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PALAEOGRAPHY

NOTES UPON THE

HISTORY OF WRITING

AND THE

MEDIEVAL ART OF ILLUMINATION

ERNARD UUARITCH

Extended from a Lecture, delivered at a Conversazione of the Sette

of Odd Volumes, at the Galleries of the Royal Institute of

Painters in Water Colours, I2th December, 1893

Eonfcon

PRIVATELY PEINTE1)
1894

*#* One Hundred and Ninety-nine Oopies of this book have been, privately
printed for my personal friends.

This is Copy No.,

This Volume is
Betitcatetr to mp excellent

BROTHER ALEXANDER T. HOLLINGSWORTH,

ARTIFICER, and PRESIDENT OF

The Odd Volumes, 1893-94,

AND TO

THE BRETHREN OF THE SETTE

WITH WHICH

I have been united since 1878 in O. V. bond,

BERNARD QUARITCH,

Librarian to the Sette,

LONDON, 15 Piccadilly, March $ist, 1894.

LONDON :

O. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,
COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

PALAEOGRAPHY:

NOTES UPON THE

HISTOEY OP WEITING

AND THE

MEDIEVAL AET OF ILLUMINATION

Foreword

OF the books which preceded the invention of Printing,
a much larger quantity is still extant than the world
in general would suppose, but they are nevertheless so widely
scattered and so seldom immediately accessible, that only
a very long experience will enable any one to speak or to
write about them in other than a blundering fashion. So
many qualifications are required, that it may seem presump-
tuous in me to treat upon a matter bristling with difficulties
and uncertainties. The brief but admirable outline of its
history which Mr. Maunde Thompson has lately published
is likely to mislead the inexperienced into a belief that a
science defined with so much clearness and apparent ease
may as easily be mastered. No one knows better than that
accomplished scholar how hard it would be to supply sure
and definite criteria for the guidance of palaaographical
students in all the branches of their fascinating pursuit.
My excuse must be that the observations which appear
in the present opusculum may be useful to some who are
unable for various reasons to give the necessary fulness of

Palaeography

study to -Mr. Thompson's work, and who, while loving
manuscripts as well as I do, have not had so large an
experience. I may venture to justify myself by a personal
anecdote. The author of the "Stones of Venice" once said
that he was surprised by my apparently exact knowledge of
the commercial value of manuscripts ; and my reply was
that, as I had for twenty years been the buyer of, or the
underbidder for, all the fine examples which had appeared in
the public auctions, there was no great reason for his wonder.
The following sketch will consist of a number of cursory
remarks upon the calligraphy and the ornamentation of
medieval manuscripts ; preceded by an historical sketch,
arranged in chronological paragraphs, of the beginnings
and the gradual diffusion of the art of writing through-
out the world.

The Beginnings of Writing

Palaaography is the branch of science which deals with
ancient writing (iraXaLa ypafylf). As the Greek word for
writing comprises a great deal more than the work of pen
and ink, palseographical study would be imperfect if it did
not take into consideration the ancient inscriptions upon
stone and metal which are usually left to numismatists
and other archaeologists. In a small treatise like the
present, no such ambitious and comprehensive treatment is
intended. The object is mainly to summarise the results of
other men's labour, and to give a general idea of what is
known at the present day about the diffusion of the art of
writing and the methods of producing books before the
sixteenth century.

The name for book in various ancient languages is
indicative of the earliest stage in the history of writing.
The English word itself appears in its oldest written form
m the Gothic Scriptures of the fourth century, in which
&o&a=writing, and bokos=things written=books. This is

believed to be derived from the name of the tree we call
beech and the Germans buche, because it is supposed that
the bark or wood of that tree was used for cutting runes
upon. Similar to this is the Latin liber, which originally
meant the inner bark of a tree, and afterwards came to
mean book, because leaves were made from that inner bark
for the purpose of writing. Diphthera, in ancient Ionic-
Greek, was equivalent to book, because it meant a polished
skin (like parchment or leather) used for writing upon
before the Greeks adopted papyrus (by~blos, biblos) from
the Egyptians. Then the name for papyrus became the
name for a book, and has been retained in modern speech in
the word Bible. The word diphthera passed into use among
the Persians about five hundred years before Christ, as the
material was borrowed by them from the lonians for the
use of the scribes who kept the royal records, and it still
remains in the speech of the modern Persians as defter
book. The Hebrew word sep^er=engraving, and is therefore
used to designate a book ; and the same sense underlies the
Arabic word Kitab. Writing was a scratching or incising
of symbols representing sounds (or ideas) upon stone or
metal, upon wood, or bark, or leaves (folia), dressed leather,
parchment, papyrus, wax tablets, and paper.

The form in which the sheets (of skin, parchment, bark,
papyrus, or paper) were gathered, may have been rolls in
which they were united to form a single page, or a square
combination of successive leaves united only at one side.
The former was of course the earlier mode, but the latter
was also in use at a remote date. Greek and Eoman scribes
had evidently begun to prefer the square fashion during the
early days of the Eoman empire ; and we may take it to
have become the prevalent custom in the fourth century.
Elack ink has always been in use for writing, red and blue
ink are of comparatively recent date. The use of gold ink,
which was of course so costly that it could never be other-
wise than rare, originated probably when the empire was as

yet unshaken by barbarian inroads ; it was, however, not
extinct in Home during the sixth and seventh centuries, and
was relatively not uncommon at the magnificent court of
Byzantium. Late examples were produced in Gaul for the
Frankish princes in the ninth century ; and in these the
simple splendour of the Koman style was embellished with
ornamentation chiefly drawn from Irish and Anglo-Saxon
models.

Although people knew how to write and to read more
than five thousand years ago, " a reading public," as we
imderstand the term, came into existence for the first time
in Greece in the fifth century B.C., and again in Eome in the
first century B.C. By this it is meant that there were people
who bought books for the pleasure of reading them, as
distinguished from the class which produced or used books
as an official necessity. The requirements of that reading
public among the Greeks, led to the disuse of skins for the
purpose of writing, since only a cheaper and more plentiful
material could satisfy the demand. Egyptian papyrus being
both cheap and plentiful, it was adopted and remained in
use for over a thousand years among the people who spoke
Greek and Latin. Books upon vellum or parchment
cliarta pergamena, an improved form of the old skins
were only produced occasionally, as luxuries, between the
second century B.C. and the fifth century of our era. At
this latter period, the reading public was extinguished in the
revolutions of barbarian conquest, and the cheap material
ceased to be necessary. In the absence of a popular demand
for books, and when only persons of exceptional learning,
churchmen, statesmen, and monks, experienced the need of
reading and writing, the supply of vellum was sufficient, and
this dearer material was relatively economical because of its
durability. A reading public can hardly be said to have come
into renewed existence till the fifteenth century, and then
once more vellum was superseded by the cheaper material of
paper. Paper, from linen or rags, had been made in the

Saracenic east for several centuries, but was little used in
Europe till the thirteenth century, and was not fabricated in
the west to any considerable extent until the fourteenth
century.

Writing in Egypt 5000 B.C.

The origin of writing, that is of the art of transmitting
information by means of symbols representing speech,
is, like the origin of every other invention, obscure and
uncertain. It is not the proud Aryan, nor his elder brother
the Semite, who can claim the honour of the invention. It
belongs neither to Japnet nor to Shem (convenient eponyms)
but to the despised Ham, with whom they are unwilling to
acknowledge kinship. Four thousand years before Christ
(the very period at which, in Milton's opinion, Adam and
Eve were banished from Paradise) the people of the Nile
Valley formed a rich and powerful monarchy, with an old
civilisation, and possessed the arts of painting, sculpture,
architecture, and writing. Their writing was chiefly upon
stone monuments, and recorded the deeds of their Kings or
the greatness of their Gods. They also wrote upon leaves
of papyrus the forms of prayer and eulogy which were buried
with their dead. Among the surviving written productions
of that great monarchy is a work containing the Moral
Precepts of Ptah-Hotep. Written in the language of Khem
(old Egypt), and in the hieratic character, upon papyrus, it
is " the oldest book in the world." The period of its com-
position is more ancient than the date of the writing, which,
by internal evidence, has been proved to be over 2000 B.C.
It is now in the Bibliotheque Rationale, and is known by
the name of the Papyrus Prisse. As there can be no question
that hieroglyphic writing (engraving) upon stone was con-
siderably anterior to the evolution of the cursive hieratic
written with pen and ink upon papyrus ; and as there is a
hieroglyphic inscription on stone in the Ashmolean Museum

which, is assigned to 4000 B.C. we must infer that the real
age of Egyptian writing is beyond our ken. It must be at
the least six thousand years old ; and there are numerous
examples in lapidar inscriptions which represent the
millennium preceding the date of the Prisse Papyrus.
With this book, written several centuries before Moses
dwelt in the land of Egypt, a sketch of the history of
writing may modestly begin. It must not be imagined that
the dates of Egyptian and Babylonian documents are based
upon enthusiastic conjecture, or upon unaided calculation of
the years assigned to the lives and reigns of monarchs in
their newly discovered and deciphered records, Josephus
and Eusebius have preserved fragments of older historical
writers, among them portions of the lost Chronicles of
Berossus the Chaldgean and Manetho the Egyptian, whose
works were written in Greek in the fourth and third centuries
before Christ. In former days, when scholars were nurtured
upon the Christian chronology which counted the birth of
Christ as A.M. 4004, or A.M. 5870, according as the Hebrew
Bible or the Septuagint was adopted as the authority for
dates, it was the custom to deride as fabulous the immense
lists of Chaldean and Egyptian dynasties, which spoiled the
story of Genesis ; but the hieroglyphic and the cuneiform
monuments have yielded up their long-buried testimony to
justify the discredited chroniclers. Nothing in romance is
more wonderful than the story of the work of interpretation,
by which old Egypt and old Assyria have been brought
forward into the light of authentic history. Two generations
of acute and patient scholars working contemporaneously in
England, France, Germany, and Italy, have contrived, with-
out dictionary, without grammar, without even a key to the
mysterious letters, to decipher and to read the stony records
of those ancient empires. Their first labour was to dis-
tinguish the symbols, and to assign to them a phonetic
value, then to compare the resultant words with the vocabu-
lary of known languages supposed to be akin to the old

ones. In the case of the hieroglyphics, the Coptic language
alone offered its aid, this being the tongue of Egypt as
written and spoken in the first ten centimes of our era,
genuine Egyptian indeed, but necessarily differing enormously
from its earliest phases thousands of years back. As to the
cuneiform inscriptions, the various Semitic tongues furnished
means of comparison for Assyrian texts, the Persian and
" Zend " for old Persic and Median, and certain cuneiform
vocabularies were discovered which rendered it possible to
understand a third language, the most ancient of them all,
which had been utterly unknown even by name. From the
time of Christ, perhaps even before it, down to sixty years
ago, the languages and monuments of Egypt and Chaldaaa
had never been looked upon by the eye of intelligence. The
mystery of ages is a mystery no more.

Writing in Chaldcea, 4000 B.C.

The age of Chaldsean writing (engraving) is not far
behind that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is said that
an inscription of the first Sargon, King of Akkad (in the
square or angular character out of which the wedge-shaped
or cuneiform letters were evolved), carries the record back
to 3800 B.C. Even if we take a large latitude in discounting

< ' O

the chronology, there still remains a certainty that the
cuneiform character of Babylonia was used over the greater
part of Western Asia from at least 2500 B.C., and in Persia
and its tributaries down to 300 B.C. While, of the Egyptian
writing, we have remains exhibiting all the stages of
development, namely (1) the hieroglyphic, (2) the hieratic,
(3) the demotic, (4) the Coptic in Greek letters ; of the
cuneiform script we have only the two phases which may
be roughly said to correspond to the Egyptian hieratic and
demotic, or more exactly to two stages of the hieratic. We
cannot reconstruct the original Chaldsean hieroglyphics
which must have preceded the Chaldgean hieratic and

cuneiform; nor do we know (at present) of any truly cursive
hand developed from the wedge-letters. Among the relics
of the Assyrians is a great number of stone tablets of small
size, containing reports to the monarch from provincial
governors. One of them, now in the British Museum, is
supposed, from a phrase which occurs in it, to show that the
stone tablets were simply copies made for preservation in the
archives, while the actually transmitted originals were written
on papyrus. If that were the practice, and there is inherent
probability in the suggestion, there would assuredly have
been a great quantity of papyrus used throughout the
Assyrian empire ; yet not a fragment of that material has
been discovered. In the absence of some positive evidence,
we can but suppose it likely that the Assyrians used papyrus
(or skins) for writing on, as well as the Egyptians, but
applied it only to temporary purposes, trusting rather to
granite and brick, than to paper or to leather, whatever was
intended for enduring record.

Progress of the Art, B. C. 2500-1500

At about 2500 B.C. all the civilisation of the world was
confined to the regions bordering the whole length of the
Bed Sea, and extending northwards to Armenia. In the
South was Egypt, a powerful monarchy dominant at times
from Ethiopia to Asia Minor, and in the North the Chaldee
kingdom of Akkad dominant over Mesopotamia and the
frontier lands. The country of Egypt was named by its
people Kerne or Kheme, and their language was called the
speech of Kerne (out of which the Hebrews made Ham).
The name of Ai-Gupt was given to the Delta by its Semitic
neighbours and inhabitants, while they called the whole
country Mizr (Mizraim) or Misr. The former name has
prevailed in European use, as well as furnished the words
Copt and Coptic, although this is questionable. The Kheme
language was written both in hieroglyphic and in hieratic

characters at the year 2500 B.C. The former were the
ancient picture-symbols, which were arranged in vertical
columns and read from top to bottom and from left to right.
This practice was retained to the end, notwithstanding that
the Egyptians had been long in contemporaneous possession
of the cursive hieratic characters, written in horizontal lines
from right to left, just as Hebrew and Arabic. The hieratic
character was simply an abridgment of the hieratic, a
reduction of the pictorial to conventional forms.

The two scripts endured side by side till Christianity
supervened, and then the modified Greek alphabet which we
call the Coptic came into existence. The demotic script, a
still more cursive reduction of the hieratic, had come into
use probably a thousand years B.C., but it was only used for
private mercantile transactions, and it died out on the
establishment of the Coptic. Examples of both hieroglyphic
and demotic writing are given in the plates accompanying
this sketch.

The Akkadian Chaldee language (to be distinguished
from the later Semitic Syro-Chaldee) has, like the Egyptian
Khemi, no immediate affinities with any other important
form of speech. They are both of an older type and stock
than the oldest known members of the Aryan and Semitic
families. The Akkadian is called Turanian, as showing
undoubted resemblances to the Turki and Mongol languages
of the lands lying north and east of Persia, which were
named by the Persians Turan, as distinguished from Iran.
The place of the Khemi in philology is not so easily defined.
It does not seem that any other language than that of Egypt
was ever written in the Egyptian script. The case is some-
what different with the Chaldee characters. They were
adopted in varying modes for writing Semitic and Aryan
languages, as well as the native Akkadian. This resulted
from the blending of populations by successive conquests.
The Akkadian-Chaldees ruled in Mesopotamia till 1500 B.C.,
when they went down before the Semites from Northern Arabia.

2
Palceography

A branch of these Semites had already for a considerable
time occupied the eastern side of Mesopotamia and were in
possession of the region round Nineveh, at the time when
their Arabian kindred swept away the old dynasty that had
had its chief seat in Babylonia.

At or about 1300 B.C., the Ninevite Assyrians or Syro-
Chaldseans united the whole of Mesopotamia by conquest,
and completed the downfall of the Akkadian Chaldaaans who
were thenceforward reduced to servitude. Even the later
uprisings in Babylonia were only the work of princes of
Assyrian blood. The date mentioned is another standpoint
in the history of writing. The Semite Assyrians were now
the chief users of the cuneiform script. At Babylon they
seem to have retained it in the same form into which it had
developed in the hands of the Akkad people. At Nineveh,
it had undergone a modification ; the combinations of the
symbols being considerably altered, so that one may speak of
Babylonian characters and of Assyrian characters as being
two scripts, although they look identical.

The Semitic Alphabet about 1700 B.C.

This is (in chronological sequence) the place at which
mention should be made of the Greek myth that alphabet-
ical letters were introduced into Boeotia by Cadmus the
Phoenician. It has always been accepted as substantially
true, even by those who knew that Cadmus in Semitic
speech meant simply The Ancient, or The Eastern ; and
has usually been assigned to about 1500 B.C. The story
requires some modification, and the date is probably a good
deal out of reckoning. Here it is only referred to as showing
the early use of letters by the Phoenicians. There are really
no extant monuments to prove the anteriority of the Semite
alphabet to that of the Greeks, but there can be no question
as to the fact. The names of the Greek letters are manifestly
borrowed from a Semitic speech, and the Cadmus story is in

itself a sufficient acknowledgment of the secondary position
of the Hellenes. It is generally held that the Phoanicians
derived their alphabet by means of a selection from the
phonetic symbols of the Egyptian hieratic script. Whether
the process was due to the Phoenicians themselves, is not so
clearly asserted. Mr. Maunde Thompson, following Lenor-
mant and the Yicomte de Rouge, seems to consider that it
gradually took place in Egypt after the Arabs had conquered
the country, and when the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings
had established their dynasty (2000 B.C.). During the five
hundred years of their rule there must have been a large
Semitic immigration, and it is not unlikely that the Semitic
alphabet was then derived from the Egyptian for the use of
the Syrians and. Arabs who dwelt in Lower Egypt. There
is, on the other hand, a modern theory that the Semitic
alphabet was not evolved in this way, but from the hieratic
Babylonian writing. It is true that similarities may be
found between them, and it is also demonstrable that the
Greek names of the alphabet were drawn from the speech,
not of Phoenicia or Palestine, but of Aram or Semitic
Chaldaaa. Nothing is certain as to the origin of the Semitic
alphabet, notwithstanding the elaborate comparative tables
produced by Rouge and others, beyond the fact that several
letters resemble Egyptian (and Chaldgeo- Assyrian) symbols
having sometimes the same phonetic value. The names given
to their characters by the Semites are undoubtedly descriptive
of their apparent iconism, and the initial sound of each name
is the power of the letter. This, on the face of it, would
imply that the Aramaic alphabet was an original invention.
The Greeks who first received it, must have been those of
Asia Minor, not those of Hellas ; and the first transmitters
were neither Arabs, nor Jews, nor Phoenicians, but Babylonian
Arama3ans in contact with Cilicia and Cappadocia. The
names of the letters, as sounded by the Syrians of Palestine
(Phoenicians, Israelites, Jews), were : AlepJi, Beth, Gimel,
Daleth, He, Van, Zain (Zai), Hheth (Khetli), Teth, Yod,

Caph, Lamed, Mem (m.aim=waters}, Nun, Samekh, Ain
(Oiri), Pe, Tsade, Koph, Eesh (=head), Shin, Tau.

We have no actual knowledge of the Chaldaeo- Aramaic
sounds of these names, but we know that the Eastern
Syrians would probably have written them thus :

Alpha, Beta, Gamla, Dalta, He, Vau, Zaita, Hheta.
Teta, Yoda, Kappa, Lamda, Mu (=ivater), Nun (Nu},
Samkha (Simkha=Sigma'), Oin (Oif), Pe, Tsada, Koppa,
Rash (Mof=face), Shen, Tau.

Leaving aside for the present any consideration of the
changes and additions in the Greek alphabet, we may
assume that it passed from Babylonia through Cilicia to
the Phrygians and Lydians ; and that, whatever inter-
course may have taken place between the European Greeks
and the Phoenicians then or afterwards, the lonians of Asia
Minor had already formulated the Hellenic alphabet before
it reached the Thebans. As it seems to be nearly certain
that the Phrygians possessed it in the tenth century before
Christ, the Aramaeans must have had it much earlier, and
we may credit them with the use of writing as far back as
1300-1200 B.C. It is very unlikely that the Western Syrians
were far behind, but the oldest monuments extant go no
higher than the tenth century, and are probably surpassed
in antiquity by some of the Sabsean (Himyarite or Homerite)
inscriptions of Southern Arabia. The Himyari alphabet,
which is the direct ancestor of the modern Abyssinian,
introduces some novel forms, and has less resemblance to
the Aramaic original than any of the others. Most of the
letters are, however, ultimately traceable to the Aramaic,
although the date must have been remote, to judge from the
large divergences in shape which had had time to develop
themselves before the type was fixed.

About, or soon after, 1000 B.C., we find a considerable
portion of the earth's surface occupied by people knowing
how to write ; namely, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, Arabia, the
whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia,

and China. Abyssinia and Armenia are included because
into the one country Egyptian and Himyaritic characters
had been imported, and into the other a form of Babylonian.
China is placed in the list, far below her pretensions, because
we do not really know the age of the character in which
Chinese books preserve the inscriptions of Yu. It appears-
derivable from the dissertations of M. Terrien, whose saga-
cious learning has attracted many scholars, that the earliest
history recorded in Chinese annals is not geographically
Chinese ; but that it represents the legends and traditions
which were carried into China by the ancestors of the race.
A connexion has been found to subsist between those
traditions and the early history of Babylonia, which leads to
the inference that the Akkadian people of 3800 B.C. and
the ancestors of the Chinese were at one time united.
Assuming that the theory is justifiable, we may treat the
Chinese in China as having inherited the art of writing,
however strangely altered in form. It is probably true that
they used the letters out of which their present characters
descended, in the country they now inhabit, at more than
1000 B.C.

The Alphabet in European Greece, 800 B.C.

