Such overwritten parchment manuscripts, where the original text has begun faintly to show through, are called palimpsests. During the 7th through the 9th centuries, many earlier parchment manuscripts were scrubbed and scoured to be ready for rewriting. Papyrus, the writing surface of choice in Antiquity, became prohibitively expensive as commercial supplies dried up propably through over-harvesting (see Papyrus) and was replaced by parchment and vellum. Wealthy people often had richly illuminated "books of hours" made, which set down prayers appropriate for various times in the liturgical day. As such, it was usually reserved for special books: an altar Bible, for example. Illumination was a complex and frequently costly process. Rubrics and illuminations were added by a separate class of specialists. The director of a monastic scriptorium was the armarius or scrittori, who provided the scribes with their materials and directed the process. In the monasteries, the scriptorium was a room, rarely a building, set apart for the professional copying of manuscripts. Before the invention of printing by moveable type, a scriptorium was a normal adjunct to a library. Indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting.Ī scriptorium (plural scriptoria) was a room devoted to the hand-lettered copying of manuscripts. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting. Illuminated manuscripts are the most common item to survive from the Middle Ages. Beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment (most commonly calf, sheep, or goat skin) or vellum (calf skin). A very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus. Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, although many illuminated manuscripts were rolls or single sheets. However, especially from 13th century onward, an increasing number of secular texts were illuminated. The majority of these manuscripts are of a religious nature. The majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many illuminated manuscripts survive from the 15th century Renaissance, along with a very limited number from late antiquity. The very existence of illuminated manuscripts as a way of giving stature and commemoration to ancient documents may have been largely responsible for their preservation in an era when barbarian hordes had overrun continental Europe. Had it not been for the (mostly monastic) scribes of late antiquity, the entire content of western heritage literature from Greece and Rome could have perished. The meaning of these works lies not only in their inherent art history value, but in the maintenance of a link of literacy. The earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period AD 400 to 600, primarily produced in Ireland, Italy and other locations on the European continent. However, in both common usage and modern scholarship, the term is now used to refer to any decorated manuscript. In the strictest definition of the term, an illuminated manuscript only refers to manuscripts decorated with gold or silver. We call these beautiful books Illuminated Manuscripts.Īn illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration or illustration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniatures. The colophons of the their creations are testimony to their short lives since most of the books that they worked upon were only completed in several of their brief lifetimes, one scribe replacing the other over decades. In this inhospitable milieu, secluded in the scriptoria of cold monasteries, under the light of feeble oil lamps, mittened against the biting cold some of the greatest book designers that ever lived, created some of the most beautiful books the world has ever seen. It is a world where most people seldom leave their place of birth for any distance longer than 10 miles, where few people even live beyond the age of 30. One of the darkest periods known to mankind: Pestilence and plague, darkness and fear, witch-hunts and illiteracy roam the land.
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