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Saturday, 8 June 2013

A manuscript without glitz or glamour

Conservative. Inexpensive. Modestly decorated. These are
three terms that pop-up frequently in discussions of the late Saxon and Anglo-Norman
manuscripts produced at Worcester.This
week your blogger considers how we read and understand a medieval manuscript
that is sparsely illuminated or even undecorated.

If you enjoy the glitz and the glamour of a beautiful
illuminated manuscript then it’s true, Worcester was producing some plain
looking manuscripts from the late tenth-century to the middle of the
twelfth-century. Let's take as an example the Expositio libri comitis: a manuscript which contains writings by Smaragdus (a Benedictine monk from the Diocese of Verdun).

The scribe’s
name has been identified from another Worcester book , now held at the British
Library, as Sistan. Sistan exemplifies a typical scribe employed by Worcester
at the end of the tenth-century. The script he uses is called Caroline
miniscule. This script developed from the earlier Saxon Insular miniscule, and
retained some if its features (such as wedge shaped ascenders). Sistan’s script
is quite easy to read, this is because it is quite bold or heavy handed. Yet
the quality of Sistan’s work is far from perfect, and there is a great deal of
variation in the quality of his hand between manuscripts and even within the
same manuscript.

In the Exposito
libri comitis, for example, Sistan appears to have ruled lines but
occasionally gone a bit wonky when copying; there are even instances within
this manuscript where he seems to have written across the lines rather than on
them. In the close-up below, you can see that he’s gone over the line ruled in
the right-hand margin.

Sistan
aside, the Exposito libri comitis fails to leave onlookers gobsmacked
primarily because it is undecorated. Academics and medieval enthusiasts alike
emphasize decoration as an important aspect to medieval book production.
Rightly so, manuscripts should always be considered the product of a
collaborative project between patrons, scribes, decorators and binders. The
sheer cost of manuscript decoration alone in the middle ages seems evidence
enough that patrons considered visual appearance (letters, colours, pictures)
as important as the text itself.

In the case
of an undecorated text, like the Exposito libri comitis, should we
therefore assume that the text was considered unimportant or was cheaply
produced?

That the Exposito
libri comitis is undecorated actually tells us some important information
about the contact Worcester had with other centres of manuscript production
(English and continental) during this period. Richard Gameson, who writes an
excellent chapter on Worcester’s book production in St. Oswald of Worcester:
Life and Influence (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), stresses
that during the episcopate of St. Oswald (961-92) Fleury was probably
Worcester’s main source for exemplars (“standard” versions of the texts that
the scribe copied from). Gameson describes Fleury as “a centre of reform and
scholarship” and “an important potential source of text and script models”.
Fleury was not, however, renowned for its illumination and this might explain
the blandness or sparseness of decoration in late Saxon and early Norman
manuscripts produced at Worcester, such as the Exposito libri comitis.

The Exposito
libri comitis being devoid of any artistic stamp is, however, an extreme
example of the late Saxon manuscripts produced at Worcester. Many other
Worcester manuscripts were illuminated, particularly as we move towards the
Anglo-Norman period. Illumination in Worcester manuscripts was nevertheless
sparse in comparison to texts decorated in the scriptoriums of Canterbury and
Winchester.

To end, I'd
like to talk briefly on some of the decoration of Anglo-Norman manuscripts at
Worcester. A psalter with commentary, which dates from around 1200, is a good
example of Anglo-Norman decoration at Worcester. The psalter was decorated in
two stages. Stage one was undertaken at the time of the psalter’s writing, and
it involved the adding of initials in red, green and blue (see below).

Photograph, Psalter (1200). Photograph by permission of the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (U.K.)

It was not
until thirty years later, however, that stage two of decoration began. In the
second stage of decorationthe ‘Beatus’ initial, which marks the beginning of
the text, was added as well two other initials (‘X’ and ‘H’) gilded in gold.
The second stage would have been far more costly than the first given the large
size of these initials and the price of the precious metal. Both stages are
beautiful in their own right but all-in-all the psalter presents the reader
with a hodge-podge of decorated initials. The two very distinct decorative
styles do not visually gel well together.

Photograph, Psalter (1200). Photograph by permission of the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (U.K.)

One interesting decorative feature of the
psalter and other manuscripts produced at Worcester in this period, are these decorated initials (like the 'M' pictured below) with curious little
foliate tails. Some are very plain whilst others include intricate lattice work.

Photograph, Psalter (1200). Photograph by permission of the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (U.K.)

Next Friday, I’ll talk a little
more about these and ask whether one or more Worcester artist was employed
them, and explore whether they present a unique Worcester style of decoration.