The European Greeks are not included in the preceding
paragraph, simply because there are no means of proving
that they had the use of letters in the tenth century B.C.
The probability, however, is that they were not far behind
their brethren in Asia Minor. The variations in the forms
of some of the letters of the Greek alphabet which are found
in inscriptions at different places both in Asia Minor and in
Greece, are attributable to local fashions and to the fact
that the script was not built up all at once from a single
model. It is here that the tradition about Cadmus has its
chief significance ; for there can be little doubt that the
alphabet of Tyre, not quite identical with its elder Aramaic

sister, had some immediate influence in modifying the forms
borrowed by the Boeotians from the lonians. The older
Greek alphabet has been already mentioned. It was found
after a while to be both insufficient and more than sufficient.
The Tsade (ts) and Koppa (q) were not needed in Greek,
and were only retained formally as numerals. As most
Greek organs could only give the same sound (s) to both
the simklia and the shen (which they called sigma and san),
one of the two names was superfluous. So they kept the
symbol for shen as an s, but transferred to it the name of
the simkha. The symbol of the latter they retained in its
place, but sounded it as ks, and called it Ksi, a name which
did not badly suit the original Semitic sound of the letter
which was like hs rather than s. The unaspirated He they
called mere E (E psilon) ; to the aspirated Heta, they left
its name, but regarded it as aspirated E. Its original
Semitic value as an aspirate (adaptable to any vowel) was
not wholly lost sight of, and this idea of its power survived
the stage at which H had become nothing more than e or ee.
The necessity of making aspirated letters led to the prefixing
or over-writing of the ff, at first in its full size, then (so as
to avoid confusion with Eta) in small, then in half shape,
thus [-. This custom produced its complement in the shape
of -| , to mark the soft breathing; until in the eleventh
century of our era, the two breathings were worn down into
semicircular form, thus C , 3. Another rejected symbol was
the van, formed like the letter F and sounded like our V.
It dropped out of usage, and they forgot its name, although
it had been considerably used by the old poets, in connexion
with whom it is usually named digamma, because of its
resemblance to a double gamma, or one gamma superimposed
on another. It was found necessary to have a character for
u, and advantageous to use single symbols for double letters
frequently occurring, such as ph, kh, ps and oo (long o).
The old Eastern form of vau supplied the u ; in fact, having
dropped the letter as a consonant out of its sixth place in

the alphabet, they put it in its vowel-character at the end.
The symbol of the discarded koppa was used for the Ph,
which was not equivalent in sound to our ph, but must have
resembled the German pf. The discarded tsada (a trident)
was used to represent, in some places ps, in others M, but
finally the symbol fell into two distinct forms, by being
written upright as + (\^) and leaning side wise as x (x). By the
time of Herodotus the Greek alphabet may be considered as
having reached exactly its present form in capital letters.
The cursive hand which must have existed at all times of
Greek writing was simply a rapid deformation of the capitals,
and consequently did not attain to any uniformly distinctive
character till much later. The general use of minuscules
in any such uniform type is always referred to the eighth
century after Christ, but really there is no essential change
of form between the cursive letters a hundred years before
Christ and those of a thousand years after Christ. The
chief difference is in the greater freedom and fluency of the
late letters, an air of practised familiarity which is lacking
in the earlier cursive.

Writing in Italy from 700 to 100 B.C.

The Greeks and the Phoenicians had a similar aptitude
for establishing colonies abroad to that which the English
have shown during the past three centuries. Thus the coast
line of the Mediterranean from Tripoli to Morocco, and from
Sicily and Southern Italy to Spain and Gaul, was dotted with
Punic and Greek settlements created for purely commercial
purposes, but gaining an independent importance as time
went on. The chief seat of Phoenician domination was at
Carthage; of Greek nationality at Syracuse, Cuma3 (near
Naples), and Marseilles. The age at which those colonies
acquired political greatness may be roughly set down as in
the fourth century before Christ, but it is sufficient for our
purpose to know that they had been founded considerably

earlier ; and that the art of writing had been carried west-
ward as far back at least as the seventh or eighth century
B.C. It was virtually the one alphabet, applied by various
races to their various languages, which was used at Carthage
and Cadiz, at Marseilles and in Sicily and Italy, in the
seventh century B.C. Italy was occupied by several distinct
sets of people. The Umbrians, Latins, and Oscans occupied
all the middle of the peninsula ; the Pelasgic tribes who
were in the heel and toe of the geographical boot were
nearly Grecised ; the Etruscans held Tuscany, and Celts
occupied Lombardy. Mommsen thought that the Greek
alphabet had reached the Italians more than 1300 years
before Christ ; but a more modest estimate will be safer.
It was probably about seven hundred years B.C. when the
Etrurians received their alphabet from the Greeks ; and
there is no reason for thinking, as Mommsen implies, that
their first contact with Greek letters had been elsewhere
than in Italy. The alphabet reached them no doubt from
Cuma3, as it did the Latins, and there was sufficient variation
in the practice of the Greek colonies in Italy to account for
the differences which mark Etruscan, Umbrian, and Latin
writing.

Roman Writing.

The usual date of the founding of Rome is undoubtedly
correct or nearly so. It was about the middle of the eighth
century B.C., and the rapid enlargement of the new Latin
town on the Tiber, produced by the influx of settlers into a
trade emporium with waterway, must have led to an early
use of writing. This indicates something like 700 B.C. for
the period of the extension of that art over the whole of
Italy. The custom of writing from right to left and left to
right in alternate lines was retained for several centuries
among the various Italic peoples, but the Latins seem to
have been the first to adopt the Greek modification by which

the letters took their permanent shape from the left-right
sequence. In several Greek towns, the old T was replaced
by a C (the result of a cursive mode of writing), and the
triangular A had its second and third lines represented by a
single curve. The IT was still a P, and the P had a little
stroke added to it (P) for the sake of distinction. The
Sigma was commonly written ^ instead of (2). The
Latins omitted of course such letters as they found super-
fluous (z, th, k, ph, ch, ps, and oo), but were naturally bound
to retain letters already becoming superfluous to the Greeks
(F, Q). The third letter of the alphabet was used for both
K and G ; but later, when the need of some differentiation
became felt, the useless Z was replaced by a second C to
which a tail was added ( Q). The Eta (or Heta) was made
to retain its earliest function as a strong breathing (H),
although the Greeks were treating it as no more than EE.
The Greek confusion between the symbols for ks, ps, and
c/i, affected the Latins so far that one of the three letters,
i.e. X, was taken to represent the only sound of the three
which their language needed, namely ks ; and this being an
afterthought, it was put at the end of the alphabet. Thus
in the second century B.C. the Romans had their alphabet
completely formed in the capital shapes, and with the
phonetic values, which it thenceforward retained. The
letters were A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, 0, P, Q, R,
S, T, V, X, the F being sounded probably as our V and F, the
V as our U and W. It was long afterwards that the F was
restricted to the sound of English F, and V as a consonant
took the sound of English Y (instead of W.) The Q was
a more guttural letter than the C originally, but afterwards
lost its distinctiveness of utterance. When it became
fashionable to learn and quote Greek, in the time of Cicero
and after, the letters K, Y, and Z were reinserted in the
Latin alphabet for form's sake, as K, Y, Z. It was not till
the sixteenth century that, in the northern countries of
Europe, the letter J was evolved from the black letter form
Paloeography 3

of I (|) arid the letter V split into U and V. As for the
W, it was needed only by Germanic people, and was conse-
quently a late intruder into the modern Koman alphabet.

Indian Writing about 300 B. C.

To return to the East, the first examples of native Indian
writing appeared in the rock-inscribed decrees of Asoka,
found in various places over the north of India, from the
Indus to the Ganges, and even in the Dekkan ; which can
be dated between 250 and 230 B.C. The language is
Prakrit or Pali, the characters (although at first sight they
seem an independent script) were derived like so many
others from the Semitic system, and the nearest of the
parallel types is the alphabet of the Himyarite inscriptions.
The Saba3an monarchy which ruled over Southern Arabia a
thousand years B.C. had had large commercial relations with
India, and it was probably from that source that the people
of Bombay and the North- West acquired the art of writing,
how long before Asoka it would be difficult to learn. Out
of the simple forms of Asoka's alphabet all the modern
scripts of Indian native writing descended, including the
artificial and elaborate Nagari alphabet which is one of the
latest of them.

Writing in Central Asia from 300 B. C.

In the kingdom of Bactria, the coins of the kings
who from about 150 B.C. followed the older Greek princes,
bear inscriptions in Indian Prakrit, but not written in the
same character as was used by Asoka. The two scripts
differ so much in appearance not only from all others,
but also between themselves, that one does not easily
recognise the fact that they both must have been of
Himyaritic origin. They are very different from the Pehlvi
which was used by Parthian sovereigns in the second century
after Christ, and by the Sassanide kings' in the fourth. The

Pehlvi had been evolved from the later Aramean, and must
have been in use in Persia before the time of Alexander ;
but the existing specimens are all subsequent to the
beginning of the Christian era. And as for the script which
is called Zend, and which is used for writing the Zoroastrian
books of the most ancient Persian language, there is nothing
to prove that it is not of much later invention than the
Pehlvi.

Oriental Letters after the beginning of the Christian Era

Samaria. The writing of Palestine was probably identical
originally with that of the Phoenicians, and the Samaritan
script, which is still in use for biblical purposes, has retained
to the present day a considerable resemblance with that of
Tyre and Sidon. The expatriation and partial repatriation
of the Jews and Israelites during the seventh and sixth
centuries B.C., had the effect of leaving only a small remnant
in the north of the land who preserved their ancient writing.
From that time to this some of the descendants of the
Samarians have continued to write their Pentateuch (which
for them is the whole of the Bible) in the ancient characters
of the Hebrew language (a specimen is found on plate 4).
All the rest of the Jews, in whatever part of the world they
may have been, have retained the square character (with its
various Rabbinical modifications) which they learned in
ChaldaBa in the seventh century B.C. But the Hebrew
language never returned to the Holy Land. Hebrew, as
spoken among the Samaritans, underwent the same Ara-
maisation as the language of the Judseans, and from three
or four centuries B.C. down to the eighth century of our era,
the language of all Syria was Syriac with local dialects, and
Greek in the great cities. The usual character in which
Syriac was written has already been mentioned, but the
Samaritans wrote even their semi-Syriac speech in the old

characters of their Bible; and there is a really Samaritan
Pentateuch different from the Hebrew Pentateuch in
Samaritan letters which corresponds in Samaritan literature
to the Chaldee Targums of the Jews. None of the Hebraeo-
Aramaic dialects long survived in Syria the conquest of the
Arabs. Syriac still lived on in Western Persia and in
Mongolia, and in India for a time, but only survived as a
dead liturgical language. Chalda3O-Hebraic made its
way westwards to Morocco, Italy, Spain and Gaul. The
faithful in Samaria, now nearly extinct, clung to their Penta-
teuch and their religion through all vicissitudes, and have
never ceased to write the Bible in the Hebrew script of
ancient Palestine.

Arabia. Arabian writing before the time of Mohammad
is only known to us under the name of Haurani and
Nabatha3an in the North, of Himyaritic in the South.
None of these scripts resembles the Islamic characters
called distinctively Arabic. The Gospel-script (Estrangelo)
of the Syrians is the nearest of all the Aramaic hands to
that used by the earliest Mohammadans, which (from its
special cultivation in the town of Cufa) is called Cufic. But
even here, the resemblance is not so close as to make it
improbable that there was a link between them in some lost
script of pre-Christian days. The Cufic writing which
prevailed for three centuries as the mode of writing the
Koran cannot strictly be shown to be the mother of the
Naskhi which replaced it and has flourished for a thousand
years. It is clearly older than the Naskhi in its forms,
but the Naskhi has been proved to have existed contem-
poraneously with the Cufic almost from the beginning of
Mohammadanism. After the third century of the Hijra, the
Cufic was only retained for ornamentation and head-lines.
By that time the Arab conquests had created a vast Moham-
madan empire ; the Syrians, the Persians, and the Egyptians
were obliged to give up their old scripts, and to accept that
of their conquerors. Arabic writing occupied not only all

the seats in which Phoenician letters had been used fifteen
centuries before, but even a far larger area. The writing
and the language were used and known from Seville to the
frontiers of India. Soon after, India likewise fell a prey ;
and Arabic letters have been used there ever since by the
Mohammadan population. The elegant script called Talik,
which was peculiar to the Persians (but has been borrowed
in India), was developed in the fourteenth century. It
differs little, except in gracefulness, from the typical
Naskhi.

India and the further East. The characters ill which
the Pracrit inscriptions of Northern India were engraved on
stone, in the third century B.C., descended, with considerable
modifications of form, to the various tribes of Hindus who
developed the modern languages of India, now called Hindi,
Gujarati, Mahratti, Panjabi, Bengali. All these languages
are akin, their differences being produced by segregation
and by local contact with aboriginal or foreign populations.
Their character two thousand years ago (before local
diversities were perpetuated in names) is described by the
term Prakrit (^Natural) as distinguished from the title
given to another form of the language, namely Sanskrit
(=Artificial) which is believed to represent a far more
ancient stage of Indian speech. In this artificial language
the earliest traditions and literature of the Hindo- Aryan
race are preserved, but it is supposed to have died out of
speech (if ever it was spoken) several centuries before the
Christian era. However that may be, we have no monument
or record to show that it was written till the tenth century
after Christ, and the Sanscrit alphabet is undeniably not
more than eight or nine centuries old, having been artificially
elaborated from the much simpler script of Asoka's
time.

The graphic systems of Southern India, Ceylon, Thibet.
Burma, and Siam were all derived from the script of Aryan
India after Budhism had begun to spread.

In North-Eastern Asia, the Mongolian script (and out of
it, the Manchurian) were formed from the writing of the
Nestorian Christians who carried their Syriac books to the
frontiers of China.

Spain and Gaul under the Romans

It has been already said that Punic settlements were
made in Spain probably as far back as the seventh century B.C.
To the Phoenicians or Carthaginians we may ascribe the
introduction of letters and their application to coins and
inscriptions, not only in the Punic language of the men
who held Cadiz, Carthagena, and Barcelona, but also in the
Iberian and Celtiberian language of native princes. Strabo
says that the Turdetani (of the present Andalusia) boasted
the possession of historical and poetical books of immense
age in their own language ; but when he was writing, about
the time of the birth of Christ, they were all Romanised
and unable to speak any other tongue than Latin. There
exists, however, a great quantity of coins struck in Spain
between 400 B.C. and the time of Augustus. There are
three varieties (omitting those of Greek colonies in Aragon),
namely, those in Punic language and Punic letters, those
with Iberian names in Punic letters, and those with Celt-
iberian names in modified Punic letters. The later Iberian
and Celtiberian have sometimes Latin inscriptions added to
the native ones. In the first century after Christ, the whole
of Spain was virtually Eomanised. The Transalpine Gauls
retained their own speech longer than the Spaniards did
theirs, because the conquest was later; but the people
of Cisalpine Gaul were Eomanised even earlier than the
Spaniards. The independence of Marseilles as a Greek
republic came to an end in the first century of the Roman
empire, and the Greek language probably died out in a few
generations. Then, no doubt, Roman letters took the place
of the Greek, which, as Caesar said, were used by the Gauls
in his time. Henceforward, till the fifth century, Spain and

Gaul were simply outlying provinces of the empire, without
anything in literature or calligraphy to distinguish their people
from the Komanised Italians. It was not till the sixth century,
when the Gothic kingdom had become a stable institution,
that anything like a local fashion of calligraphy began to
develop itself in Spain. Gaul was similarly affected by the
influx first of the Visigoths, then of the Franks.

Influence of the Bible upon writing

The events which led to the compilation of the Gospels
were of the greatest moment in the history of writing. The
educational influence of the Bible apart entirely from its
claims to supernatural importance in spreading the use of
letters and creating schools for the study of reading and
writing, has been incalculable. The historical and religious
traditions of the Jews would probably have had but little
effect upon the world, if the result of the various wars by
which Syria was so often desolated had not been to expatriate
the chosen people of the Lord. A large Jewish population
occupied Northern Egypt at the time when Alexander's
conquests revolutionised the old world. The establishment
of Greek dynasties in that country and in Syria speedily
Hellenised the upper classes and the citizens in both ; and
the linguistic subjugation of the Jews in Egypt was even
more complete than that of their old masters. Their
peculiar condition facilitated a change ; for while they
possessed the sacred book of the Law of their forefathers in
a language that had been dead for centuries, they had only
translations in the language of the country of their former
exile (Chakbsa) ; and though they had the commercial
qualification of bilingualism, their Chaldee and their Egyptian
were probably equally weak. Two generations were enough
to Hellenise them, and seventy years after Alexander's
death, the Bible was introduced to the knowledge of the
Greek world in an edition destined to render the old Hebrew

scripture intelligible to Egyptian and Syrian Jews. This
fortunate circumstance drew a number of people into the Elo-
histic fold who would never otherwise have been found there ;
and had no small influence in bringing about the social and
moral revolution which signalised the beginning of our era.
The Septuagint must remain the true Bible of Christendom
until the Hebrew text of the prse-Christian ages is discovered.
Next to it in importance is the Syriac Bible, and next to
that, the Latin Yulgate. All three indicate the prior
existence of a Hebrew original ; but to obtain a critically
exact knowledge of what that original was at the time of
Alexander the Great, one must resort to the Septuagint ; at
the time of Christ, to the Syriac ; and at the time of the
Emperor Julian, to the Yulgate. The Hebrew text, as we now
have it, underwent so many changes and corruptions during
the first few centuries of the growth of Christianity as a
younger rival to Judaism, that even the oldest Hebrew MSS.
are precluded by their comparative modernity from claiming
equa] importance with the three versions referred to. The
multiplication of copies of the Syriac Scriptures, between
the first century after Christ and the seventh, must have
been very great ; that of the Greek Bible and Testament,
from the first to the fourteenth century, still greater ; and
that of the Latin Yulgate, from the fifth to the fifteenth,
enormous. The early missionaries of the Christian Church
were Hellenised Syrians or Egyptians, and they stamped the
art of their native countries upon the new Biblical literature
in every country except Italy. Italy was the exception,
simply because it was the centre of political power and of
Grasco-Roman culture, and thus too learned and too fastidious
to accept a new popular religion or an inferior type of
ornamental art. But all the external provinces of the
Empire underwent the influence of the enthusiastic prosely-
tizers, and even Byzantium succumbed to it after the Empire
of the West had been extinguished. The types of ornament
created for the embellishment of Bibles were Egyptian in

design and colouring ; and this is the reason why the
pictures in all the early examples of book-illustration in the
West are supposed to have a Byzantine aspect ; the fact being
that while classical art faded away almost with paganism
in Italy and Hellas, the Oriental substitute, which reigned
from Asia Minor to Ireland, was preserved in Byzantium till
the downfall of the Greek empire. A few belated specimens
of degenerate classical ornament are found to represent
the ages between Constantine and Charles the Great ; but in
general terms it may be said that Roman book-illustration
died out in the fourth century. It came to life again, but in
utter metamorphosis, in the decorated Irish books of the
sixth-seventh century, which were really the first examples
of the mediaeval art of illumination.

The Coptic alphabet and the Gothic alphabet were two
late and artificial inventions, due entirely to a holy rage
for producing the Bible in the language of the Egyptians
and the Goths. The two Slavonic alphabets likewise were
late scripts, invented for the purpose of translating the
Bible into Slovene. The Armenian alphabet (and out of it
the Georgian) had a similar origin, and seems to have had
some relationship to the Slav Glagolitic. They are both
attributed to the fifth century.

Writing in Italy during the first five centuries of the

Christian era

We have not as full a knowledge as could be wished for
of the ordinary styles of writing under the Koman empire.
The books of the fourth and fifth centuries which are extant
show that calligraphy was then flourishing in great splendour,
so far as capitals and uncials were concerned ; and the
coins and inscriptions of the three preceding centuries show
us Roman capitals at their best. That rustic capitals were
used in the first century is proved by the Herculanean
remains, and that the fashion of writing in square capitals,

Palaeography 4

rustic capitals, and uncials was still practised in Italy down
to the eighth century, we have sufficient grounds for

knowing. But as to the style of handwriting used in books of
which editions of perhaps a few hundred copies were issued

such, for example, as the edition of his own epigrams which
Martial found at Lyons we can only form conjectures.
The semi-uncials of the fifth and sixth centuries, which
grew into the minuscules of the seventh and eighth, must
have been as much needed in the first century as the sixth,
but there is no trace of them. The Koman cursive hand,
upright or backsloped, that appears in the few extant
tablets and wall-inscriptions of the first and second centuries,
would have been too difficult for the readers who bought
books to enjoy them, and would assuredly have served as an
obstacle to their sale. It resembles rather the charter hand
of later days than the minuscule writing of books, but the
letters are unconnected, and there is no trace of any attempt
at neatness. It is indeed almost illegible, without slow and
painful decipherment. One striking peculiarity is the &,
which has frequently the shape of d, a form that was retained
in the official diplomatic hand of the fifth century. Such as
it was, however, the cursive hand would have had considerable
influence in shaping the semi-uncial or minuscule writing,
which must have existed before it was adopted by the Irish
in the fifth century and most other barbarians in the sixth.
That semi-uncial, although we find no examples of its use
in the empire before the end of the fifth century, had
evidently been the immediate parent of the first Irish,
which only differs from it in the superior evenness and
regularity of the latter. It included the g, r. s, t, which
are usually looked upon as special and characteristic letters
of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon alphabet.

