuable proportion of the riches of the princ.i.p.al European libraries: of the Vatican of Rome; the Imperial at Vienna; St. Mark's at Venice; the Escurial in Spain; and the princ.i.p.al public libraries in England.

The art of thus illuminating MSS., now entirely lost, had attained the highest degree of perfection, and is, indeed, of ancient origin. In the remotest times the common colours of black and white have been varied by luxury and taste. Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus mention purple and yellow skins, on which MSS. were written in gold and silver; and amongst the eastern nations rolls of this kind (that is gold and silver on purple), exquisitely executed, are found in abundance, but of a later date. Still they appear to have been familiar with the practice at a much more remote period; and it is probable that the Greeks acquired this art from Egypt or India. From the Greeks it would naturally pa.s.s to the Latins, who appear to have been acquainted with it early in the second century. The earliest specimen of purple or rose-coloured vellum is recorded in the life of the Emperor Maximinus the younger, to whom, in the commencement of the third century, his mother made a present of the poems of Homer, written on purple vellum in gold letters. Such productions were, however, at this time very rare. The celebrated Codex Argenteus of Ulphilas, written in silver and gold letters on a purple ground, about 360, is probably the most ancient existing specimen of this magnificent mode of calligraphy. In the fourth century it had become more common: many ecclesiastical writers allude to it, and St. Jerome especially does so; and the following spirited dialogue has reference to his somewhat condemnatory allusions.

”Purple vellum Greek MSS.,” says Breitinger, ”if I remember rightly, are scarcer than white crows!”

BELINDA. ”Pray tell us 'all about them,' as the children say.”

PHILEMON. ”Well, then, at your next court visit, let your gown rival the emblazoned aspect of these old purple vellums, and let stars of silver, thickly 'powdered' thereupon, emulate, if they dare, the silver capital Greek letters upon the purple membranaceous fragments which have survived the desolations of time! You see, I do not speak _coldly_ upon this picturesque subject!”

ALIMANSA. ”Nor do I feel precisely as if I were in the _frigid_ zone!

But proceed and expatiate.”

PHILEMON. ”The field for expatiating is unluckily very limited. The fact of the more ancient MSS. before noticed, the _Pentateuch_ at _Vienna_, the fragment of the Gospels in the British Museum, with a Psalter or two in a few libraries abroad, are all the MSS. which just now occur to me as being distinguished by a _purple tint_, for I apprehend little more than a _tint_ remains. Whether the white or the purple vellum be the more ancient, I cannot take upon me to determine; but it is right you should be informed that St. Jerom denounces as _c.o.xcombs_, all those who, in his own time, were so violently attached to your favourite purple colour.”

LISARDO. ”I have a great respect for the literary attainments of St.

Jerom; and although in the absence of the old Italic version of the Greek Bible, I am willing to subscribe to the excellence of his own, or what is now called the _Vulgate_, yet in matters of taste, connected with the harmony of colour, you must excuse me if I choose to enter my protest against that venerable father's decision.”

PHILEMON. ”You appear to mistake the matter St. Jerom imagined that this appet.i.te for purple MSS. was rather artificial and voluptuous; requiring regulation and correction--and that, in the end, men would prefer the former colour to the intrinsic worth of their vellum treasures.”

We must not omit the note appended to this colloquy.

”The general idea seems to be that PURPLE VELLUM MSS. were intended only for 'choice blades,' let us rather say, tasteful bibliomaniacs--in book collecting. St. Jerom, as Philemon above observes, is very biting in his sarcasm upon these 'purple leaves covered with letters of gold and silver.'--'For myself and my friends (adds that father), let us have lower priced books, and distinguished not so much for beauty as for accuracy.'

”Mabillon remarks that these purple treasures were for the 'princes'

and 'n.o.blemen' of the times.

”And we learn from the twelfth volume of the Specileginum of Theonas, that it is rather somewhat unseemly 'to write upon purple vellum in letters of gold and silver, unless at the particular desire of a prince.'”

”The _subject_ also of MSS. frequently regulated the mode of executing it. Thus we learn from the 28th Epistle of Boniface (Bishop and Martyr) to the abbess Eadburga, that this latter is entreated 'to write the Epistles of St. Peter, the master and Apostle of Boniface, in letters of gold, for the greater reverence to be paid towards the Sacred Scriptures, when the Abbess preaches before her carnally-minded auditors.'”

About the close of the seventh century the Archbishop of York procured for his church a copy of the Gospels thus adorned; and that this magnificent calligraphy was then new in England may be inferred from a remark made on it that ”inauditam ante seculis nostris quoddam miraculam.”

This art, however, shortly after declined everywhere; and in England the art of writing in gold letters, even without the rich addition of the purple-tinted material, seems to have been but imperfectly understood. The only remarkable instance of it is said to be the charter of King Edgar, in the new Minster at Winchester, in 966. In the fourteenth century it seems to have been more customary than in those immediately preceding it.