II.1. Making & Meaning

In a day and age in which writing no longer means putting pen to paper (let alone quill to parchment), and the dematerialization of books and their content, in the form of texts and images, proceeds apace, the book as material object exerts a special fascination. From the manner of its binding to the details of layout and design, the materiality of the manuscript book literally constructs its meaning. Books do not simply transmit texts, they lend their messages shape and substance.

In illuminated manuscripts, that substance takes the form of an intricately crafted object, in virtually every instance the product of a collaboration between several craftsmen. Before the scribe could write a word, an animal had to be slaughtered and skinned, its skin soaked in lime to remove the hair (a smelly process), and its surface laboriously scraped and smoothed, first with a scraper, then with a pumice stone. Vellum (from the Latin vellus, or calf) refers to parchment made from a calf; parchment, however, could come from other animals, such as sheep or goats. The production of parchment was akin to that of leather. Whereas leather was limed (to remove the hair), then tanned (soaked in tannin) to make the skin both flexible and durable, parchment was stretched and scraped on a frame, a process that rendered the skin somewhat stiff and thereby appropriate for writing on both sides. Scribes distinguished between the hair side (with follicles) and the flesh side, which was smoother and often more uniform in appearance.

Prepared parchment would in turn have been cut into sheets (the number depending on the size of the animal and the size of the book), which in turn were folded in the form of bifolia (sheets consisting of two leaves) (cat. nos. 53-54). The size of medieval books is limited by the sizes of the animals from which the skins were taken; the largest books (such as cat. no. 49) rarely exceed more than about sixty centimeters in height. Bifolia, in turn, were nested inside one another so as to form gatherings, or quires. A gathering with an odd number of leaves (or folia) therefore invariably means that either one or more leaves have been excised or added (in the form of singletons, or single leaves). Although gatherings of ten to twelve leaves or even sixteen or more are known, by the High Middle Ages, gatherings of eight leaves (hence four bifolia) were most common. A well-made manuscript tends to have gatherings of uniform size. In the early Middle Ages especially, scribes sought to compose their gatherings such that hair sides would always face hair, and flesh, flesh, so as to lend each opening (the salient feature of the codex or bound book) a uniform appearance. In the case of very thin parchment, artists and scribes had to take into account the phenomenon of “show through,” which could, however, also serve as an aid when it came to repeating motifs from one side of a page to another. Aesthetic criteria were considered even before a scribe or artist had made a single mark on the page.

Layout played a critical role in determining the way in which any given book addressed its reader. Wide margins were a sign of luxury or that space needed to be left for readers to add their comments in the form of marginal glosses. Interlinear space was also a consideration that affected legibility, especially if interlinear glosses, often of a lexical character, were anticipated (the origin of our expression “reading between the lines”). In the earlier Middle Ages, the ruling that governed the justification (written space) as well as the number of lines was carried out in hard point, sometimes barely visible. In later centuries plummet (lead) or ink was employed. Ruling was guided by small holes or pricks placed in the margins; the appearance of pricking often indicates that a manuscript has not been rebound, as every rebinding required that the edges of pages be trimmed. In addition to ensuring a uniform appearance, the ruling matrix could also provide a framework or scaffolding for the illuminator. Blank but ruled pages provide a clear indication of what would have confronted the scribe or illuminator (by the late Middle Ages, hardly ever the same person) as he (or sometimes she) set to work.

Medieval scribes had at their disposal a variety of scripts (cat. no. 55). A change in script therefore does not always mean a change in hand. Especially elaborate scripts (display scripts), sometimes based on epigraphic inscriptions, employed size and color to introduce texts of particular importance. Small guide letters left by the scribe directed the rubricator, who, however, sometimes made mistakes. Rubrics and initials in different sizes defined content, directed the reader, and established a variable visual hierarchy within the pages of a book. Although sometimes standardized, each of these elements could be varied, ensuring that no two copies of a single text were ever exactly alike. Decoration, therefore, was not simply an addition to the text, it formed a constituent part of its meaning.

Except in earlier medieval manuscripts, in which script and image can often hardly be distinguished, lending lettering an iconic presence, illuminators relied on scribes to carve out space from the text block into which they then inserted their illustrations (cat. no. 57). The process of illumination itself was often collaborative, with various tasks, from preliminary, often highly schematic, preparatory drawings (cat. no. 75) to gilding, to coloring, carried out in a series of passes through the entire book, in a manner not unlike that of a modern printer (cat. no. 43). Unfinished manuscripts give us a detailed glimpse into the process of manufacture. Specialized tasks, such as the repetitive decoration of margins, were often left to assistants. The modern obsession with attribution to a single artistic hand, therefore, often hardly begins to reflect the collaborative circumstances of production.

In this context, there was far less of a premium than there is today on artistic innovation and originality. Like scribes who patiently transcribed texts from authoritative exemplars, occasionally introducing variants, medieval illuminators often relied on models, which in some cases were gathered together in the form of model books (cat. no. 60). Models also circulated in the form of independent drawings (cat. no. 63). To the extent that illuminators explored new ideas, these often took the form of sketches on the blank pages (flyleaves) found at the beginnings and ends of bound books. Models assured a certain level of accuracy and were also a warrant for authority and authenticity, especially important considerations in the production of religious books. New texts, however, very often in various vernaculars, demanded original illustrations. Although illuminators often combined motifs appropriated from other contexts (and also other media), their work nonetheless provided scope for extraordinary creativity.