After the fifth century Italy ceased to be entirely Roman.
In Rome itself, and in the region subject to the Popes, the
production of fine manuscripts of the old style in capitals
and uncials still went on, sometimes written in gold

and on purple vellum ; and the modified cursive hand above
referred was applied to the writing of books as well
as the writing of despatches. When this custom began is
just what we should like to know, because it would give us
the true origin of all modern minuscule writing or printing.
A specimen, dating from the seventh century, is given in
the PalaBOgraphical Society's facsimiles, which is clearly the
type that was followed and improved upon in Central France,
in the Caroline period. Carelessly written as it seems,
it indicates that a considerable length of time had elapsed
since the pen had been trained to form alternate light and
heavy strokes, and to give to the curves of the letters an
agreeable roundness, which was wholly missing in the earlier
Roman cursive. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose
that such writing was used in books long before the arrival
of the fifth century ; but there is no proof accessible.

The British Isles during the Roman period

It would have been correct enough to bracket Britain
along with Spain and Gaul in a preceding paragraph, but
we cannot venture to claim for this country any knowledge
of writing before the arrival of the Romans. It is true that
a great part of the south of the island was Gaulish, and
that the Gauls of Gaul, who knew how to write, were
in intimate relations with the Britons. Britania was
probably a land of Celtiberian population like Spain, but
without such traditions as the Turdetani. It was Romanised
very effectively all over the south, and with the Latin
language the people used Latin letters like their fellows in
Gaul and Spain. Like other Roman citizens, the Britons
became Christians, underwent subjugation by pagan bar-
barians, and lost their lives or their Latinity, those who
escaped massacre being absorbed by the invaders. So far
as writing is concerned, they have left nothing beyond some
lapidar inscriptions ; but these and whatever else they

produced in the form of MSS. during the first four centuries
were no doubt as wholly Eoman as anything of the kind
in Italy.

At so short a distance from the shores of Koman Britain,
it is not likely that the Irish remained letterless till the fifth
century of the Christian era. It is almost certain that the
labours of St. Patrick (about the middle of that century)
were but complementary to those of earlier missionaries ;
and that the adoption of the Koman alphabet in Ireland
may be dated from the end of the fourth or the beginning of
the fifth century. The consummate ornamental beauty of
the MSS. executed in Ireland during the seventh century,
and the testimony given by St. Adamnan (writing about
A.D. 670) to the expertness of St. Columba as a calligrapher
(about 550) tend to prove that the art had been practised
for a long time before it attained to such excellence. The
particular merit of the Irish is that they seem to have
developed (out of Roman semi-uncials) a handsome minus-
cule form of writing earlier than any other people. The
cursive of the Romans had always been an ugly and ill-
decipherable script ; and it was only in the seventh century
that even the Italians, under barbarian pressure, evolved a
fairly good readable minuscule. The minuscules of Gaul
and Western Germany, called Merowingian, were still in a
formless and primitive rudeness at the time when the Irish
had already attained the elegance of practised penmanship.

The Goths have next to be mentioned, as they and the
Irish were the only two barbarian nations that adopted the
Grseco-Roman alphabet before the break-up of the Roman
empire.

The Goths and Germans

The people who in the fourth century after Christ called
themselves Gut-tJiiuda, i.e. Goth-people, had been for many
centuries the most easterly branch of the Germanic race.

Down at least to the second century B.C. their tribes
occupied the regions bordering on the Vistula and the
Dniester, extending from the Bay of Dantzig to the Black
Sea. At the north-western end of the line they were in the
time of Tacitus known as Guthones ; those at the other
end were called Bastarnaa by Polybius and Strabo, and
recognised as Germans. The latter people were the first of
their race to become acquainted with civilisation. The
amber-trade was already in the time of Herodotus a vigorous
traffic, carried on between the Baltic and the Greek settle-
ments on the Euxine. It passed through the lands of the
Guthones and the Bastarnse, and led undoubtedly to the
growth of the form of notation called Runes. The Runic
alphabet, inscriptions in which are numerous in Scandinavia,
was evidently deformed from the Greek, and must have
originated about the Dniester some five or six centuries
before Christ. As time went on, that alphabet naturally
drifted further and farther north; the Goths and Germans,
nearest to the Greeks, having, of course, less need of it
according as their knowledge increased. From the shores
of the Baltic it was carried into Scandinavia, and became
the earliest form of writing in Northern Europe. Mr. George
Stephens claims for the oldest of the extant Norse Runes an
antiquity exceeding that of our era, but a more moderate
Scandinavian writer sets the earliest date at about A.D. 300.
In any case, it must be allowed that some form of writing was
obtained by Gothic tribes from Greek traders before the time
of Christ, and that it afterwards found a home in Denmark,
Sweden, and Norway. The name of Runes is equivalent
to that of ciphers or riddles or mysteries, and we may infer
that its real origin was in the cutting of strokes to express
numbers. Runic letters never reached the pen-and-ink
stage of other alphabets, and their records are hardly
more than inscriptions upon tombstones. For that and
similar purposes they continued to be occasionally em-
ployed, both in England and Scandinavia, long after the

use of Roman or modified Roman letters had been established
in all countries. The singular variations in form and
number and value between runes of different dates and
different places, are easily accounted for by the circumstance
that . there can have been no continuous practise of such
inscriptions in any country in which Christianity had already
established a simpler script.

Runes do not seem to have come into use among the
Western Germans, that is, the tribes which occupied the
region which we now call Germany. Hrabanus Maurus, in
the tenth century, wrote about the runes of the Marcomanni,
and gave figures of them. This has led German writers to
assert the existence of Runic letters among the Suevi in the
early days of the Roman empire ; but Hrabanus adds to
" Marcomanni " the gloss "quos nos Northmannos vocamus."
His Marcomanni were not the Marchmen of the Roman
period. Bede is also said to have formulated a list of the
runes of the Northmen. One reason which retarded the
educational advancement of the Western Germans was that
they never came into contact with the Romans till the
beginning of the first century B.C., and even then only for a
short time, in the invasion of the republic by the Cimbri
and Teutones. They were shut away from the Roman
frontiers by the buffer states of Celtic countries, and it was
only after the conquest of Gaul, Rha3tia, and Noricum that
the Romans came into continuous conflict with Marcomanni
and Suevi. It was Cassar who first made the name of
Gerrriani historical, and Tacitus who invented Germania as
the name of the country.

The name Germani is, as Zeuss suggests, Gallic for
" Neighbours," and was pronounced Gdrmani by the Gauls,
who had first been asked by the Romans how their neigh-
bours were called. It is curious that even in this country
the Britons called the invading English Garmani, by what
Bede supposed to be a corruption of speech. (The Celts in
later days were not Latinised Britons, and knew nothing of

Germans. They made no distinction between Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes, but called them all Saxons.)

The name by which the Germans call themselves is not
a race name, but merely the adjective meaning national,
native, vernacular. Just as the Italians afterwards used the
phrase in volgare to mean " in Italian," as distinguished
from Latin, so the Germans had the word diutisc or
thiutisc (deutsch) to mean vulgar, as opposed to walahisc
or ivalesc (welsch), which meant Latin. The two adjectives
became in time proper names, with the sense of German
and Koman. The Western Germans had nothing to do
with writing till they conquered the Welshmen of Gaul.
Consequently, we proceed to the Gothic alphabet.

After repeated attacks on the Roman empire in the
third century, and repeated defeats, the Goths had extended
their seats southwards, and were resident, in a partly
Christianised state, in the lands north and south of the
Danube. Wulfila, or Ulfila, a Goth, said to have been bora
in Cappadocia, a man of great ability, who was able to preach
in Gothic, in Greek, and in Latin, thought the time had
come to Christianise his countrymen completely. For that
purpose he translated the Bible into the Gothic language,
and created an uncial alphabet, derived partly from Greek,
partly from Latin, and partly from Runic. Of his twenty-
seven letters, two are merely numerals. In the twenty-five
that were used for writing, the c (g), d, I, p, and ch have
their Greek uncial shapes, the a, b, e, /, h, i, k, m, n, r, s, t,
and z may be called Latin uncials ; the q resembles our
capital u, but is plainly an adaptation of the Greek koppa,
the th seems to be modified from the Greek ph, but may
have easily been the Greek th ; a Roman G is inserted in
the alphabet in the place of the Greek Ksi, and seems to
have been used as gh or Y consonant ; a Greek Y is used
for the Runic angular P which represented the Teutonic w ;
an o with a dot in the centre stood for hw ; and the vowels
o and u appear as and n. The Gothie th, hw, w, o,

and u are found in the Runic alphabet, from which
Ulfila must have borrowed them. So far as it was
possible to him he avoided the letters of his pagan
ancestors, but for certain sounds existing in Gothic,
and not in Greek or Latin, he was compelled to fall back
upon the Runes. Just in a similar way, the Anglo-Saxons
two hundred years later, when adopting the Irish-Roman
alphabet, were obliged to add the necessary th and tv from
the same Runic source.

The Gothic letters of Ulfila were used for about two
centuries by the so-called Ostrogoths, all the extant manu-
scripts of the Gothic Bible having been written in Italy in
the sixth century, the famous Silver Gospels of Stockholm
included. Of the Visigoths who had preceded the Ostro-
goths in Italy, but gone onward thence to fix their rule in
Southern Gaul and Spain, we have nothing to show that
they ever made use of the Ulphilan alphabet. Their coins
of the sixth and seventh centuries bear inscriptions in
debased Roman capitals ; and the so-called Visigothic writing
in manuscripts of the eighth to the twelfth centuries is
simply Spanish-Roman. The use, in modern times, of the
word Gothic to indicate special forms of writing and archi-
tecture is very absurd, but the phrase has become
convenient. In so far as writing is concerned, we may
continue to use the word gothic (with a small g) to denote
the angular "black letter" of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries.

Irish and British writing

Of the various species of national writing which were
evolved from Roman calligraphy, and which, from the seventh
century onwards, are divided by palaeographers into Lom-
bardic and Yisigothic, Frankish (Merowingian), and Irish
(Hibernian and Anglo-Saxon), the Irish was probably the
first to attain a distinct type of its own. There would be

inherent probability in the notion that the Irish alphabet
and the Irish style of ornament were created in Britain and
transferred to Ireland in the fifth century when the English
arrived. Professor Westwood seemed to regard the idea
with favour but hesitated in giving it full expression. He
says "it may be observed that the earliest of the sculptured
Christian stones of Wales exhibit the same system of orna-
mentation, as tvell as the same style of writing, as the Irish
MSS. which are, in all probability, of a somewhat more
recent date." One will naturally seek to test the value of
this observation by examining the writer's Lapidarium
Wallia3. In that work, however, no substantiation will be
found. There are a couple of instances in which sculptured
stones bearing names, which are assigned by Bishop Stubbs
to the ninth century, are said by Prof. Westwood to be
perhaps of the sixth or seventh ; and that is all. On the
contrary, the one salient fact observable in the Lapidarium
is, that all the inscriptions of the Koman and early post-
Roman time are in pure Roman capitals, while the inscrip-
tions upon sculptured stones in minuscules resembling the
Irish alphabet, all belong to the period when the Angles
and Saxons were in full possession of Irish calligraphic and
artistic models that is, after the seventh century. The
Britons of the fifth century, at least all over the Southern
half of the island, were a Romanised people as much as
the Gauls, and it would be ridiculous to expect Celtic
provincial art in the home of Roman culture. They were
exterminated or absorbed in the east and middle of the
island by the Germanic invaders, and they were harried out
of the west by their Cumri kindred from the north, and by
pirate Scots from Ireland. The latter part of the fifth
century and the whole of the sixth and part of the seventh,
formed a period during which the inhabitants of Cambria can
have produced little or nothing in the way of letters or art.
It was probably not till the beginning of the eighth century
that the Cumri began to identify themselves with the
Palceography 5

ancient Britons, and to gather up the legends and historical
traditions of the British remnant as their own. There is a
clear testimony that the Cumri and the Britons were closely
akin as a race, but not identical, in the fact that names
beginning with Y in British use down to the fifth century
are found to begin with Gu (Gw) in the language of the
Welsh. Guend and Vend were of course two phases of an
old Celtic word, but the former is necessarily the older.
Consequently the people who have used Gw from the fifth
to the nineteenth century cannot be the same as those who
had already reached the F-stage in the first century. They
were close relatives undoubtedly, but had little in common
beyond their racial affinity and the original homogeneity of
their speech. It may be surmised that the Briton found no
more kindness in his Cumric stepbrother, or his Irish cousin,
than in the fierce strangers who called him a Welshman
(because they found him talking Welsh, i.e. Latin).

Bede, in spite of his Romanist tendency, and his Romanist
aversion to the practice of the Celtic church with regard to
the Paschal festival and the tonsure, gives clear evidence
that in the middle of the seventh century "many English-
men of the noble and the meaner sort " resorted to Ireland,
and dwelt there for the purpose either of study or of leading
a religious life (divinse lectionis vel continentioris vitas
gratia), and states that "the Scots received them all most
willingly, giving them their daily food without charge, also
books for reading, and gratuitous instruction." The Angles
were apt pupils. They learned to write and ornament
books of their own in the Irish manner, and they had Irish
monks in their new monasteries who fostered the art. By
the close of the seventh century, there were expert penmen
among the Anglian monks, and during the eighth century,
although the very close adherence to Irish models is the
feature of most of the ornamental manuscripts, they began
to strike out a new and characteristic line of their own in
which they soon surpassed their masters. This was in

figure-drawing, in miniatures painted with a mastery of
design which was altogether unknown to the Irish. The
heads or figures which appeared in Irish illuminations were
merely accessory and subordinate to the scheme of decoration,
utterly contemptible as delineations of human form. In the
Anglo-Saxon miniatures of the period which began say about
750 and continued to the eleventh century, there is a distinct
national school, in which the over-anxious treatment of
draperies and the striking addiction to light green pigment,
are prominent characteristics. The style gives a sort of
general impression that it had been formed upon a Byzantine
model, but the probability is that the later classical survival in
Italy in the seventh century had helped to form the Anglo-
Saxon taste as well as the taste of the Carolingian school.
A similar, but ruder, expression of the same Anglo-Saxon
method of illustration appeared in German work of the tenth
and eleventh centuries ; and as this had its parentage in the
French Carolingian art of the ninth century, we may suspect
that the tendency which brought that art to its perfection
in the time of Charles the Bald, had begun in Gaul before
the time of Charles the Great, that is, earlier than the usual
date of its sudden genesis. This conjecture would make the
production of books illustrated with miniatures synchronise
in France and England, and thus obviate the difficulty of
supposing that the Anglo-Saxons invented the art and carried
it to perfection within a century of their learning how to write.
It is sufficient glory for them to have converted the artistic
movement of the time into a national school of painting un-
mistakable with any other, at a time when the calligraphical
schools of central and Southern France, under an enlightened
Frankish emperor, and with far superior opportunities, were
labouring for a Gallo-Roman renaissance.

Origin of Mediaeval Illumination

Books in the classical period had of course been orna-
mented with illustrations, but the illumination of books (in
the medieval sense) did not originate with the Graeco-
Koman calligraphers of the Empire. We cannot suppose that
it sprang into life in Ireland, but certainly its first European
manifestation was in Irish MSS., and the art had not been
received by the Irish from any of the European nations.
The only alternative is, however, far fetched, that Christian
missionaries from the East (or with Eastern training) had pre-
ceded St. Patrick and brought with them those characteristics
of Syro-Egyptian art which are traceable alike in Irish and
in Byzantine work. The documentary period of writing in
Ireland is of course later than the actual practice of the art
in that country, but it is earlier than amongst any other of the
unromanised barbarians. Adamnan, writing about A.D. 670,
relates the life of St. Columba (dead in 598) and describes
the writing materials which that saint had used in his scrip-
torium in the island of Hy. As he had learned to write in
Ireland and had begun his priestly career there before 540,
we may place the historically ascertainable use of writing in
Ireland as beginning with the early years of the sixth century.
Irish monks carried the art to Britain, to Gaul, to Germany;
and those elaborate and intricate patterns to which the
French give the names of "lettres perlees, lettres brodees,
spirales, noeuds, et entrelacs, initiales ophiomorphiques,
ichthyomorphiques," &c., and which they claim as indigenous
productions of Carolingian France in the early part of the
ninth century were fruits of the teaching of Irish mis-
sionaries, in the houses which they founded in Britain and
all over the continent in the seventh century.

Some of the remarks in the preceding section will be
found in strong disagreement with the authority of Professor

Westwood, whose work on the Anglo-Saxon and Irish
miniatures is such a splendid testimony to his zeal and
ability. His conjectural dates are, however, frequently
misleading. An instance is that of the so-called Bible of
St. Gregory, figured on his plates 14, 15. In the text he
says that Sir Frederick Madden had declared the MS. to be
"unquestionably of the eighth century," but he prefers to
call it of the seventh, in agreement with Casley and Astle
(who thought so in the last century !). He ought to have
accepted the opinion of a recognised master in palaeography
like Sir Frederick, so far as the writing is concerned, in
preference to that of two men living at a time before the
science had attained anything like exactness in England.
He ought also to have seen or felt, while making his
elaborate facsimile, that the nearest parallel to the style of
illumination of his "first page of Luke" is to be found in
Oarolingian work executed about 800; and that no great
space of time could separate the two examples. The English
work was probably the earlier, but it can hardly have been
accomplished before 770. The purely Irish patterns in the
columns supporting the arch, with the excellent picture of
St. Luke that surmounts it, prove by their combination that
the work is Anglo-Saxon of its second and finer period,
that is after the phase in which it was merely and wholly
imitative of the Irish. With these considerations in view, and
a remembrance of Bede's words quoted above in relation to
Anglian education in Ireland about A.D. 650, the assignment
of the Bible of St. Gregory to the seventh century is a pure
absurdity. Again, Westwood's facsimile from the Golden
Gospels of Stockholm, bears the attribution " Sixth Century ?
Ninth Century ? " while its position in the book, as the first
plate, tends to show that Professor Westwood leaned to the
earlier date. Yet the book is unquestionably not Irish ; its
artistic illustration is a singularly fine development of
Anglo-Saxon art think of Anglo-Saxon art and chryso-
graphy in the sixth century ! The writing cannot be

mistaken for Roman uncials of the sixth century ; it is
plainly in Carolingian uncials of the latter half of the eighth.
The book seems to have been illustrated by an Anglian
hand, and written by a Frankish one, probably on the
continent rather than in England.

Books in Irish or Saxon-Irish writing are found all over
the continent. As they were written in monasteries founded
by Irish missionaries during the seventh and eighth centuries,
they only indicate that a succession of Irish or of Saxon
monks continued to make their way for a considerable period
to France, Germany, and Italy. The writing can hardly be
said to have left any traces in the various national hands of
those countries, but the Irish house at Bobbio probably
transmitted the use of the interlaced ornamentation which
revived in Italy several centuries later.

Most of the motifs of decoration in the illuminated
Carolingian, Yisigothic, and Lombardic MS. were derived
from the Irish methods of ornamentation introduced through
monastic houses and schools established by Irish monks on
the continent. French writers deny their indebtedness to
foreigners for it, since, as they say, the pattern was always
at hand in the tessellated and mosaic pavements of Gallo-
Roman architecture. But there is something of un-
necessary vanity in the denial. The Irish MSS. of the
seventh century are the first in Europe which contain
decorative initials of the kind. This fact is indisputable,
and is not affected by the question of original derivation,
which in my opinion is to be sought for in the east among
those Hellenised Syrians and Egyptians who were the
propagators of Christian art as well as Christian religion in
the west.

Merowingian, Lombardic, Visigothic

These names, applied to varying styles of writing, are
without historical exactness. Roughly speaking, the first

means the debased Koman used in Gaul and Western
Germany from the sixth to the eighth century, the second
was the script of the larger part of Italy (but chiefly the
east and the south) between the ninth and the twelfth
centuries, the third was the national hand of Spain and
Languedoc during the eighth to the twelfth century. The
names are based upon erroneous historical assumptions.
The Frankish kings, supposed to be descended from Merowig,
carried with them across the Rhine no graphic system what-
ever. They found in Gaul the identical styles of writing
which were used in Italy, and such of their people as gave
up the trade of warriors to assume that of clerics and
councillors, were obliged to learn the arts of the Gauls.
The circumstances under which the new kingdom was
established as a permanent institution, were not such as to
make the Franks a nation of penmen ; and the influence of
their bad taste in calligraphy could hardly have been felt
till the beginning of the seventh century. Their Gallic
underlings continued to write as before, but in the absence
of enlightened patronage, the schools of art no longer
produced good work, except in the monasteries of the
Provincia Romana, where less deterioration took place than
elsewhere. The Frankish monarchy was so widely extended
throughout the territories stretching from the Loire to the
Main, and along the whole course of the Rhine from south
to north, even in "Merovingian" times, that the use of the
word to designate a special style of writing is hardly desir-
able. It is probable enough that in the seventh century
and the early part of the eighth a kind of uniformity existed
in the writing used in all the region between Paris and
Mentz, but it was nothing else than Roman uncials, semi-
uncials, and minuscules written in more or less cramped and
graceless fashion ; varying only in the degree of badness
according to the locality. It is Roman cacography with a
Germanic stamp upon it. There was a decided improve-
ment in it when the eighth century was in progress.

