Exhibition
Introduction
Making medieval books involved the collaboration of many people, from the bookbinder who assembled each quire (four sheets of paper or parchment folded to form eight leaves) under a useful and even beautiful cover to the illuminator who took charge of the embellishment. In some manuscripts, later additions are visible, for example, inscriptions of the manuscript’s owner’s name (ex-libris), text added in the margins of a manuscript (marginalia), and sometimes changes in the illuminations made at the decree of a previous owner.
Bookbinding
In the Middle Ages, the book, or ‘codex’ as it’s called in Latin, was composed of various quires of parchment leaves, sewn together and attached to two wood, paper or pasteboard covers then covered with leather (for example, morocco, chagrin, sheepskin, pigskin, parchment). The binding could be simple or with added decoration such as coloured leather, gold inscriptions and a title piece.
The Breviary of Martin of Aragon depicts a scene from the Annunciation. When the Angel Gabriel appears in her room, Mary is praying with some books on the floor. Each one is covered with coloured leather with clasps to close them. The smallest one, in white, could be bound with parchment.
Scripture
Different scripts, or writing styles like the fonts or typefaces we use today, were used in the Middle Ages. A popular one was Caroline minuscule, developed during Carolingian reforms to clarify and standardise handwriting. Another, based on Caroline minuscule, was the humanistic ‘antiqua’ script, used in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. One or many scribes, or ‘copyists’, could work on copying the text of a manuscript.
The Book of Hours of Frederic of Aragon is luxuriously illuminated with images of the four Evangelists writing. On page 2, St John is preparing his feather to write. On page 42, we see St Luke writing with a feather and correcting his text with an erasing-knife.
Illumination
Pages of a manuscript could be embellished with different kinds of designs or ‘illuminations’, often with painted initials, coloured scripts, miniatures, or decorative borders. We call an artist who worked on these an ‘illuminator’.
On the first page of Anthology of travel literature and texts on the Orient, the artist painted a large image introducing the collection of travel stories. It is framed by luxurious borders incorporating heraldic symbols of the owner, Jean, duc de Berry. On the following pages, the text is elegantly complemented by rubrics in red ink, running titles in blue ink, colourful initials with gold, charming borders with foliogae and elegant miniatures.