The Lombardic hand is also a Roman hand as written by
or for barbarians who lived nearer to the centre of civilisa-
tion than the Franks did. To justify its name it would be
necessary to show that it originated and was practised
in the region we call Lombardy in the seventh century.
There is, however, no trace of its existence before the ninth
century, and very little show of its having been used to any
extent in Cisalpine Gaul. Most of the surviving examples
of its employment as a national or local script indicate
Eastern and Southern Italy as its home during the ninth to
the twelfth century ; while most of the manuscripts produced
in Lombardy and northern Italy during that time belong
rather to the Carolingian type. In fact, the Carolingian
minuscule, the Visigothic minuscule, and the Lombardic
minuscule all show at their beginning so much similarity
that we look for examples of the latter two sufficiently early
to decide a doubt which arises which of the three was
the fountain head of modern letters. The chief marks of
distinction in the Lombardic through its whole career are
the t shaped nearly like a, and the a shaped like cc. The Visi-
gothic t is identical with the Lombardic ; and in the a there
is so little unlikeness that the form of the letter seems to
be something halfway between u and cc. (It is equivalent
to cc without their beaks or initial knobs.) The circum-
stance that two scripts so widely removed in place should
retain common peculiarities, down to the very end of their
severed existence, leads to a suspicion that the so-called
Lombardic was probably a post-Ulfilan Ostrogothic. The
peculiarities referred to, -and some others which need not be
specialised, are also found in the " Merowing " writing of
books produced west of the Rhine in the seventh century.
Now as Carolingian writing is quite free from these peculiar-
ities, we can safely conclude that the Lombardic and the
Yisigothic are both older than the time of Charles the
Great. It is usually supposed by those who see the difficulty
attaching to the use of the name Lombardic, that the mode

of writing so styled was used in the kingdom of the Long-
beards, but died out in its chief home after the conquest by
the Franks, and only maintained a continued existence in
the Neapolitan duchies held by princes of Lombardic origin .
The suspicion hinted at above becomes stronger when we
review these facts. The Lombards were a far rougher and
more uncultivated race than the Goths, and found a Gothic-
Roman script in use in Italy when they entered to destroy
the kingdom of Theodoric. It was probably in Ravenna
that the so-called Lombardic minuscule had its seat during
the sixth century, side by side with the declining Gothic
uncial of Wulfila. From Ravenna, its spread over the east
and south of Italy would be much more easily effected than
from Milan or Pa via ; and its undeniable similarity to the
Visigothic script of Spain leads to the belief that these two
were the real Gothic writing of the early Middle Ages, as
distinguished from the Moesian alphabet, which cannot have
endured much longer than the reign of Theodoric himself.
The hand which is called broken Lombard belongs to a
later time. Its characteristic is an attempt to produce an
ornamental wavy effect by suspending the weight of the
pen-stroke in the middle of each descent, but the forms of
the letters remain unchanged. It was a fashion of Neapolitan
writing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and seems to
correspond in its own school with that tendency in the
schools of northern countries which produced the angular
"gothic" of the thirteenth. As has been remarked in
another paragraph, the "Lombardic" flourished even in
Italy, side by side with the pure Carolingian, which had
become the most favoured of all handwritings since the
Empire of the West was renewed in the family of Charles
the Great. The Carolingian, however, seems to have
encroached to no more southerly point than Rome itself,
leaving all the region beyond to its Lombardic rival.

Of the Visigothic, as of the Lombardic, it has to be said
that, so far as extant specimens are concerned, it might

Palaeography 6

well have been the offspring of 'the Carolingian, rather
than an elder form of writing. Its kinship, however, to
" Merowingian " and " Lombardic " is undeniable, and there
is a very fair show of probability that the Visigoths had some-
thing to do with it, notwithstanding the fact that we only
know it in examples later than the destruction of the Gothic
monarchy in Spain. What the term Visigothic means we
do not know. Most people think it meant West Gothic,
and that is how it was interpreted by Jornandes, who, as an
Italian Ostrogoth of the sixth century, ought to have been
capable of understanding the sense of the word. It is,
however, very uncertain ; for Jornandes, though intelligent
and well-informed, was not impeccable even as regards his
Gothic kinsmen. Most of his knowledge was derived from
his Latin education, and to him probably we owe a good
many misconceptions, arising from his acceptance of various
geographical names in Latin and Greek writers as referring
to his own people and their kindred. Nothing which he
has said has had a more enduring influence upon opinion
than the statement that Scandinavia, the " vagina gentium,"
had bred all the barbaric tribes which overpowered the
Roman empire. Of course, he knew nothing of Scandinavia
beyond the vague facts that Goths, Heruli, Burgundians,
Lombards, and Oimbri inhabited the southern shores of the
Baltic, and that there was a vast land beyond that sea.
Everything that descended from the north seemed to have
come down from Scania, or Scandinavia. He did not know,
as we do, that the climate of Scandinavia must have been
at that time much more severe than now, and that the
population of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark cannot have
reached in the fourth and fifth centuries to anything like
its present numbers. The movements of that age, which
carried millions of warriors to Greece, Italy, France, Spain,
and Africa, represented a wave of emigration, caused by an
overflow of population, beginning in the far East, on the
confines of China, of which the typical originators, so far as

Europe is concerned, were the Huns. No such overflow
was possible from Scandinavia.

The Yisigothic script had certainly not yet come into
existence when the kingdom of Alaric had its capital at
Toulouse in the fifth century. After the Franks had
driven the Goths southward, and the monarchy was estab-
lished in Spain (incorporating the Suabians, who had
held a separate state in Portugal), we may suppose
that the Yisigothic hand was derived from that of the
Ostrogoths, and used in the service of the Gothic monarchs
until their dynasty was destroyed by the Saracenic conquest
in 713. From that time onwards to the twelfth century it
was employed in all the Christian lands of Spain, although,
as in Italy, the Carolingian script began to be introduced
in the ninth century. The two kinds of writing went on
side by side, the Carolingian always gaining ground as time
went on, until in the thirteenth century Spain fell into line
with the other countries of Europe in adopting a sort of
French " angular gothic."

The Carolingian Renewal

The renewal of art and learning in Gaul in the second
half of the eighth century is ascribed to the patronage of
Karl the Great and his descendants. He was a man of
extraordinary gifts, and few figures of equal majesty have
ever appeared on the stage of history. King of the Franks
and the Lombards, Koman Emperor of the West, a great
conqueror, a wise statesman, and a man of learning, he has
left his name even in the annals of palaeography. It can
hardly have been in the beautiful Koman handwriting which
is called after him that he transcribed the Frankish ballads
or set down the rules of Frankish grammar, as he is said to
have done. He was fond of practising with his pen, but, as
Eginhart says, the study was begun too late in life to be
cultivated with success. He had excellent taste, however,

and bestowed generous rewards upon the calligraphers who
worked for him. His usual home was at Aachen, and his
palace there contained a library and a scriptorium, in which
scribes were always busy. A greater school of calligraphy was
in the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours, directed by the famous
Alcuin, under the Emperor's patronage. It was at Tours,
undoubtedly, that the Carolingian writing reached the stage
at which it became the model for all succeeding time, and
Alcuin was almost certainly the man who introduced the
Irish-Saxon fashion of decorative ornament, as practised in
York when he resided there with Archbishop Egbert. A great
deal of the learning which (with some latitude of phraseology)
has been attributed above to the Emperor, was due to the
frequent lectures upon all branches of science which Alcuin
was in the habit of delivering when he and his patron were
together usually at Aachen. Karl did not spend much of
his leisure time in the France which regards him as her
own prince. He is believed to have founded the University
of Paris, but he did not regard the city on the Seine as
equal to Rome or Aries. It was not included in the twenty-
one metropolitan cities of his empire.

Wherever the movement arose which produced the beauty
of Carolingian work, we can have no difficulty in declaring it
to have been in central or Southern France, not in the
Rhenish territories. That contemporary calligraphers would
have followed the lead was to be expected, whether they
worked at Aachen or at Metz, or at Trier or elsewhere ; but
the real perfection of the style must have been attained in
those parts of France which were most nearly connected
with Provence. The uncials of Carolingian work were
imitated from Roman work of the fifth century, the capitals
from Roman inscriptions of the empire, and the minuscules
were improved from the two contemporary Italian scripts in
which they were found, that is the Papal Roman and the
Gotho-Lombard. The art was cultivated (and we may allow
that it had been so cultivated for many years before Alcuin's

arrival) so carefully that a fine aesthetic sense had arisen,
and every letter of all three kinds was drawn with an elegant
simplicity and truth which the world has never ceased to
admire. The letters are upright and wholly without angu-
larities, and are quite free from the mannerisms by which in
the two Gothic hands of the time certain unessential portions
of the outline were dwelt upon and made over-prominent, to
the deterioration of the graphic form. Fine as the writing is
in the time of the great Emperor, it is still finer throughout
the half century or so which followed his death, in all the
Gallic centres.

At the same time, the decoration of manuscripts, other-
wise remarkable for their calligraphical excellence, with
illuminated initials, border ornamentation, and miniatures
resembling in character those of the Anglo-Saxon school
but infused to a greater degree with the feeling and the
style of late classical art, render the Carolingian French
school of the ninth century one of the most splendid in the
history of paleography.

The scripts of Spain and Italy lived on for centuries
uncorrected in certain peculiarities by the example of
Carolingian writing, but gradually drawing nearer, and
visibly improved in manner. This was brought about by
the introduction into both countries of pure Carolingian
work, practised simultaneously with the native styles, and
constantly increasing in influence. In England the Caro-
lingian type won but little ground, notwithstanding the
Romanising tendencies of Winchester and Canterbury and
the Southern monasteries in general. It was not till the
tenth century that certain signs of Carolingian influence are
seen in the writing of Latin charters, and it was only in the
twelfth century that the handwriting of Northern France
and of England began to take an identical character. In
Germany, of course, Carolingian writing was an inheritance,
but it was never cultivated with the same elegance as in
France. The letters began gradually to slope and grow

narrow, and to take small projections at the extremities
which by and bye became medieval gothic forms.

A Eeview at the standpoint of the Ninth Century

The middle ages began with the establishment of
barbarian monarchies over the area of the Roman empire of
the west ; and with the middle ages began the final and the
most important chapter in the history of manuscripts. The
study of manuscripts, for most persons, is confined to the
period between the twelfth century and the sixteenth ; since
it is not given to everyone to make pilgrimages to the
museums scattered over Europe, for the purpose of looking
at the earlier and rarer examples of writing. Besides, the
chief interest of the study lies rather in the decoration than
the calligraphy of manuscripts ; and it was not till the four-
teenth century that the production of such work became so
large and general as to leave a sufficient number of specimens
readily accessible to modern inspection. The history of
illuminated manuscripts begins in Ireland in the sixth
century, that first phase being the application to written
books of a system of Oriental decorative ornament which
had previously been confined to architectural work. It
spread into England in the seventh century, a little later
into Gaul and Germany, and a new phase began in the
eighth century by a happy combination of Romanesque
pictorial design with the more purely decorative features of
barbaric art. In the ninth century England and central
France were easily ahead of all the other barbarian states.
In Germany, in Aquitaine, in Spain, and in Northern Italy,
the same system was followed, but with a prevailing stamp
of barbarism, especially in the design of the human figure,
which affords a striking contrast to the refined luxury of
Carolingian art and the more sober splendour of English
work. The only parallel was in Byzantium and Alexandria,
where a similar combination had led to a nearly similar

effect, with this difference however, that the decorative
illumination was a far less prominent feature than the
pictorial designs. Roman Italy and Roman Provence still
kept aloof from the new movement. The classical traditions
which survived there permitted the production of MSS.
written in gold, and perhaps also illustrated with pictures,
such as had constituted the splendour of books in the first
five centuries; but the immixture of decorative patterns
from architectural design, which formed the art of illumina-
tion, was a thing of alien character to the taste of the
older school. Examples of course were produced both in
Rome itself and in Provence of the new mode of illumination,
but they are to be ascribed to the barbarian element which
was encroaching there as elsewhere, and which finally
triumphed.

Byzantine Work

The traditions of classical art, which had begun to
grow weaker in Byzantium even before the seventh
century, had faded away when the Eastern Emperor lost
all hold upon Italy. Not Athens, nor Rome, but
Memphis, seemed to inspire the later gestheticism of
Byzantine art ; and the Greek emperors, from the ninth
century onwards, appeared to be the successors rather of a
line of Ptolemies than of Cassars. When we contrast the
sculptures of ancient Greece, the designs upon Grseco-Roman
coins, and the pictures in Pompeii, with the work of
Byzantine illuminators, we are inevitably reminded that the
word Greek is rarely appropriate in connexion with MSS.
There is very little of true Greek in the artistic features
of Thraco-Grgecian or .ZEgypto-GraBcian work; and it is
not to real Greeks or to real Romans that we owe the
handsome Roman and the handsome Hellenic type in
which the texts of the ancient classics are now printed.

In the minuscule writing of Greek, which is usually

supposed to have come into use about the end of the eighth
century, there never was the same calligraphical character as
the uncials of an earlier time had exhibited, nor the same
desire to attain symmetrical beauty as was shown over and
over again in the manuscripts of Western Europe. The best
writing of Greek minuscules belongs to the ninth and tenth
centuries of our era, in which a sufficient amount of practice
had been gained to ensure regularity of form. A specimen
of such writing, executed towards the end of the tenth
century, probably in Cyprus, will be found in Plate 6.
From the eleventh century to the sixteenth all minuscule
writing in Greek looks like a free cursive written without
any calligraphical ambition, and it became more and more
ungraceful as time went on. The value of Greek MSS.,
however, depends more upon their contents than upon their
beauty, and frequently the roughest-looking piece of work
may command an interest far greater than attaches to the
splendid penmanship of the west.

The recently discovered " Gospel of Peter" is in a curious
primitive minuscule hand, which the editor of the facsimile,
Oscar von Gebhardt, ascribes hesitatingly to the eighth or
ninth century, as had already been done by H. Omont.
It would not be surprising if other scholars were to assign
it to the seventh century, and thereby throw back the age
of Greek minuscule writing to a century or more behind
the date usually fixed for it. The mingling in that curious
Christian document of many uncial forms, with a set of
minuscular letters that betray a want of familiarity with set
minuscules, seems to prove that the book is older than the
eighth century. This observation is made, not from any
desire to be critical, but simply in order to show that the
question of age, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, is a
thing which is still not finally settled.

The Tenth Century

The Irish school of writing, after its triumphs of the
seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, lost much of its home-
life in the midst of the struggles with the Norsemen. In
England and on the continent its influence was still felt for
some time longer ; even in the thirteenth century many of
the Psalters produced by English illuminators have the
initial letter B decorated in the style adopted from the
Irish six centuries before. Irish MSS. of any age are
excessively rare ; even the comparatively worthless tran-
scripts of the eighteenth century are in no inconsiderable
request.

The English school continued to blend its Irish style
of writing with the illustrative pictures and borders
which may have been entirely of native production in the
eighth century, as was seemingly the fact, or may have
originated from the artistic tendencies of Frankish Gaul,
as has already been surmised. They were, in any case,
influenced to some degree by examples of late Koman work,
introduced by the Italian missionaries who came to convert
the Saxons of South England after the Angles of the north
had been converted by the Irish monks of Ion a. It was
really this English phase of decorative art which blossomed
into Anglo-Norman in the twelfth century.

The French schools were still Carolingian and splendid,
but their pre-eminence was not maintained after the
breaking up of the empire of Charles the Great. The
revolutions of the ninth century led to the making of
nations. France ceased to be the Gallo-Koman province
of a Frankish monarchy. A French language and a French
nation emerged into existence in the tenth century, but
the grand ornamental and calligraphic work of the Franco-
Gallic time was no longer equalled. The Caroline writing,
which attained its greatest beauty about the middle of the

Palaeography 7

ninth century, gradually lost its elegant boldness, tending
towards angularity and crampness when the eleventh
century had begun.

Scandinavian Writing

The Scandinavian countries have not yet been alluded to
specifically. The immense quantity of Runic monuments
found in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, of all ages,
and in England, of and after the Norse period, proves
that Runic writing was almost exclusively Scandinavian.
There is now no question as to the actual origin
of the Runic alphabets. They came into existence, as
already said, by reason of the necessities of the amber-
traffic between the coast of the Baltic and the Crimea long-
before the time of Christ ; but what has survived belongs
to the monuments of the North. The real age of the extant
runes does not probably exceed the fifth century. That
they were prized as national characteristics seems to be
proved by their continued use among the Northmen, even
after they had come into collision with a superior civilisa-
tion in the British isles.

Christianity was not so easily adopted in Scandinavia
as in some other countries. From the time of the first
mission to its ultimate triumph at least two centuries
elapsed, and the result might have been still further delayed
if it had not been for the example of two royal proselytes,
Olaf Trygvason and St. Olaf, who belong to the first half
of the eleventh century. With the first introduction of
Christianity, the Norse people also received the script which
they had found in use in England. The colonisers of
Iceland, in the ninth and tenth centuries, carried with
them the language and the writing of Scandinavia ; and it
was probably the remoteness of that island from Norway
which has caused the preservation in it, down to the present

day, of the old Norse tongue (little modified by age) and
the Anglo-Saxon letters of the tenth century.

In Denmark, Sweden, arid Norway, the influence of
North Germany prevailed in time over old national
tradition, and the gothic hand of the thirteenth century
took the place of the special alphabet. By the time of the
Reformation the writing in Scandinavia had been wholly
Teutonised (with some exceptions too slight to need men-
tion). The most remarkable part of the change was the
exclusion of the th letter from the script of Sweden, Norway,
and Denmark. This tendency, which had for centuries
been in growth, had the remarkable effect of practically
confining the old Norse literature to Iceland, and of making-
it the apparent home of all the poems and Sagas which
Norway had produced. It was at least the home of most
of the literary men who in the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries wrote for the delight of their kinsmen,
in both Norway and Iceland. The great literary activity in
Iceland, at that time and afterwards, produced a large
quantity of MSS., usually written on vellum, and rudely
decorated with painted initials ; but of those which remained
in the country most have perished. A relatively con-
siderable number were, however, carried to Denmark in
the sixteenth and later centuries, and have been preserved
in museums. Very few yet remain in circulation, unsecured
by public appropriation.

The Slavonic Alphabet

Slavonic writing is said to have begun with St. Jerome.
To him is ascribed the invention of the Glagolitic
alphabet, a set of symbols for Illyrian use, which seem to
have no affinity to any of the familiar scripts. It cannot
have obtained much currency, notwithstanding the ample
sufficiency of its twenty-eight letters; as otherwise the
Cyrillic alphabet (derived from the Greek, with necessary

additions) would never have come into being. In any case,

St. Cyril's alphabet, devised in the ninth century for the

use of the Slovenes in Moravia, quite overpowered the

Glagolitic of Dalmatia, and while the Croats and the

Dalmatians, who came under the influence of the Koman

see, retained their Glagolitic only for liturgical use, the

Slavs to the east fell into communion with the Greek

Church, and employed the Cyrillic letters as their national

type of writing. It has lasted to the present time in its old

form, in biblical and liturgical books of which the texts are

ancient, but a plainer type, more like the Greek of to-day,

has been adopted for modern literature. The Poles and

Bohemians, and the various Slavs in Germany, have always

followed the custom of Germany in writing. The Kussian

alphabet is more complex than that of Servia ; but it is

only in modern time that the latter has been simplified.

The Bulgarians, since the establishment of their autonomy,

have given up the old Slovene alphabet, and adopted that

of Servia.

The Labour of Mediceval Scribes from the
Ninth Century omvards

The literature which was to afford material for the
exercise of the penmen's skill was restricted within Christian
boundaries. It was rarely that a scribe condescended to
make copies of any of the literary work produced in pagan
Rome or Greece. Occasional instances are found which
offer exception to the rule, but as in the ninth century all
the men who knew how to write were, in one form or another,
servants of the Church, it was not to be expected that many
among them would help to perpetuate the pernicious books
of the dead heathens. Consequently many of the treasures
of ancient literature perished. The Bible was the substitute ;
and innumerable copies were made in the East and the West
of the book which has influenced the world more powerfully

than any other production of the wit of man. In the East,
there was a more logical tendency to neglect the Old
Testament and to copy only the New; in the West, it was
the custom to multiply transcripts of the complete Latin
Scripture as left by St. Jerome. Besides the Bible, there
were the liturgical monuments. The Sacramentary which
contained the order of sacrifice and adoration in the most
solemn office of the Church, with all the prayers that preceded
and followed the acts of offering and worship, required
careful and frequent copying, so that it should not deviate
in the smallest degree from the established model. The
slight changes which constituted differences of use in this
part of the liturgy, and which have distinguished the so-
called Gallican, Mozarabic, Milanese, and Celtic churches as
at least co-geval with (and possibly older than) the Latin
church of Rome, began to lose their historic distinctness
in the ninth century and soon faded away. The survival of
belated and rare examples (by the grace of papal sanction)
at Toledo and at Milan, is but an antiquarian curiosity
without any significance. Rome triumphed in the ninth
century, and the diversities in certain respects which have
been dignified in England and elsewhere with the name of
"use" since then, are simply local varieties in unimportant
particulars.

Beyond the establishment of the supreme rite of sacrifice
on certain holy days, the Church began, at an early period
of its existence, to treat every day as consisting of so many
hours of which some were necessarily to be yielded up to
religious service. The use of the Psalms, and of set prayers,
for that purpose, and the fact that the anniversaries of
saints' and martyrs' deaths had to be borne in remembrance,
led to the creation of the Breviary. Besides this, the office
of the Mass itself became requisite for celebration on every
day as well as on the more solemn days, and thus a variable
portion (according to the character of the day) had to be
added to the invariable. Thus enlarged, the volume of the

54:

Sacramentary, with all its lessons from the Bible, and its
accumulations of antiphonal phrases^ grew into the Missal
as we know it. The Breviary underwent similar increase,
and the result was to make the Liturgy so extensive and so
complex that it gave continual employment in the scriptorium
of every church and monastery all over Europe. There
were Psalters, Sacramentaries, Missals, Breviaries, Lection-
aries of several kinds, Hymnals, Graduals (Books of the
chanted antiphonal portions of the Mass), Antiphonaries
(Books of the chanted antiphonal portions of the Hours-
offices), Martyrologies, Homilies, and (at a later time)
Kituals, Processionals, and Pontificals (offices to be
performed by Bishops). St. Gregory had been the latest
official arranger of the Sacramentary or Missal, in the
seventh century ; but its text was hardly settled till the
twelfth century, and the same may be said of the Breviary.
In the ninth century, however, the texts had grown to some-
thing not very different from their ultimate state. Here was
plenty of work for the priestly and monkish scribes.

Besides the Bible and the Liturgy, there were the works
of the fathers, and by-and-by the treatises of the schoolmen
and the chronicles of monkish historians ; quite enough, in
all conscience, to render useless the heavy lucubrations of
Livy and Trogus Pompeius, and the absurd conceits of the
heathen poets.

Things were not dissimilar in Byzantium. The Liturgy
there was even more complex and extensive than in the
West, and the foolish literature of old Hellas was generally
ignored by the men who were engaged in daily study of
the Euchologium, the Horologium, the Menologium, the
Archieraticon, the Synaxarium, the Octoechos, &c. The
Bibliotheca of Photius shows, however, that the race of
students who cultivated the old literature was not wholly
extinct.

At all times, both in the East and the West, the letters
and charters of Kings, and diplomatic documents of every

kind, needed the service of trained penmen. This depart-
ment of graphic labour was not completely in the hands of
churchmen ; and it led to the creation of a caste of writers
in every country who were not under the influence of the
monkish schools. They could not afford to spend so much
time as the book writers over their work, and thus a hand of
cursive character was established in every chancellery in
Europe, devoted only to the service of the State and never
employed for any other purpose. It was nearly always ugly,
sometimes fantastic, sometimes difficult to be read except
by the officials engaged in such work. From the earliest
days of diplomatic writing, in the sixth century in Italy,
down to the seventeenth century in England, it preserved
a strange and fanciful style, first long, thin and narrow letters
looking like a congeries of wandering parallel lines indis-
tinguishable without a glass, and finally letters of proper
size, but so disguised in shape as to be indecipherable
without a special training. At only one period, that is, in
the late eleventh and in the twelfth century, was diplomatic
writing fair and readable. That was in England and
Northern France ; but even here, the upright strokes of
letters like 1, and d, and b, were elongated to an enormous
extent, and in their sweep offered to the scribe his few
opportunities of ornamentation. As our business, however,
is with books we leave the charters and the rescripts on one
side, and proceed to the consideration of the main character
of the calligrapher's work.

The Bible and the Liturgy for churchmen have been
spoken of as the chief objects of reproduction among the
scribes for many centuries. It was not till the twelfth
century that their labours required to be augmented for the
service of laymen. Men (and women) who could afford
the expense, or whose position demanded that they should
have prayerbooks for their own use, whether they could
read ill or well or not at all, were furnished with Latin
Psalters, to which were added, at the end, the Athanasian

Creed, a Litany of Saints, some general prayers, and the
office for the Dead. They were extracts from the Breviary
for the use of persons who only prayed occasionally. The
growth of something like education, and a religious desire
to share to a somewhat greater extent the communion with
Heaven which was monopolised by monks and priests,
caused a farther extension of calligraphic labour towards
the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Psalter with
its scanty additions was no longer sufficient for pious laymen.
A larger selection of prayers and lessons from the Breviary
was concocted ; the offices of the Virgin, of the Cross, of the
Holy Ghost, and of some special saints were united to form
the Book of Hours. It was nothing like the severe and
frequent task of orisons with which the monks performed
their duties at the canonical Hours of the day and night,
but it was sufficient for the most zealous laymen and
laywomen ; and it became the private Prayerbook of the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. During
that period it was produced in countless thousands of
manuscripts in England, France, Flanders, Italy, and to a less
extent in Germany and Spain. In England it was called
Horse Beata3 Maria3 Virginis, or Book of Hours, or Primer ;
in France always Horge, or Livre d'Heures ; in Italy it was
Officium B.Y.M., and in Flanders and Holland Ghetijden.
The Gebetbuch of Germany belongs chiefly to the fifteenth
century, and was nearly always in German, while in France,
Flanders, and England, prayers in the vernacular only crept
in gradually here and there. (In Italy the book always
continued to be written in Latin only.) In the English
Hours or Primer the vernacular portions became at last so
important that it was found advisable to issue many of the
printed Primers in the sixteenth century in bilingual form,
Latin and English ; and it was undoubtedly this tendency
both in England and in Germany which produced the
Reformation. It was not so much the desire for a Reforma-
tion of the Church even Boccaccio, himself a churchman,

and many others of his kind had wished for that as an
invincible demand for a vernacular liturgy, which widened
through opposition into an eagerness to sweep away every-
thing that opposed it. Hence the break with Home, which
still imperiously demanded the uniformity that could only
be maintained by the use of a single language throughout
Europe. The few exceptions to the rule which ecclesiastical
policy had ever allowed were in the concession to the
affiliated Greek, Slavonic, and Oriental congregations of a
right to use their own vernacular liturgies. The antiquity
of the Greek and Syriac formulas, on the one hand, the
utter impossibility of making Latin familiar even to the
priests of the Slavic and Oriental churches, and the certainty
that a denial of their needs would throw them into the
Byzantine fold account for Papal acquiescence in that
respect. But the Popes could not see that England and
Germany, which had from so early a time been the seats of
Roman colonies and the homes of Latin churches, likewise
needed a liturgy that the people could understand ; and
that the Teutonic speech of the north had no such generic
sympathy with the language of the Roman liturgy as the
rustic Latin tongues of Italy, Spain, and France.

The Canon Law, deriving from the remains of the
apostolical constitutions and the acts of the Councils, the
Penitentiaries which had been formulated by bishops for the
government of Christianised barbarians, and the decrees of
Popes, began to take shape as a Code in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. The existence of forged documents
among the decretals was a matter of no great importance.
Everything was sufficiently old to be respectable ; and the
schools of law, which had never given up the study and
cultivation of the Civil Code (digested in Justinian's time
from the various works of the old Roman jurists), set to
work to arrange and gloss the Canon Law. The two Codes,
especially the Ecclesiastical, provided the scribes of Western
Europe with an enormous amount of work. Bologna,

Palaeography 8

Padua, Paris, and Oxford were renowned for their lawyers
and their schools of law ; with the accompanying armies of
students and copyists.

Christian poets, too, were not lacking. From the time
of Lactantius onwards, the quantity of metrical Latin work
done by churchmen was very large ; and the lyrical
yearning inherent in all societies had produced an immense
hymnology, which comprised a great deal of real poetry
most poetical and most charming when least Ciceronian.
Here, again, was rich material for the copyists of the
scriptorium ; and both Hymnals and Lawbooks lent their
aid towards the gradual tendency of students to go back
and investigate the ancient sources of literature and
philosophy and history. Pliny had never been wholly
forgotten, even in the most anti-pagan times, and the
treatises on natural science which had appeared among the
schoolmen, all stimulated curiosity to learn what had been
written before the days of Constantine. The result of these
intellectual tendencies made the fourteenth century a dawn
of the Renaissance, and with the beginning of the fifteenth
a large body of heathen literature was annexed to the
libraries of universities, scholars, and monasteries, giving
increased employment to the transcribers who were at that
time busy all over Europe. It was in the thirteenth century
that the monks and the priests lost their monopoly of the
practice of ornamental writing ; in the fourteenth century
every great city had its ateliers of calligraphers unconnected
with the Church; and when the fifteenth century arrived
the trained citizen penmen, who formed crafts throughout
Europe, were probably not inferior in number to the scribes
who worked in ecclesiastical edifices.

The Illuminated MSS. of the Middle Ages

This division of our matter is the largest, and is also
the most interesting to the majority of students and

collectors. In beginning it, some repetition will be necessary
in order to bring the subject as a whole before the reader.

Between the ninth century and the sixteenth, the multi-
plication of MSS. in Europe was very great, but comparatively
few of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh have been preserved.
Beautiful examples of blended writing and decoration were
produced in England in the ninth century by Anglian and
Irish calligraphers in the north, and by Saxon writers in the
south. In York and Durham, and Lindisfarne, the style
and the motifs of ornament were still thoroughly Irish ; in
the south, although the late Roman had conquered the
Celtic, their collision had produced a singularly fine type
of illumination, reminiscent of Byzantine work, but much
more free and natural. That art had already beautified the
Carolingian French school ; in the Carolingian German its
influence appears in a weaker and ruder form. When with
the tenth century France and Germany emerged as two
distinct nations from the chaos of the Frankish empire, their
modes of book-decoration began to diverge. The rudeness of
an earlier time remains, with a good deal of spirit, in the
illustrative designs produced in Germany ; the beauty of
French work began to decay, while the English was at its
best. Winchester, Canterbury, and Glastonbury were the
real centres of English art at the middle of the tenth
century; the Norsemen having destroyed the Anglo-Irish
monasteries in the north. This south English school is
considered to have benefited materially by the technical
superiority of French methods. What the north English
schools of York and Lindisfarne had given to Tours in the
eighth century, came back to Winchester at the end of the
ninth, refined and embellished. Thus the supremacy of
English art was assured at a time when French art was
declining. The great variety, however, in all countries, of
work done by different men, renders it difficult to draw
general deductions. The calligraphic decoration of " Yisi-
gothic" and " Lombardic " manuscripts during the ninth,

tenth, and eleventh centuries is visibly Celtic in origin and
style. Their pictorial illustration is sometimes very striking,
and indicates the existence of several central schools of
design in Europe. The English, the French, the German,
the Spanish, and the Italian, had all certain qualities in
common, but the first two were most nearly akin. The
other three schools produced in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries books containing pictures, in which the composition
is more remarkable than the drawing, and the painting is
full of barbaric contrasts of colour. At all times, fine work
was to be found in Italy, but only in isolated examples, and
Italy as a whole underwent the same barbarisation as the
other countries. From that stage the English and the French
were the first to emerge. They can hardly be said to have
revived any former state of art in connexion with books. It
was with them a real creation. The frequent reference to*
Byzantium as having supplied the models for European
illuminated work is misleading. The first sign of actual
contact with Byzantium is in the early part of the ninth
century, when certain pictures produced in Carolingian MSS.
show that the painters had been made aware of the existence
of similar Byzantine work. Arid that is actually all that
can be referred to as direct imitation of Byzantine art.
The magnificent early examples of chrysography on purple
vellum were not Byzantine but Easter n-lloman, and the
Koman traditions of the Eastern capital lingered on into the
ninth century, having begun to grow weaker at the end of
the sixth. Italy was nearer and more potent in its influence
upon barbaric art than Byzantium, arid there was little
difference in book-decoration between East Kome and West
Rome till after the time of Justinian ; so far as the cultiva-
tion of the arts was concerned. Consequently there is no
need to look to Byzantium as having supplied models for
the rest of Europe to follow. There is a difference of kind,
not merely of degree, between the livres de luxe of the two
Koman empires, and those of the new nations which began

with Irish work about A.D. 600, and ended with Italian and
French work about 1550. The former were books written
in gold, perhaps ; perhaps decorated with red ink only ;
illustrated, maybe, with a picture or with pictures. The
latter were books of which the principal characteristic was
not their bookishness but their decorativeness. A set
scheme of ornament sustained from beginning to end, with
due proportion in the intervals, in which even the pictorial
designs were subordinate to the decorative plan, constituted
the value of the illuminated books of the European middle

ages.

Bibles and liturgical books in the twelfth century are
remarkable for their large size and the quantity of decoration
with which they were produced. In Germany, the method
of ornament still repeats the Anglo-Saxon type derived from
"Carolingian work, and the handwriting is still Carolingian,
but the letters lean forward instead of being upright, their
forms are narrowed and chiselled off by short sharp terminal
strokes that give an appearance of angularity. (An example
of the art is given on plate 21.) In Spain, the beautiful
round "Visigothic" letters are still retained, with large
initials of interlaced Celtic pattern, and the illustrative
pictures (if there are any) have the same style as had been
developed some centuries earlier in Aquitaine. The German
and the Spanish have a sort of resemblance by reason of their
common origin, but more especially because of the striking
combination of green and yellow in the paintings, the note
of yellow apparently being strongest in the latter, and of
green in the former. The use of green tints predominates
likewise in English work of the eighth twelfth centuries,
but became much more sparing under the influence of the
French school which, after the eleventh century, began to avoid
indulgence in that colour. It never lost its favourite pLuv
in German art, and the MSS. of Holland and Flanders only
dropped it when they began to assimilate French methods
in the fourteenth century. England in the twelfth century

produced much finer work than the French. In fact the
English school of that century was the parent of nearly all
the art of the following century. Both in calligraphy and
in pictorial designs, it forestalled the work done in the whole
of Western Europe between 1200 and 1300, which has
rendered the thirteenth century the most noteworthy in the
history of illustrated MSS. The mode and style of drawing,
unfinished by illumination, which were practised in England
towards the close of the thirteenth century, may be examined
in plate 10. Italian work of the same time is shown in
plate 11 to have been much more barbaric and unskilful.
The difference between English twelfth-century work and
that of Europe in the thirteenth century consisted in the
large and ample freedom of hand which marks the former
and the delicate minuteness which characterises alike the
writing and the miniatures of the latter. As for style and
quality of work, there is scarcely any difference between
them. This new English school, so admirable in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, had grown up over the decline of
the Anglo-Saxon phase, which, fine as it was, had still some-
what of a barbaric air about it. The conquest of the Saxon
monarchy by a Duke of Normandy in the eleventh century,
and the succession in the twelfth of a Count of Anjou who
united under his sceptre England, Normandy, and Aquitaine,
made this country the centre of French art and literature
for a considerable period. Hence the almost complete
identity of the modes of writing and ornamentation between
English and French work in the thirteenth century. In
Central and South-eastern France the style varied somewhat
as will be seen by comparing the examples given on plates 8
and 9. There is no school of art more interesting than the
Anglo-Norman, as it is called, of that time. The illuminated
border had not yet established itself, but the initials, drawn
upon a ground of burnished gold or of diapered tints, enclose
painted miniatures looking like very fine pen-and-ink
designs carefully coloured. Bibles thus decorated are very

numerous. As they approach the end of the century, they
exhibit now and then long straight lines, ending in curves
or fleurons, which spread from the pictured initial upwards
and downwards, and form a simple border to more than
half the page. This incipient practice increased gradually
from the beginning of the following century onwards. The
fleurons became gold ivy-leaves, and similar leaves were
figured as sprouting out from the long straight border-lines,
these lines being extended so as to enclose the page on all
sides. Still the effect was stiff and imperfect, but by the
close of the fourteenth century, a very splendid kind of
foliated border was used by French illuminators. The gold
leaves called ivy-leaves were now introduced in greater
number and made to sprout, no longer from the straight
border frame itself, but more naturally out of branches which
festooned from the frame. The ivy-leaf border in this state
was very much favoured in French illumination, but was
little used elsewhere. It generally accompanies pictorial
illustration of superior merit, and gives an air of distinction
and elegance to any MS. in which it is found. The French
schools of Central France and of Paris had by the middle
of the fourteenth century regained their lost pre-eminence
in art.

The thirteenth century was the first and the finest
period of mediseval " gothic," so far as handwriting is
concerned. (The name is a misnomer, but has a clear
recognised sense, and is useful.) The letters are angulated
at their extremities, but the bodies are still rounded and
perfectly clear. The square and lapidar Gothic was intro-
duced in the fourteenth century, and prevailed during that
and the two succeeding centuries. It was a vicious script,
indistinct and difficult to read; and although some examples,
distinct, legible, and handsome, were brought out in the
fifteenth century, the system was generally bad, and there
is no reason to regret its extinction, which took place in
France, Italy, and Spain about the middle of the sixteenth

century, and in England somewhat later, although it is
lingering on even now in Germany and Denmark.

The square Gothic of the fourteenth century, however
unclear and objectionable as a script, was not ill adapted to
ornamental purposes, as the vast number of prayerbooks for
the laity produced between 1350 and 1400, and throughout
the succeeding century, make manifest. Of those prayer-
books, which for a hundred and fifty years were the chief
medium for displaying the skill of the medieval illuminator,
the number of copies which were made for individuals or
families, as birth-day or wedding gifts, or for whatever
reason, was incredibly large. The existence of such prayer-
books, well written and decorated with paintings, for private
persons, is enough in itself to show that the office of
calligrapher and miniaturist was a secular trade, and that
the " old monks," to whom so many persons ascribe the
writing of the " missals," had long ceased to be the sole
producers of MSS.

Not many of the earlier Books of Hours have survived,
that is, of those which were written between 1300 and 1350 ;
but from the latter date onwards to 1400 they are not
uncommon, and from 1400 onwards very numerous. This
statement refers to French and Franco-Flemish and Bur-
gundian work. Of English work, there are very few extant
anterior to 1400, and the same may be said of Dutch
examples. As for those written in Italy and Germany, it
is only towards the close of the fifteenth century that they
are met with. The English and French Hours produced
during 1350-1420 are very different in their mode of orna-
mentation. The Gothic writing was pretty nearly the same
everywhere, and the larger illuminated initials had followed
one model since the thirteenth century. These initials
(when not historiated with little miniatures) were painted
in colour upon a ground usually of gold. The space within
the letter-forms was filled up with a conventional flower-
pattern, having buds of red arid blue tints. At the earlier

period the letter-form has a small extension upwards and
downwards, in a simple style resembling wood-carving.
In the fourteenth century this extension is increased, and
the long straight border, with ivy-leaves here and there, was
produced. While that kind of border was in France being
developed into its most elegant phase, a different type was
preferred in England. The gold ground of the initial is
prolonged into a stem, around which twines a corresponding
prolongation of coloured foliage springing from the curved
extremities of the initial letter. Thus they form a border
which would be pretty enough in itself, but which is
further decorated with tufts of long feathery grass, tipped
with buds, which grow out of the stem and sweep in
graceful curves outside the line of foliage. This feathery
ornament which, except for the little fleurons in colour
here and there, seems drawn with a fine pen in brown ink-
is distinctly English, and was retained till late in the
fifteenth century, side by side with newer methods borrowed
from France. The red and blue, with white lights, which
are used in the initials and capitals by the French
illuminators, are in the English MSS. pink and pale blue,
and the white lights are broader.

As soon as the ivy-leaf pattern, with its brilliant gold
points, began to go out of fashion in France, a new kind of
border came into vogue. The conventional red and blue
foliage still continued to spring out from the initials and
at intervals below and above ; all the intervening space
was filled in with curling and twining tendrils, drawn with
a pen or a very fine brush, forming a kind of hedge, in the
midst of which were scattered here and there little natural
flowers and fruits, growing out of the curled tendrils. This
was in use in French and Burgundian and Flemish MSS.
from about 1420-30 onwards, and became a favourite
method of decoration in England towards the middle of the
century. At that time, and in that style, prayerbooks
done in the three countries are often much alike, and it is

Palaeography 9

only the painting of the miniatures and the differences in
the calendar and litany which distinguish them.

The chief Liturgical Books distinguished

A word may be said here as to the means of distinguishing
the liturgical MSS., and obtaining an idea of their place
of origin. It ought not to be necessary, but, as a matter
of fact, there are many persons of fair education, and
possessing no inconsiderable familiarity with manuscripts,
who call every Book of Hours a " Missal," and who cannot
distinguish between a Breviary and a Missal.

The Missal gives the service of the Mass for the whole
year. Its essence lies in the Canon of the Mass, beginning
with the words " Te igitur," which is preceded by a number
of prsefationes (some of them general, some of them appro-
priated to special occasions), and followed by the Communion
and the concluding thanksgivings. This was in more
ancient times the first and the larger part of the Mass-book,
and was followed by a set of prayers, which in the service
itself preceded and led to the Preface, these preliminary
prayers being arranged under the festivals of the year from
December to December. In the Missal, as arranged and
enlarged in the thirteenth century, there are four divisions :
1. De Tempore (Sundays and festivals) ; 2. Prefaces, Canon,
and Ordinary of the Mass ; 3. Mass-prayers appropriated
to special Saints' days ; 4. Mass-prayers common to all
Saints' days. The chronological order from Advent to
Advent (30th November to 29th November) was followed,
except in the case of some of the most solemn and ancient
commemorations, and also of some special festivals that
had been appointed after the original compilement of the
Mass-book. These were incorporated in the part De Tem-
pore, in succession to the text relating to the Advent.
At the end of the fourth part were also added some of
the special offices in regard to the laity, which had to be

performed by the priest, such as matrimony, baptism, and
burial.

The essence of the Breviary was the Psalter, which
formed the groundwork of all the forms of devotion used at
the Canonical Hours. With the appointed extracts from
the Psalter a number of prayers were used, and these
were divided in exactly the same way as those of the Missal
into Temporal (of Sundays and festivals) in one sequence ;
and Sanctoral, in two sections, Proper and Common. The
perpetually recurring rubrics of Matins, Lauds, Prime,
Tierce, Sext, None, and Vespers (ad matutinas, in laudibus,
ad primam, ad tertiam, ad sextam, ad nonam, ad vesperas)
mark the hours of their use from midnight to midnight.
These headings, repeated from day to day all over the year,
ought to be sufficient even to the least observant eye to
indicate the Breviary. It also contains at the end the
offices of Marriage, Baptism, Burial, &c. ; and in some of
the Breviaries the office of the Mass itself (not the whole
Missal) is included.

The Book of Hours (or Private Prayerbook) is a
selection from the Breviary, and is likewise marked with
the rubrics of the hours (Matins, Lauds, Nones, &c.), but
they are applied only to the offices selected, and do not
contain the chronological divisions, Temporal and Sanctoral,
for the year. The offices are usually those of the Virgin,
of the Cross, of the Holy Ghost, of the Trinity, and these,
with the Office for the Dead, and commemorations of some
special Saints, form the chief bulk of the Horse.

The Calendar, which is found at the beginning, and the
Litany (or Litanies) of Saints, which is found in the body,
of each of the three books, are usually the most obvious
sources of information with regard to the origin of the
manuscript. If the use, or diocesan form of the liturgy, is
purely Koman, as is sometimes the case even in books
written in France, Flanders, and England, then the search
is frustrated. It happens, however, frequently that even

the Roman Calendar and the Roman Litany are enlarged
by the addition of names to which a special local veneration
was paid, and then one is able to discover hints of origin
which may indicate either a country or a diocese. In the
French books, the number of French Saints is usually con-
siderable, that is of French Saints who do not appear in the
Roman calendar, but they are generally gathered impartially
from all the dioceses. It is only when we find that a
single diocese furnishes the names of two or three canonised
bishops, or when a name appears in gold in the calendar
which had no special importance for the whole of the
country, but must have had a particular interest in one
city or diocese, that we can begin to think of special
attributions. Thus, if St. Ives (Yvo), Ste. Genevieve,
St. Germain, St. Leufroy, St. Louis, S. Faro, St. Ursin,
St. Saintin, St. Saturnin, Ste. Radegonde, St. Fiacre, St.
Austrebert, and many others, are found in the Calendar,
and any of them in the Litany, it is a sure proof of French
origin. If St. Saturnin appears in gold in the Calendar, it
serves to indicate Toulouse ; if St. Sainctin, Meaux ; Martial,
Limoges; Firmin, Metz or Amiens; and if SS. Ursin,
Guillaume, and Austregisile occur together in the Litany,
they point out Bourges all three having been Archbishops
of that see. But in all cases collateral or cumulative
testimony is required.

Saints Yedastus and Amandus (Vaast and Amand),
although belonging to Flanders, may occur either in French
or Flemish Calendars ; but when they are combined with
Bavo and Bertin, and Quintin and Aldegund, they indicate
Ghent or its vicinity as 'the place of origin. St. Piat, St.
Lehyre (or Eleutherius), and St. Guillain point to Tournay.
St. Valery or Walery (Walaricus) is another Flemish Saint,
as also are Audomar, Gaugericus, Godeleve, Winnoc, and
Amelberga. As for MSS. of Flemish origin, it must be
remembered that the word Flemish is loosely used to
designate all portions of the Low Countries except the

purely Dutch provinces, and that Artois and Picardy and
other portions of the French Pays Reconquis of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries were part of them. In the same
way Franche Comte and the Duchies of Burgundy and
Lorraine were also outside of France in the fifteenth century ;
and Languedoc and Provence and Dauphine were late
additions to the French monarchy. The words Flemish (in
its fullest sense) and French have therefore to be used with
caution. Even Brittany was only incorporated at the end
of the fifteenth century.

Manuscript liturgies of English origin of any date are
unmistakable by reason of the saints' names. St. Thomas
a Becket is not one of the distinctive ones, for he was
worshipped everywhere ; but all the English books, whether
they be of Roman use, or of Salisbury or York use, contain
the names of SS. Alban, Cuthbert, Aldhelm, Guthlac,
Botulph, Grimbald, Edward, Richard, Edmund, Swithin,
Dunstan, Etheldreda, Edith, Winifrid, Chad, John of
Beverley. The names of St. Wilfrid, St. William, St. Hilda,
St. Aidan, St. Bede, and St. Everilda, are proofs of York
and northern use ; St. Milburga, St. Guthlac, and St.
Thomas Cantilupe indicated Hereford, as also does St.
Osytha, although one name alone is not sufficient. St.
Wulfstan points to Worcester, St. Hugh to Lincoln, but
not always. Aldatus, Kinburga, Egwin, and Elwin, are
only found in books of Gloucester or western origin. St.
Erkenwald always indicates London or the south.

Scottish liturgies of the kind are very rare, and contain
the names of saints not elsewhere met with. There can be
no doubt as to the origin beyond the border of a book which
either in its calendar or its Litany gives the names of Ken-
tiger n, Ninian, Aidan, Adamnan, Monan, Queen Margaret,
Duthac, and Modoc. Even any one of these names is
sufficient, although Adamnan, Aidan, and Ninian might
.possibly appear on this side of the Tweed, as well as St.
Adrian who was likewise Scottish.

Special German saints are Gotthard, Lambert (not
always), Adelbert, Bernward, Sebald, Swibert, Cunegund,
Hermenegild, Willibald, Kilian, Hedwig, Wolfgang, Irmin.

Among the saints of the Spanish calendar are Isidore,
Ildefonsus, Eulalia, Raimund, Leocadia, Gumersind,
Baldomer, Learider, Braulio, Turibius, Quiteria, Froilan.
There is sometimes a curious coincidence between the
Spanish and the German calendars. The Spanish coinci-
dences with the calendar of Southern France are more
easily to be accounted for.

The Italian saints are always those of the Roman
calendar, but St. Zenobio is seldom found outside of Tuscany.
SS. Bernardinus of Siena and Nicolas of Tolentinum are
Italian saints of the fifteenth century more frequently found
in Italian calendars (after 1450) than in calendars of other
countries. In the case of the latter two, their names are
sometimes useful in fixing a limit for the age of a book,
because MSS. of the time of their canonisation are numerous.
The dates of beatification of some earlier saints such as
Thomas Becket, Francis, Dominic, and King Louis, are also
occasionally of service ; but as a rule the names of the saints
in the calendars are far older than the thirteenth century.

The Fourteenth Century in Italy and Germany

To go back to the fourteenth century. In Italy the
broken Lombard had given way to the general adoption of
the modern gothic. Some excellent decorative work began
to appear in the borders and miniatures of MSS. executed
in Northern and Central Italy. As a rule in the earlier
times, Italian miniatures were rude in drawing, and barbaric
in colour like German and Spanish work; but in the
thirteenth century a distinct Italian type arose, based at
first on imitation of the semi-Byzantine art of Calabria and
Sicily ; but soon growing more national under the influence
of Giotto. There is no resemblance in style or manner
between the miniatures and borders of Italian artists, and

those of Northern Europe. The figures and faces are
painted with opaque colour, and a broad brush ; giving
altogether a stronger impression of representing real men
and women, than the exquisite drawing of the French
artists, in which faces were washed with colour after having
had the features drawn in with a pen or a fine brush.
(Plate 12 shows the style of illustration used at Venice in the
first half of the fourteenth century, in which there is a
curious combination of French-like calligraphy with the
painty miniatures of the home school of art.) There was
in fact more of modelling in the Italian illuminator's work
in its purely national stage from about 1350 to 1450.
After the later date a more subtle and minute delicacy in
the drawing altered the character of the pictorial work.
The borders which prevailed during 1320 to 1420 are also
quite different from French work. Broad foliage of archi-
tectonic pattern hangs in soft tints of red and blue from a
long upright slender pole like an ornamental curtain-rod,
and little buds or drops of burnished gold fall here and there
within the line of sight, but there is no attempt to fill up
the spaces with any elaborate scheme of twining branches
and real leaves and flowers, as in the French parallels. The
writing is usually square and gothic, but with few of the
oblique angles and little projecting points that are seen in
Western gothic. The Lombardic hand of Eastern and
Southern Italy, had left no trace in the script which
succeeded it. The round and beautiful Carolingian letter of
North Italy had a distinct influence in moulding the Italian
gothic, and preserving its freedom from Teutonic angularities.
It had lasted longer here than in other countries, but
Spanish Visigothic was also a late lingerer, and did not
succumb to French influence till the thirteenth century.

In Germany, the fourteenth century proceeded as else-
where to produce a closely packed difficult Gothic letter,
and also to introduce an ugly cursive which came generally
into use in the next century. In decoration, the old

Germanic style had given way to the influence of French
and Italian work, and a sort of new school was created,
which in the following century became distinctively German.
The cursive writing alluded to was an ugly rapid script
deformed from the minuscule, which was very largely used
in the fifteenth century, and developed in time the hand-
writing which still prevails in Germany, although gradually
giving way to the Roman.

English Work in the Fourteenth Century

The cursive hand in England, as used between 1250 and
1550 for all purposes, and in legal documents for a long
time afterwards, seems to have grown up in the early part
of the thirteenth century. It is quite unlike the earlier
charter hand, although it must have been derived from it.
For the first century or more of its use, it is remarkable by
reason of the long strokes which are broad and heavy above,
but taper into' thin lines below, those heavy heads being
bifurcated in the earlier times and looped in the later.
During the thirteenth and a great part of the fourteenth
century it looked handsome, and could be read without
difficulty ; from the late part of the fourteenth century
onwards it deteriorated both in aspect and in clearness.
Nothing resembling this English hand was used on the
continent, except (in a slight degree) in the notes written
sometimes on the margins of philosophical and legal books,
by means of a hard leaden stylus. Another cursive was also
employed, which was merely the rapid writing of the gothic
minuscule, like that of Germany ; but this appeared rather
on the continent.

It has been remarked that the Norman conquest intro-
duced a new fashion in writing; but the observation is too
strong. That event led gradually to the disuse of writing in
the angular Anglo-Saxon letters, but had little influence on
the fashion of the script used for writing Latin, which had
become round and clear since the tenth century. The

Carolingian reformation had failed to supersede the Anglo-
Irish hand, but its influence extended far enough to improve
the shape even of the purely English letters. In Ireland,
the angular character had fixed its type which has not
since varied.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the English,
as has been said above, began to relinquish the lead in
calligraphy and ornamentation, which they had held since
the twelfth. The Latin Bibles which had been produced
towards the end of the twelfth century were usually folios of
good size, written in a large and fine hand, and decorated
with miniatures of the type seen in the Huntingfield Psalter.
The fashion of the thirteenth century inclined towork of
smaller dimensions, and the Bibles came out in small octavo
or duodecimo size until the end of the century approached,
when there was a tendency to revert to small folios. In the
fourteenth century, a favourite size was quarto or small
quarto. The illustrations in MSS. of both twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and of the beginning of the fourteenth,
were similar in style, but varying in appearance according
to the space allowed the artist.

French Work in the Fourteenth Century

The French took the lead in the fourteenth century,
especially during the second half. There was not much to
choose in the writing of the time in any country, but it was
best in Italy. It was in the dainty adornment of their
illuminated MSS., and in the fine and delicate beauty of the
pictorial designs, that the French school now assumed its
place of pre-eminence. The Apocalypse was a favourite
book in the first half of this century, as it had been in the
twelfth, and artists delighted in drawing pictures of its
strange visions. These pictures were seldom quite original
in design, since the earliest delineations had acquired a sort
of traditional authority, but they were sufficiently variant in

Palceography 10

particulars to exhibit the strength of the artist. Diapered
and chequered patterns came more prominently into fashion
along with the older use of burnished gold, for backgrounds ;
and a great deal of excellent work was done. An example
from a French Apocalypse is given on plate 13. In most cases,
the picture was drawn with a fine brush and the colours
delicately washed in afterwards. French artists attained to
singular perfection in this dainty method of illustration, and
nothing of the kind excels some of the superior specimens.
Amongst them will be found a number of charming Books of
Hours executed at Bourges, Tours, and Paris, for Charles V of
France and his brothers. Whatever may be thought of the
beautiful paintings in Flemish and Italian MSS. at the end
of the fifteenth century, it is undeniable that the last thirty
years of the fourteenth produced French work which will
hold its own against the illumination of any period or of
any country. It is curious as showing how little the warfare
against Edward III had affected the progress of art in
France.

The Fifteenth Century

The second half of the fourteenth century saw a dynasty
of French princes established in the Duchy of Burgundy, and
the union of the states which had belonged to the Counts of
Flanders, to the Duke's dominions. These political circum-
stances had the effect of diverting some of the best French
miniaturists to the court of Philippe le Hardi, and of founding
a grand Burgundian school of art, which led to the creation
of the Flemish one. The Burgundian MSS. of the first half
of the fifteenth century were usually executed at Dijon (the
capital of the Duchy) or Besancon ; and were thus simply
works of French art, not very different in style from those
produced at Bourges, Nevers, and Auxerre ; but a certain
local type was developed in the ornamental borders of the
miniatures; and as soon as the political centre of gravity

was shifted northwards, by reason of the greater wealth and
importance of the Low Countries, Bruges and Brussels became
the chief towns in Philip the Good's dominions, and a new
element was introduced into Burgundian art. The Flemish
artists of Bruges, Lille, and Liege had been renowned
since the middle of the fourteenth century for their skill in
miniature painting, and Van Eyck himself was a dependent
of Philippe le Bon, in whose service he spent the last nine
years of his life at Bruges (1432-1440). It is supposed
that the earlier Flemish artists were the creators of grisaille
painting, although that beautiful mode of pictorial illustra-
tion is first found in French books of the middle of the
fourteenth century. (A specimen is given on plate 14.)
The finest examples of grisaille were produced by Flemish
artists at Bruges between 1440 and 1470, and a book of
Hours, illuminated for Jaquot de Bregilles in 1443, in the
possession of the writer, is one of remarkable beauty.
Another fine specimen, of somewhat later date, is the Miroir
Historial, a miniature from which is reproduced on plate 17.
Side by side with this kind of chaste work, splendid
illumination of the rich French style was practised in
Flanders, and a favourable example is given of a Book
of Hours painted at Tournay about 1460, on plate 16.

Grisaille painting originated evidently from the sugges-
tions of carved stone-work in cathedral-decoration. The
figures of saints occupying niches, which were familiar to
the visitants of churches, were the first models that led
to the painting of miniatures with the figures in grey tints.
It must have been, for a true artist, delightful to triumph
over the difficulty of achieving the effects of relief and of
modelling with the aid of a single pigment only. To be
the master of such an art, and to handle the monochrome
in such a way as to run with perfect touch through a
gamut of gradations in tone, would surely have been more
gratifying than to win success by the splendour of full
illumination. The artist did not, however, entirely abstain

from the use of gold ; he allowed it to shine on the crowns
of kings and around the heads of his saints; and colour
was used sparingly in the backgrounds. These backgrounds
in the pictures of earlier date were ornamental diapered
surfaces, but after the first decade or two of the fifteenth
century, landscape backgrounds made their appearance.
It was, however, some time before the miniaturist succeeded
in realising effects of distance, and thus producing true
pictures as distinguished from ornamental historiation.
The Italians were the first to gain a tolerable knowledge
of perspective, but the Flemings were not much behind
them. It was not, however, till late in the fifteenth century
that anything like a faithful expression of perspective is
found in the miniatures of MSS.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century, pure grisaille
was extended into camaieu; that is, the monochrome might
be any other colour than grey, so long as it was used in the
same manner. This, however, was usually confined to parts
of miniatures, and not inconsistent with a lavish use of
gold for the lights, and masses of different colour in other
portions of the same picture. The quantity of gold that
gave magnificence to the work of the miniaturist in Flanders
and France in the last quarter of the fifteenth century
became excessive. It was a relief to the eye when this
blaze of gold receded before the outcome of late Flemish
art. Scarcely any school produced work comparable for
delicacy and truth to the miniatures painted in prayerbooks
at Bruges and Ghent between 1490 and 1520.

Illuminated Borders in the Fifteenth Century

After the year 1400, as has been already said, the
private Prayerbooks, or Books of Hours, which at that
time were used in France and England, but not to any
great extent elsewhere, began to increase in numbers and
develop new styles of ornament. The pages with illuminated

initials still preserved the older border, the basis of which
was a double line of gold and colour issuing from the
initial and running squarely round the page. At the
corners and at intervals gold branches, bearing gold and
coloured ivy-leaves, went forth in somewhat stiff curves to
form the outer decoration of the border. This was in
French MSS. In the English ones, heavy masses of gold
and colour representing conventional foliage appeared at
the corners, and out of the border-lines emerged the long
sweeping tufts of feathery grass with red and blue buds,
which have been already alluded to. Towards 1430 the
ivy-leaves lost their prominence in France, and were only
preserved in portion of the ornament. The straight framing
lines were abandoned both in England and France, and a
broader border was obtained by a methodical arrangement
of hundreds of curling hair-lines, black or brown, out of
which sprung little red and blue flowers of natural appear-
ance. This pattern was drawn and massed so as to repre-
sent a broad frame, even and square, enclosing the page.
This became a customary mode of ornamentation in both
countries, so that a large proportion of English and French
work was much alike in style, though not always in
execution. When the middle of the century arrived, a
modification began to take place in French MSS. ; the fine
black hair-lines of the borders gave place to wreathing
green branches, less numerous, and thus more proportionate
in quantity. The flowers and leaves springing from them
became more numerous, more natural and less conventional.
By this time Burgundian and Flemish Livres d'Heures
were also produced in large numbers, and brilliant pictures
of blossoms growing in the rich gardens of Burgundy
added the weight of their influence to the tendency
towards floral decoration. The flowers in the borders
grew more realistic and varied, and were sometimes
fine large examples of their species. This method was
followed in England as well as in France. Next appeared

in continental work backgrounds, either of gold or of
colour, to the borders ; which had previously been painted
on the plain vellum. Finally, in France it became fashion-
able to break the border into spaces (taking various shapes),
of which some had gold grounds and some were without
grounds ; or to treat the border in such a fashion that the
branches and flowers should appear partly on gold, partly
on russet, partly on blue, or in other combinations. This
bizarre fashion did not take the taste either of English or
of Flemish artists. The English retained their crowded
border of flowers and branches painted on the plain vellum,
while the Flemings began to paint rich natural cut flowers
upon a monochromatic ground of pale gold or yellow. On
this pale ground, free from all the convolution of twining
branches seen in French and English work, they were enabled
to throw shadows beneath the cut flowers, so that these
appeared to stand out in strong relief, with excellent effect.
The new fashion at once found copyists everywhere ; the
celebrated Hours of Anne of Brittany is one of the finer
French examples. The imitations done in England were
not very successful.

End of the Fifteenth Century

We now reach the last decade of the fifteenth century ;
in which the late Flemish school already alluded to arose in
Bruges and Ghent. In combination with those beautiful
borders of fresh cut flowers painted in apparent relief upon
pale gold or yellow, the delicate art of Memling and Gerard
David produced small and exquisite miniatures with archi-
tectural and landscape accessories ; the like of which had
not yet been seen in the illustration of books, unless we find
a parallel in the lovely and no less exquisite pictures in
Florentine manuscripts of the same period. The radical
difference between the work of the north and that of the

south notwithstanding that each of them betrays to some
extent the influence of the other is, that the Fleming took
his types from real life, the Florentine from his conceptions
of angelic existence.

All the rest of Europe was behind the two favoured
countries in which pictorial and decorative art now reached
their culminating point. Sentimental writers have been,
from time immemorial, in the habit of scouting at wealth
and of pouring enthusiastic praise upon penury, as though
the two conditions were equivalent to vice and virtue in
morals, to dulness and genius in intellect. It is quite true
that an impoverished state of society produces better poetry
than a rich one ; but it is equally true that the finest artistic
work is born amid luxurious surroundings. It was the
wealth of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, and Brussels which
attracted talent to a warmer air in which it could grow and
flourish, on the border land between the Celt and the
Teuton, with all the advantages derivable from either side.
In the same way the riches and luxury of Venice, Florence,
Rome, Naples, Verona, Cremona, Padua, stimulated the
faculties of men who had inherited the traditions of Grasco-
Roman art. It was a brilliant autumn in the annals of
illumination, but a short one, by reason of the changes
which the new art of Printing had brought about in all
things. Diirer visited Bruges and Venice; he admired the
work of Gerard David and of the Italian miniaturists, but
he did not seek to imitate or to rival their efforts. He
belonged to the modern world, and he gave to the art of
engraving what he would, twenty years earlier, have given
to the art of illumination. We have nothing to do here
with his profession as a painter of canvases in which he
followed the same tendency as had during the fifteenth
century so wonderfully multiplied the number of Giotto's
descendants in Italy. We may imagine, if we choose, what
wonderful illuminators of manuscripts were lost in Schon-
gauer, Diirer, and Lucas van Ley den, three men who owed

their artistic existence and taste to the atmosphere of rich
cities. From the year 1450 the career of Calligrapher and
Illuminator had been doomed to extinction. Its members
gradually retired from an unequal strife with the clever
mechanics from Mentz ; some became printers, some became
engravers, and others joined the ranks of the canvas-painters.
Those who remained true to their early training achieved
the most brilliant triumphs of their profession before it
was extinguished. This is the reason why we look
to the Flanders, and to the Italy of 1480-1520, for
the most absolutely perfect work that was ever produced
in the illumination of manuscripts. Considering that it
flourished side by side with the paintings of the Bellinis and
of Andrea Mantegna, and that it was in touch with the
times of Lionardo, of Raphael, of Michel Angiolo, of Titian,
and of Paolo Veronese, we cannot wonder either at its
marvellous beauty or at its sudden withering.

Of the late Flemish school, certain work done for the
Austrian Archduchess Margaret (resident in Bruges with
her brother Philip, as children of Maximilian who had
become sovereign of the Low Countries in right of his wife
Mary of Burgundy), of which the famous Grimani Breviary
is only one amongst some ten or twelve examples was the
finest of its kind. The present writer has possessed one of
them a little volume internally justifying the tradition that
it was illuminated by Gerard David for the Archduchess
(. . Margot la gente demoiselle
Qu' eut deux maris et si mourut pucelle
as she once suggested for her own epitaph when in danger
from a storm at sea) for presentation to her sister-in-law
Juana, the heiress of Castile ( Juana la Loca, the Crazy Jane
who has become a personage in nursery lore).

As for the Italian school, it was of wider extent. The
illuminators found generous patrons at Milan, at Venice, at
Padua, at Cremona, at Verona, at Florence, at Bologna, at
Rome, and at Naples. In the last city, the Kings of

Aragonese origin were noble employers of talent, and
found their chief rivals in the Medicis, and in Mathias
Corvintis, the King of Hungary, who divided with them the
patronage of the best Italian miniaturists. They also
helped to stamp on Spanish work the Italian impress which
characterises it in the last half of the fifteenth century, and
thereby to continue the line which in contact with Naples
on the one hand, with Bruges on the other, formed at the
end of the century a ring, uniting Flanders and Italy as its
chief jewels.

The name of Attavante, so famous as a Florentine
miniaturist, reminds me of a Petrarch manuscript which I
have seen sold in Paris as illustrated by him. One of the
illuminations contained a bust of a Roman warrior, in the
style so frequently seen in Italian work of about the year
1500, and under it were the initials M.A., intended evidently
for Marcus Aurelius or Marcus Antonius. Out of them, the
cataloguers of two different collections of great repute, had
evolved the idea that they stood for " Maestro Attavante"
an absurd notion for which there was absolutely no excuse
whatever. Other famous Italian miniaturists were Girolamo
dai Libri of Verona, and Sigismondo da Carpio. I have had
examples of the art of both. One still more celebrated was
Giulio Clovio, but he belonged entirely to the sixteenth
century and to the late Renaissance, and his work is in
nowise that of the Middle Ages. It is over-florid and
reveals the theatrical splendour which always accompanies
decline. I have possessed one of his finest examples,
which was formerly in the Towneley library.

During the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, a
favourite style of border among the Italians was an imitation
of goldsmith's work. Gems of various colours set in gold,
with cameos or medallions of classic busts, were the chief
feature, but spaces were always left in which the miniaturist
could paint his tiny exquisite figures of the fight between
David and Goliath, or something, of the kind. Venetian

Palceography 11

examples of such miniatures are remarkably beautiful the
beauty mingled with a certain gravity of manner ; those
which are of Koman origin have an air of masterly splendour ;
but those which were produced at Florence between 1480
and 1510 are so lovely as to upset our critical judgment in
comparing them with work done at Bruges. In the border-
illustration there never was any resemblance between the
work of Italy and that of other countries, and there can be
no hesitation in deciding between them in favour of Italy as
more appropriately decorative.

I possess a Psalter written and illuminated for Pietro
dei Medici, apparently about 1490, in which the first two
pages are stained light green, so as to soften and make
delicate the numerous tints found in the painting and
border upon one of them. These are the work probably of
Attavante, and can hardly be excelled for the exquisite taste
and finish both of the miniature and of the ornamentation.
I have also had a charming little Prayerbook written for
Lorenzo the Magnificent, which was evidently from the
same hand ; and a Siennese Psalter of kindred type and of
the same period. The loveliness of these Tuscan examples
takes away all possibility of critical fault-finding. They
delight the eye with a fuller satisfaction than even the best
of the Flemish illuminations. The latter we examine
carefully, with a continual increase of admiration ; while
we enjoy the harmonious beauty of the Florentine, we feel
that the critic's functions are set aside.

The writing of the late Italian MSS., among which
classical texts rival the books of prayers in the elegance of
their adornment, was more frequently Roman than gothic,
but a fine black-letter hand survived into the sixteenth
century, especially at Venice. The initials decorated with
interlacements, in a style that evinced its Irish origin,
which are found in Italian manuscripts after 1350 were
retained till near the end of the fifteenth century in Venice
and Naples, but they had fallen out of use in Tuscany

somewhat earlier, being hardly appropriate to the rich
neo-classical style of Florentine border-decoration.

As for the Italian styles of writing after the twelfth
century, they were various. The Carolingian in a bold and
handsome type lasted longer in Italy than elsewhere ; but
both it and the Lombard were passing away about the
year 1200. The thirteenth century saw the evolution of
the gothic letter out of the Carolingian, in Italy as well as
over the rest of Europe, but in Italy it was accompanied
by a sort of Carolingian cursive, slightly sloped, which
finally developed the two forms now familiar over all the
world Roman and Italic. In the fourteenth century a
beautiful square gothic letter was in use in Italy, and
remained unaltered in form till the end of the fifteenth ;
but it was not unaccompanied by various other styles of
writing. The Italic was still in its primitive stage without
elegance, and some books were written in a gothic letter
derived from French and German models, and quite unlike
the square Italian gothic. The script of the book, from
which a facsimile is given on plate 12, is an example of this
outlandishness. Before the fifteenth century arrived the
cursive hand had split into its two branches. The more
elaborately written letters were upright, and tended to
restore the Carolingian original ; the less elaborate characters
began to slope still further, and by degrees became a separate
script, which then became cultivated. The writing of
Petrarch (who died in 1374) was chosen as the model for
the first Italic types used in printing (1501) ; and the
upright round hand used by numerous Florentine and
Venetian calligraphers towards the middle of the fifteenth
century was chosen as the model of the first Roman types,
cut by Sweynheym and Pannartz in the Benedictine
monastery of Subbiaco, not far from Rome, in the year 1464.

Remarks on the subjects reproduced in the plates
The first plate represents portion of a hieroglyphical

text written on a roll of papyrus which was wrapped up
with the mummy of the man whose virtues are recorded on
it. As for the exact age and contents of the roll, it is
beyond my capacity to say anything definite ; but there is a
delicacy in the drawing of the figures and in the formation
of the letters which seem to indicate a considerable age,
probably not less than twelve hundred years B.C. Each
column of the writing has to be read from top to bottom,
beginning with the first column on the left. It has been
said in an earlier page that the hieratic and demotic scripts
differed from the hieroglyphic in being written like Hebrew
in long horizontal lines from right to left. The difference
is, however, merely formal. If we turn the hieroglyphic
page half round, so that the right side becomes the bottom,
and the left side the top of the page, we can see the inscrip-
tion run in hieratic fashion from right to left.

Plate 2 is perhaps more difficult to decipher than
Plate 1. We know, however, that the demotic script was
used only amongst laymen in matters of business and of
money; and this no doubt represents some commercial
transaction that took place between 500 and 200 B.C. The
demotic was a complex cursive evolved from the hieratic ;
its invention, or at least its use to any considerable degree,
does not appear to have been much antecedent to 600 B.C.,
and there was little necessity for its continuance after the
second century B.C.

It was probably about the beginning of the Christian
era that the demotic finally disappeared before the Coptic,
an alphabet derived from the Greek, of which Plate 3 gives
an example. The Arabic heading which accompanies the
Coptic rubric above the Psalm that begins below (the 118th
/>"?), is in a hand of the latter part of the fifteenth century.
Notwithstanding the lateness of the specimen, the script
takes its proper place here as representing a script of the
first century.

Plate 4 is taken from a copy, written on vellum at

Nablus, of the Samaritan Pentateuch. Both in language
and in letters it represents the old Hebrew of the days of
Solomon, long anterior to the time when Ezra introduced
from Chaldgea the square characters now called Hebrew ; the
ancient letters having been preserved by a small remnant in
North Palestine. The writing resembles that of the
Phoenicians, and the example given on plate 4, notwith-
standing its lateness, does not exhibit a very much modified
form of the character.

Plate 5 is from an Abyssinian MS. of the sixteenth
century, on the Life of the Virgin. The real origin of the
artistic decoration is unmistakable. It is what we call
Byzantine, but ought rather to be called .ZEgypto-
Grecian. The people of Abyssinia, who were mainly
Southern Arabs or Sabasans, received their instruction
in art along with their Christianity a few centuries after the
beginning of the era, and they have never abandoned them.
As for the writing which appears on the plate, it is in the old
Geez or Ethiopic language, and descended from that of the
Sabaaan people whose monumental inscriptions in Himyari-
tic language and characters are now attracting considerable
interest.

Plate 6 is from a Greek Gospelbook written on vellum,
which was brought to England from Cyprus by Cesnola.
The ornamental border at the top is somewhat freer and less
stiff in style than those which we find in most of the Byzan-
tine MSS. ; and the writing is neater and less negligent
than if it had been executed in the eleventh or twelfth
century. It slopes a little backwards and has the breathings
in their antique form as halves of the letter H. Hence I
have assigned it to the latter part of the tenth century.

On plate 7 I have given a reduction after Westwood of
a page from an Irish MS. now in the Archiepiscopal Library
at Lambeth. Although it is of comparatively late date (the
ninth century), and the writing is the Irish script in its
second or wholly minuscule stage, the ornamentation is

sufficient to show what Irish work had been and still was.
The marvellously elaborate convolutions and interlacements,
the dexterous use of colours, the utter absence of gold, and
the introduction of grotesque animal figures, are all seen in
this plate from the Gospelbook of MacDurnan. (While I
write I am reminded of a personal experience which I may
be forgiven for setting down in print. When Westwood's
great book had come out, I was one day speaking with an
English lady of high social position, cultivated and accom-
plished in many branches of knowledge, to whom after
mentioning Westwood I expressed my admiration of what
the Irish calligraphers had done in the seventh and eighth
centuries, when art was so low in most of the other lands of
Europe. The lady listened with patient good-breeding, till
I paused, and then said quietly, "I presume that you are
yourself an Irishman ! " She had evidently mistaken one
unfamiliar accent for another, and her remark was a polite
criticism upon my credulity or veracity.)

Plate 21 (which ought to have been inserted in succes-
sion to plate 7) reproduces a miniature from a Breviary
written about 1150-60 for Isengrim, Abbot of the Bene-
dictine Monastery at Ottenbeuern in Suabia.

The miniature reproduced is a picture of the Ascension,
and shows the Saviour standing in an almond-shaped frame,
supported and borne aloft by four angels. The Virgin
and the Apostles are looking upwards from below, and the
picture is enclosed within a square blue border, this being-
lighted by ornamental fretwork in white. The faces are
generally well drawn, and the rapt attention in the eyes of
the uplookers is very skilfully depicted. The colours used
are blue, green, yellow, red, chesnut, and white. The whole
effect is reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon work, and one might
easily, at first sight, mistake it for a picture out of an
English book of the tenth century. A somewhat similar
design of the same subject is found in King Athelstan's
Psalter an Anglo-Saxon MS. of the late ninth century, now

in the British Museum; but the Suabian illustration is
decidedly inferior in taste and delicacy of treatment. It
shows, however, such a kinship that we are inclined to
believe in a nearer connexion between German and English
art than between German and French Carolingian.

Plates 8 and 9 reproduce miniatures from two manuscripts
of the Latin Bible, the first page of Genesis in each. The
first is either English or Norman work, perhaps rather the
latter than the former, and is interesting as affording one
of the earliest examples of the border with leaves of the
so-called ivy pattern. The writing is a beautiful early
gothic of the transition period between the Carolingian
round hand and the mediaeval square gothic. It is unmis-
takably Norman, if not Anglo-Norman, but may have been
English. If the reds in the tiny miniatures had been a little
more pinkish, and the blue a little lighter, we should have
had no hesitation in calling it English work. In plate 9,
the writing is somewhat rounder and the ink is paler
showing that the work is neither English nor Norman ; and
we find in the minute pictures a style of design, both in the
figures and the draperies, which reminds us of late classical
art. The interlaced pattern in the lowest portion of the
ornament is also a survival of the Celtic manner which
might be found in Southern France, but which had ceased
to be used in English work, except in the decoration of
letters. On the plate, the picture is dated "1310-20"; but
we may venture to think that it was executed in South-
Eastern France about the year 1300.

The design and the writing on plate 10 are thoroughly
English of the end of the thirteenth century. The picture
is unfinished, having been left by the artist in its sketch-
condition, uncoloured. The faces are blank, and the drawing
simply in outline ; but the careful treatment of the folds in
the drapery is remarkable. The miniature is one of several
illustrating the Apocalypse, which were done in the convent
at Eaton or Nun-Eaton in Warwickshire about 1280. The

Apocalypse is not given in its Latin summaries, as was
usual, but in French quatrains of English origin. The
volume which contains these drawings is interesting, as
having been a sort of omnium gatherum, made up for the
ladies of Eaton at the end of the thirteenth century. One
of the pieces it contains is a Bestiaire by William the
Trouvere, an Englishman of the twelfth century; a French
poem called the Chastel d' Amours by Kaymond Grosseteste ;
and a popular English poem of the time, of which another
example has been lately published in facsimile in his
"English Palaeography" by the Eev. Walter W. Skeat.

The miniature of the Crucifixion which is reproduced on
plate 11 is visibly Italian work of the rudest style. It is
taken from a Missal, written in a hand which is also Italian
of the end of the thirteenth century, but gothic in form.
The liturgical character of the book is, however, such that we
may believe it to have been produced in England, perhaps
by an Italian Cistercian monk. The writing on the
miniature is in so-called Lombardic uncials, a script which
was used for capitals nearly everywhere in the thirteenth
century. The three figures in the picture have red or
auburn hair, a favourite colour at all times among the
Italians, even after the Flemings had introduced a black-
haired Christ. Another noticeable feature is the building
with an arcade and windows, in the lower background.

Plate 12 is an illustration of the story of Troilus and
Cressida, taken from Guido Colonna's Tale of Troy. It is
Venetian, of about the years 1330-40, and exhibits the Italian
style of using strong pigments for their figures. Whatever
the faults of drawing may be, this is a real painting done with
a full brush. There is no appearance of the outlines drawn
with a pen or a fine brush, such as we see in French and
English work, and the folds in the draperies appear to be
produced by broad shado wings after the main body of
colour had been painted. In fact, it seems to be, like
other Italian illuminations, the work of a painter, not

of a miniaturist. The place of origin is revealed by the
calligrapher's instructions to the artist, which occur on
several pages in a minute hand, and which are written in a
pure Yenetian dialect. The manuscript is illustrated with
an unusual quantity of pictorial designs. The writing is
remarkable as resembling that of the English charters of
the same period, but with greater regularity and evenness in
the downstrokes.

Plate 13 is reproduced from a French Apocalypse of the
fourteenth century, with a text in French prose. The writing
is gothic, much changed from the style of the thirteenth cen-
tury, and less regular and elegant. The picture is thoroughly
French, of the time when English illuminators had yielded
up their supremacy to the men of the French school. We
see the fine outlines and features as we are accustomed to
see them in thirteenth century work, offering; in their
delicate style a curious contrast to the broad free painti-
ness of the illustration in plate 12. The Apocalypse,
from which the plate is taken, is a French work of the
middle of the fourteenth century, showing a good deal of
the feeling of the preceding century, but tending visibly
towards the manner of the time when Charles Y of France
and his brothers were associated with manuscripts of an
unusually beautiful kind.

Plate 1 4 is an example of French grisaille in its earlier
stage. The four designs look like fine chalk drawings
prepared for the use of an engraver, rather than like finished
illustrations in a book. There is an ease and freedom in
the figure-drawing which reveal the hand of a true artist,
and the treatment of the draperies is excellent; but the
landscape accessories in the lower two divisions are primitive
in their absurdity and childish execution. The writing in
this example, and in plate 13 also, is typical fourteenth
century gothic; small, cramped, square, and angular. The
border is of the early ivy-leaf pattern, stiff and not natural,
but not inelegant as decoration. The style and character of

Palaeography 12

the two plates are essentially French, and could not be
found in examples of illumination at the period anywhere
outside of France.

Plate 15 introduces us to a totally different kind and
style of ornament. There is no appearance of stiffness here
in the border, with its bold conventional foliage of light blue
and green, and the long feathery lines that sweep out from
it in free and graceful curves. The miniature too is full of
merit both in design and execution, its only drawback being
the rather ugly pattern of the green flooring. The seated
priest is in the full costume of a doctor or literatus of
Chaucer's time; and the expression in his features, as well
as in those of the kneeling Gower, is excellently rendered.
The writing here is not the square angular gothic of the two
preceding plates, but a more rounded script, partaking of
the nature of the charter hand, which was appropriated to
the English language. The a is the only letter in it quite
identical with that of the fourteenth century gothic, and
the p (for th) shows the survival of Anglo-Saxon writing,
just as the w shows us a modern English letter at a tolerably
early stage of its growth. The k is likewise noteworthy, as
being the peculiar form of the letter which had been evolved
in the rapid writing of court-scribes, and which is still used
in German manuscript.

Plate 16 shows us Franco-Flemish art in a phase in
which the simple mastery of design had become subordinate
to the brilliancy and magnificence of decoration. The
inner border of interwoven blue and red lines upon a ground
of gold is connected with, and grows out of, the illuminated
initial in a suitably appropriate fashion, but the outer
border of conventional foliage, red, blue, green, and yellow,
with its inserted figures of a kneeling man and a hybrid
dromedary, has no comprehensible affinity to the rest of the
work, and is tacked on without any reason beyond the
desire for splendour and variety. The style is not dis-
tinctively Flemish, although the painting was done at

Tournay. It is rather a development out of Franco-
Burgundian models, and more suggestive of French origin

o t o o O

than any other; in fact, the extension of central French
influence northwards through Burgundy.

In plate 17 there is real Flemish work. Here is pure
grisaille at its best ; no infusion of extraneous colour in the
design, except in the tesselated pavement of yellow and
white marble, and no glitter of illumination beyond what is
given by a gold crown in the hands of one figure, and a
couple of gold chains on the breasts of two others. This is
indeed a true historical picture broadly conceived, well
composed, and admirably executed. The perspective is
excellent, and we realise clearly the size and depth of
the large vaulted chamber, lighted only from the doorways
and the open window-spaces, in which the eight personages
are grouped. The manuscript from which the miniature is
taken was written and illustrated, almost undoubtedly, at
Bruges about 1470 for a nobleman of the Lannoy family,
a member not of the principal house which still flourished in
Flanders, but of the transplanted branch in Picardy.

Plate 18 is taken from an English manuscript of con-
siderable interest. A number of armorial bearings, which
are found on the margins of the pages, show that it was
written either for the Marquis of Dorset, Edward lY's
son-in-law, or for one of his children. Whichever was the
case, the book was in the possession of John Grey, dominus
de Blis worth, the son or near relative of the Marquis, in the
early part of the sixteenth century ; and there is a record
added in the calendar of the death of Dame Elizabeth Grey,
this John's wife, about 1520-30. The miniatures are good,
but not excellent ; better in composition than in design,
and showing grave deficiencies with regard to perspective.
They are, however, well executed and well painted ; and
the borders are remarkably elegant. The conventional
large foliage, of architectonic character, is admirably disposed
upon small and appropriate fields of gold ; and the twining

branchlets that bear tiny buds and small leaves and flowers
are not so crowded as to hide the vellum ground. The
border is indeed a fine decorative composition, without a
fault, and thoroughly English in style. There is an
inscription at the foot of the miniature which inspires
curiosity to learn who the writer was. She was evidently
a woman of high position ; for only such a personage would
have been allowed to write in a Prayerbook of the kind.
The words are, " Madame, I pray you remember her that ys
yours and ewer sail be," but the bookbinder has unfortunately
cut off the signature. The person addressed was no doubt
Dame Elizabeth Grey. The writing is strangely like that
of Henry VII, but cannot of course have been his. It is
possibly as late as 1520.

Plate 22 is from a Prayerbook written and illuminated
about 1520-30 for a certain Giovanni Bentivoglio. If the
book had been a dozen or twenty years earlier than it seems
to be, one might have supposed that it was executed at
Bologna, by the order and for the use of the last Bentivoglio
who ruled in that city. As, however, he died in exile and
misfortune in 1508, the Giovanni to whom the prayerbook
belonged, must have been his grandson, born about 1510,
who was in the imperial service in 1530. The artistic
merit of the illumination is considerable, but they are
over-florid and mark a decay of taste. The colours are
vivid and harmonious, gold is plentifully used, and the
beauty of the work is undeniable ; but it is meretricious
and corrupt in style. Italian examples of the period are,
however, rare and highly prized.

On plate 19 we have a large initial (0) cut from an
Italian Antiphonal or Gradual, written probably about
1540-50. It encloses a miniature representing the Adora-
tion of the three Kings, painted with so much skill as to
suggest the hand of some student of Titian's school. In
design, composition, and execution, it is very good ; the
only drawback being the superfine air of courtly elegance

which is seen in every figure beneath the thatched roof
of the stable. There is a theatrical character in the whole
performance, that reminds us of Federico Baroccio.

Of similar date is the picture on plate 20. It comes
from a Gospel-lesson book, written in a mitred abbey on the
German side of the Rhine, probably not far from Cologne, in
the year 1548. The design of the company of monks headed
by their Abbot, all in white raiment and kneeling before an
unseen altar, is excellent German work. The landscape
with distant towers, seen through the pillars of an arcade
behind would look better than it does, if it were not for the
floating cherubs who hover in the spaces, and support two
armorial shields. The border is a close imitation of the
late Flemish style. On a yellow ground, lighted with
twining gold branchlets, cut flowers are vividly painted,
along with figures of a bee, a fox, a bird, a rabbit, and a
hybrid animal like an ape.

INDEX,

Aachen, metropolis of the

Frankish Empire, 44
Abyssinia, writingin, 12, 13
Abyssinian MS. Life of the

Virgin, 85

Adamnan (St.), 28, 36
Adoration of the Magi, a

miniature, 92
Ai-gupt, Semitic name of

the Delta, 8
Akkadian writing, 7, 9
Alcuin at Tours and

Aachen, 44
Amber-trade, 29
Ambrosian use in the

Milanese liturgy, 53
Angles civilized, 34
Anglo-Saxon alphabet, 26,

decoration of MS.,35,37
Antiphonale, 54
Apocalypse MSS., 73, 89
Apocalyptic designs, Eng-
lish work, 87

Arabian writing (Arabic),

Arabian (South) writing,12
Arabic language, 21

writing, 20, 84
Aragonese Kings of Naples,

Aramaean Chaldees, 11, 12
Ascension, Pictures of the,

86
Asoka's Rock-inscriptions,

AssyrianEmpireformed, 10
Assyriology, 6
Attavante, work done by,

81,82
Babylonian monarchies, 7,

9, 10

Bactrian Kingdom, 18
Barbarians, movements of

the, 42

Baroccio (Federico), 93
Bastaruaa, a Gothic people,

29
Bede, the Venerable, 34,

37
Bentivoglio (Giovanni)

Prayer book, 92
Berossus, Assyrian Chron-
icle, 6
Bible, its influence on

writing, 23

multiplied by scribes,52

Bible, Greek, 24

Syriac, 24

Hebrew, 24

Latin MSS., 87
Bologna school of law, 57
Book (origin of the word ), 2
Borders in MSS., 62, 65,

71,76

Boustrophedon writing, 16
Bregilles Livre d'Heures, 75
Breviary, foundation of

the, 53

constitution of the, 67

MS. written at Otten-
beuern, 86

Britain Celtiberian, 27

Gallic, 27

Latin, 27

- English, 27
British Isles, age of writing

in, 27

Bruges MSS., 81, 91
Burgundian school of art,

65, 74, 91

Burmese writing, 21
Byzantine ornamentation,

Art not Hellenic, 47
Cadmus the Phoenician, 10
Calendars in Prayer books,

67
Calligraphy extinguished

by Printing, 80
Canon Law, 57
Canonical Hours, 53
Canterbury school of writ-
ing, 59

Capitals in writing, 25
Carolingian art,35,37,43,59

writing, 40, 43
Celtic Church, 53
Cesnola (L. P. di), 85
Chaldaea, age of writing

in, 7

Chaldees (Turanian or
Akkad), 9

(Aramaean or Semitic),
11

Charles the Great, 35,41. 43

Charters, style of writing
used in, 26, 54, 55

Charter hand in England,
72

Chastel d' Amours, MS., 88

Chinese origins, 13

Christ blackhaired in pic-
tures, 88

Chronology of the Bible, 6

Chrysography, 3, 26, 60

Churches (Early Christ-
ian), 53

Civil Law, 57

Classic survival in Italy, 35

Clovio(Giulio) Miniatures,
81

Colonna (Guido) Tale of
Troy, 88

Colours in miniatures and
ornament, 61

Columba (St.), 36

Coptic alphabet, 25

writing, 9, 84
Cufic writing, 20
Cursive Roman, 26, 28
Cymryof NorthEngland,33

settled in Wales, 33
Cyril (St.), 52
Cyrillic alphabet, 51
David (Gerard) of Bruges,

78, 80

Decoration of MSS., Irish,
35,36

Anglo-Saxon, 35

Frankish, 37, 43

Gallo-Roman, 44, 47

English, 45

German, 45

Spanish, 46

Italian, 46

Byzantine, 46, 47
Demotic writing (Egyp-
tian), 9, 84

Deutsch, meaning of the
word, 31

Devanagari alphabet,18,21

Diplomatic writing, 26, 54,
55

Drawing and design, Me-
diaeval, 62

Durer (Albert), 79

Durham school of writing,
59

Eginhart, the Frank, 43

Egypt called Khem, 5, 8

A igupt, 8

Mizraim, Misr, 8

Age of writing in, 5
Egyptology, 6

England the centre of
French art and litera-
ture, 62

English Art in MSS., 49,
60, 62, 72, 90, 91

Calendars in Horse, 69

English illuminated bor-
ders, 65, 77, 90

MS. Bible Sec. XITL, 87
Estrangelo Syriac, 20
Ethiopia language, 85

writing, 12
Etruscan alphabet, 16
Euchologium, 54
Evangeliarium, German

MS., 93

Flemish school of art, 74,
76, 79, 90, 91

Calendars in Horse, 68

illuminated borders, 78
Floral borders, 65
Florentine miniatures, 78,

81
Formation and use of

books, 3
France (Central) MSS.

produced in, 62
Frankish empire, 39

writing, 28, 37, 39
French art in MSS., 60,

62,73

Calligraphy and orna-
mentation, 49

Calendars in Horse, 68

illuminated borders, 65,
77

MS. Latin Bibles, 1300,
87

Gallic language, 30
Gallican use in liturgy, 53
Gaul, Age of writing in, 22

Greek writing in, 22
German Art in MSS., 86

Calendar in liturgies, 70

illumination, 61
in Flemish style, 93

writing, 71
Germany, name of, 30
Girolamo dai Libri, 81
Glagolitic alphabet, 51
Glastonbury school of

writing, 59

Gloucester calendar, 69
Gospel of St. Peter, 48
Gothic alphabet (Wul-

fila's), 25, 28, 31
Kingdom in Spain, 23

Kingdom in Italy, 41

mediaeval writing, 32, 65
Goths and Germans, 28
Gower (John) in a minia-
ture of the Confessio
Amantis, 90

Graduale of the missal, 54
Greek alphabet, 10, 13, 14

Bibles, 53

Greek Colonies, 15

Gospels, MS.,Sec.X., 85

writing, minuscules, 47
Gregory (St.), 54

Grey (Thomas) Marquis of
Dorset, 91

(John and Elizabeth), 91
Grimani Breviary, 80
Grisaille painting, 75, 89,91
Grosseteste (Raymond), 88
Guthones, 29

Hebrew language, 19

writing in square let-
ters, 19, 84

Hellenised Oriental peo-
ples, 23

Herculaneum,writingat,25

Heures d'Anne de Bre-
tagne, 78

Hieratic writing in Egypt,9

MS. on papyrus, 84
Hieroglyphic writing

(Egyptian), 9

MS. on papynis, 83
Himyaritic alphabet, 12
Horae for private prayer,

56,67

of French work, 74

of English work, 69, 76,
77, 90

constitution of, 67
Horologium, 54

Hours, the Canonical, 53,56
Hours of the Virgin, see

Horse

Hrabanus Maurus, 30
Huntingfield Psalter, MS.,

73
Hyksos or Shepherd Kings

in Egypt, 11
Hymnals, 54, 58
Iberian writing in Spain, 22
Icelandand its literature, 5 1
Illumination (Mediaeval),

origin of, 36
India, age of writing in,

18,21

Indian languages (mod-
ern), 21

Initials illuminated, 62, 64
Ink used in MSS., 3
Ireland, writing in, 28, 32
Irish alphabet, 26

MS., 28, 36

MacDurnan'sGospels,85
ornamentation in MSS.,
85

teachers of theAngles,34
Isengrim, Abbot of Otten-

beuern, 86

Italian art, 62, 79, 92

late classical art, 60

miniatures, 88, 92

Picture of the Cruci-
fixion, 88

Schools of Illumina-
tion, 70

Saints in Calendars, 70
Italic characters, 83
Italy, age of writing in, 15
Italy, various hands used

in, 83

Ivy-leaf borders, 63
Jerome (St.), 51
Jornandes the Gothic

historian, 42
Juana la Loca, 80
Khera, name of old Egypt,

5, 8
Lannoy, Low country

family, 91
Latin alphabet, origin of

the, 17

Latin Bible, 52
MSS., 87

Liturgies, 53
Lectronaries, 54
Lenormant (Francois), 11
Liturgical books, 66

frequently transcribed,
53

Liturgies in the ver-
nacular, 57

Lindisfarne school of
writing, 59

Livres d' Heures see
Horse

Lombardic writing, 38, 40,
41

uncials, 88
Lombards, The Kingdom

of the, 40

Lombardy (Cisalpine
Gaul), 22

under the Goths, 40, 41

under the Lombards, 41
under the Franks, 41

MacDurnan's Gospels,
Irish MS., 86

Madden (Sir Frederick), 37

Manchu script, 22

Manetho, Egyptian Chron-
icle, 6

MSS. on purple vellum,
27, 60

Marcomanni, 30

Margaret of Austria, 80

Marseilles, Greek colony,
15,22

Materials of books, 3

Mathias Corvinus, 80
Medici, patrons of art, 80

(Lorenzo dei) Prayer
book, 82

(Pietro dei) Prayer
book, 82

Mernling (Hans), 78
Meiiologium, Greek Lit-
urgy, 54

Merowingianwriting,28,38
Minuscule letters, 26
Miroir Historial,MS., 75,91
Missal, MSS., 54

formation of, 53

constitution of, 66

Anglo-Italian MS., 88
Mizzaim, Misr, names of

Egypt. 8
Moeso- Gothic Alphabet,

31,41

Mongolian script, 22
Mozarabic liturgy, 53
Nagari alphabet, 18, 21
Naples, work done at, 82
Naskhi Arabic writing, 20
Norman Conquest of

England, 62
Norse Runes, 30
Nuneaton Convent, work

done in, 87

Ornamentation in MSS. ,60
Oscan and Umbrian writ-
ing, 16

Ostrogoths, 32
.Ottenbeuern MSS., 86
Oxford School of Law, 58
Padua University, 58
Palaeography (the word), 2
Papal prohibition of ver-
nacular liturgies, 57
Papyrus for books, 4

in Assyria, 8
Parchment for books, 4
Paris University, 44, 58
Patrick (St.), 28
Pehlvi writing, 19
Penitentialia, 57
Persian writing (Cunei-
form), 7

Pehlvi, 19

Talik, 21
Perspective in miniatures,

Petrarch MS. attributed to
Attavante, 81

Philip I. of Castile (Arch-
duke of Austria), bO

Phoenician colonies, 15

Phoenician use of letters, 10
Photius, Bibliotheca, 54
Phrygian use of letters, 12
Pontificale, 54
Prakrit language, 18, 21
Prayer books for private

persons, 55, 56
Primers, 56
Prisse Papyrus, 5
Processimale, 54
Psalter in the Liturgy, 54

for private prayer, 55
Ptah Hotep's Precepts, 5
Punic writing in Spain, 22
Reformation in the

Church, 57
Renaissance of Literature,

58
Roman letters in their

modern forms, 83
Roman origins, 16

writing, 25

Rouge (Vicomte Emm.

de), 11

Runic letters, 29
Rustic capitals, 25
Ruskin (John), 2
Sabaan use of letters, 12

origin of Abyssinian s, 85
Sacramentaries, 53, 54
Saints' names in Calendars,

67, 68, 69
Samaritan alphabet, 19

Pentateuch, 84
Sanskrit language, 21
Sargon, King of Akkad, 7
Sarum use, 69

Saxons and Angles, 34
Scandinavia, 42
Scandinavian writing, An-
glo-Saxon, 50

Teutonic, 51

Runic, 29, 50

Scots, Irish pirates, 33
Scottish Liturgies, 69
Semitic Alphabet, 11
Semi-uncials, 26
Septuagint, creation of

the, 23

Siamese writing, 21
Sigismondo da Carpio, 81
Singalese alphabet, 21
Skeat (Rev. W. W.), 88
Slavonic alphabets, 51
Slovene language and

script, 52
Spain, Age of writing in, 22

Visigothic writing in, 43

Spain, Carolingian writ-
ing, 43

mediaeval Gothic, 43
Spanish Calendars in

Liturgies, 70

ornamentation of
MSS., 61

Stephens (George), 29
Stubbs (Bishop), 33
Suevi, 30
Sweynheym and Pannartz,

Synaxarium, 54
Syriac language, 19, 24
Syrians, 12

Talik writing (Persian), 21
Terrien de la Couperie

(Prof.), 13
Teutonic, 31

TheodorictheOstrogoth,41
Theotisc, 31
Thibetan writing, 21
Thompson (E. Maunde),

1,11

Tournay Hours, 75, 90
Tours, Abbey of St. Martin,

Troilus and Cressida, 88
Troy book, Venetian MS.,

Tnrdetani of Spain, 22
Ulfila see Wulfila
Umbrian and Oscan

writing, 16
Uncials in writing, 25
Vellum for books, 4
Venetian Art, Troybook, 88
miniatures, 81, 82, 88
Visigoths, 32

in Spain, 23
Visigothic art, 39

writing, 38, 40, 42, 43
Volumes, rolled books, 3
Wales, Briton and Cymry,

Welsh, meaning of the

word, 31
West wood (Professor), 33,

William the Trouvere, 88
Winchester school of

writing, 59

Wulfila, Gothic Bishop, 31
York school of writing, 44,

York use in Liturgy, 69
Zend writing, 19

^--1-- [H*-*^

T^PiiSiS

-Is

fesi

" ' ' '

. i -v'

t^.

/>!(

n^.

Griggs fecit 1893.

PORTION OF A FUNERARY INSCRIPTION.
Written on papyrus in the Hieroglyphic character.

m&&8&&KI&ii - .^

%W^- ^.--l^A * a ^--. ^9^. .* " '~-'

^^*^K^i<^1fi-*--' i ^cifc>i^2%ij"* /* -/ifeJrf- t "^?' j ' ' : "' > -- '"vir

3f|s iSjjir^^ -^f^%te^ : *&**_jk? &*

' - r "" ^ y ^rp -f*^^jS5 ^^r^'^v^^^w^ ^

^fep?!^^ 1 ^^^^^^

^: c ^-

T~ -<.--^-

" ":.

J^j VU

^'^^_ ; i-

* I FT
0. K. PalcBography No. 2.

Griggs fecit 1893.

EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTION.
Written on papyrus in the Demotic character.

VJT * \ *-=* 'vXL'i^^ * f " *T **^^*~ i .r-7

;

JLAJLI

riA^PT- AJvLii^

rmc

S4s^y^4

0. k 1 . Paleography No, 3.

Griggs fecit 1893.

A PAGE FROM A COPTIC LITURGY.
Written in Egypt in the fifteenth century.

K>tf *~+J^ *fT ^J 'J-V/7/^-^CV^ -f> />"'"> '^J^J'^-' ^V'//-c\ '<\ /V^J >2/

A^-ewT'/fc'*'^ pia^v^ M y7^*^e-/^flwi -^^Ri)
^^ i54^A- r^-^/^^^jy^ -^*r - -A^^^-A^iy^-^^/v

: ^jy ^ -iy^ '2/tfK-Wv -^VTA^ -/^-^ "ZUYBa^m

0. V. Palaeography No, 4.

Griggs fecit 1893.

SAMARITAN MS. ON VELLUM, PROBABLY SEC. XV.
Leviticus, X. 16 to XL 13.

A -11 : A 3. *?

0. V. Paleography No. 5. Qriggs fecit 1893.

A MINIATURE IN THE TAMHERA MARYAM.
An Ethiopic work on the life of the Virgin, written in 1522.

tsj "* ""V 00 f *

" V -

0. V. Palaeography No. 6.

Qriggs fecit 1893.

THE FIRST PAGE OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL.
From a Greek JJfS. of the Tenth Century, brought by Cesnolafrom Cyprus.

0. 1^. Palceography No. 7. Griggs fecit 1893.

A PAGE FROM MACDURNAN'S GOSPELS.
4 MS. written in Ireland in the Ninth Century, now at Lambeth.

num fiWt nttttlmtux^tttfao fltuT

cnmtt fat ^n tmmtr. amt Attftot* d

o aramu'uattm MMD are
ctcw- jut f^f ttctmtm ':mr.i^ c
mtnnoi uettttu atyut <tt one wtett
ami rtr tuft ftwcp pttntintf c'ntl

A wimhivtj tf f nwfctnnr fr ftr

atttmoni .1 c^tttn tir<r tut ciaitmr
pnt ttt Te rftn
^ntmnttftt<6t
ftuotA/f com* Ofti

<?fttt> crto ftmr w tmtttt' wt

rcttuf fuu.c'f
Ctr fu

.'i flr tnftgtvn t^iA/
ftmrf*TuiaaJr {ftttni

inf ttr
mmuf ur

pofturcif f 6t*4mcp cwtu,

tofittfrt

0. I/. Paleography No. 8. Griggs fecit 1893.

THE FIRST PAGE OF GENESIS.
In a Latin Bible, written probably in England about 1290-1300.

tnAti lrffc-.-utr ahr t etf tf tt

Arfl* cgortonu .'T-feittti'? ue^x zmmte
-.J) yrtrjCll)

tn fttiunextutenn-f -r i

r(c ftntmnif tto& ^'pd
1C rfri tvtn jfr to to qua

Jl li- en t Aufctta - w tr urtn ita w vtt tt^. i

-vuef cj
*t fettitun f utf^e i tnane

mf tm alttiutttc

i atrfct thzi-^Mi \ttxr{7o

x ttmrta -TOttfc ixpttt* *rt

in-n Uttt^tnem
niam .T pftr pt-f fa j trurxTf ttiftlntt It t.- celt n

c fmnrt-'Cf -{Sn .at .ajtt

tnttrJI nxsitj tt- 1 ( tof-btr*'tttp J

ktt ffnui.7

.-tttf-xttol
rtrliantuftfrf .wnnarrtt b; 3 tnotjctrr<ijj>

o nxaiti rr> octti -i3itn.Trrra

^
' tau"uum ttimtir oaq^u

qiu^ ctto-ff i n lu,
M. fvieltttnq? c ttA-i^

-Tonfc mt^tttttl
tn Avt -oetnq^ t>6atw

eft- Uotulr- tAtt-.G*vtict'cutiUmtt>
i feietctttc few *n n Ugnu pnmfer

n etavqtu o^vvwtt ta- tTtvm . f t -fim nf

--t ttt^nvivxrr i ti

fo ftp tiuwam T fa4m e tta-

d .r^ttU&tnrtfTtiod.i ftttf mft^nan

wni It&Cott -iVc

0. K. Palceography No. 9. Griggs fecit 1893.

THE FIRST PAGE OF GENESIS,
/n a Zait're 5i6/e written in France about 1310-20.

(5 tm t ant tmtwteme eufttmtett*

jpnr tucr itttet^tafttmit

0. t'. Palaeography No. 10

Griggs fecit 1893.

THE SECOND ANGEL BLOWING HIS TRUMPET,
from a series of unfinished designs illustrating the Apocalypse; executed at Nuneaton about A.D. 1280.

0. V. Paleography No. 11.

Qriggs fecit 1893.

MINIATURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION.
In a Missale written by an Italian hand about 1290.

ilf!

I \*f~T*. .i ;- > _* \ As

C/5

LU
UJ

I
h

co -^

to ^

uj r

CO o 5

o ^

r,I

i* K ^l

^fT^lcl !

silx^-f

~^i W^.-'O \ ^ ^. -, i.

l-rtw^

Cni / ym<tgf /^rtm uu fi?<? mtV to? . wg ggk

&u ncl /

ft g i$ttr0$& titt* # rntti*? firf

>^ ^*f

Tvtuurmcg relBftnr?

tttar

nrfttgng

' tj eftG&faeyiu: it fyuj&r- ^tf teg flii

ttt^iftunptimtfr mituCavr tantpne* * <^|gg w qmyef ^H6 iht tmitr ft

trpifcl; zmocl fotq fttu

ri)cftu? e^0itnmit>* ^r^ntji? i^ frragp

0. P. Palceography No. 13. " Griggs fecit 1893.

A PAGE FROM THE REVELATIONS.
/ a French MS. Apocalypse Figure'e, written about 1360.

iimnotne wnflnsaHatufr
^tntts _

ai-uetin

te flates non ^ tncoia teftnpt lament
Ag uiaimit an rav

ncDttques mitcucquiiie

0. K. Palaeography No. 14.

FIRST PAGE OF THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE.
MS: written in France about 1370.

Qrlggs fecit 1893,

^ctno fi fitmc*>oimfaflm
oomt*

0. /. Paleography No. 15.

JOHN GOWER AND THE PRIEST OF VENUS.
From a MS. of Gower's Confessio Amantis, written before 1399.

dduttoiutm liimitt
mitt: Jfrmutf ; '
all dftwuditimm

0. y. Palaeography No. 16.

Grlggs fecit 7803.

A PAGE FROM A LIVRE D'HEURES.
Written at Tournay about 1465.

0. f. Palceography No. 18.

Qriggs fecit 1894.

CHRIST IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.
From the Prayer book of Grey, Marquis of Dorset, about 1470.

U^V^ U ^JL^UA^

WrXttCnttlWf&^rtr^

0. 1'. Paleography No. 19.

ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
From an Italian Chorale written about 1530-40.

Griggs fecit 18

Htfttwv

rltawWttn

0. V. Palaeography No. 20.

Griggs fecit 1894.

AN ABBOT AND MONKS KNEELING BEFORE AN ALTAR.
From an Euangeliarium illuminated in Flemish style by a German hand in 1548.

0. V. Palcegraphy No. 21.

Griggs fecit 1894.

MINIATURE OF THE ASCENSION.
From the Suabian Breviary written at Ottenbeuern about 1160-

mca. aperies,
it 05 in cum an

nuntiatidau
dem tuarn.
Deus uiaaiu

ton urn rnciin

Pom 11 ic ad adiuuadu

et fuio
icut erat in on

. Palcegraphy No. 22.

Griggs fecit 1894.

THE FIRST PAGE OF THE OFFICE OF THE VIRGIN.
From the Bentivoglio Prayerbook, written in Italy about 1520.

UNIVERSITY OF CALI ^ RNIA LIBR- 1
BERK

y/ x.

KKl)

sSJalK

Y M

J i]

^m\

\ K ' \