Parts of a Manuscript

The basic elements of illuminated manuscripts are the initial, the text, the miniature, and the border. The initials are decorated letters that are often found at the beginning of a section of text. The text is the body of the book, which is written in script. A miniature is a stand-alone illustration, rather than being part of a scheme or an initial. The border, as its name implies, is a group of images and illustrations that decorate the edges of a page. The border is often filled with plants, animals, people, and coats of arms, which seem to bring the page to life. Borders are rich in symbolism and many scholars have spent a great deal of time and effort studying the borders of manuscripts. Each of element of the book plays a vital role in the feel of a book and adds to the beauty of the manuscript . (Diringer 22-6; BNF; "Illuminated Manuscripts")

The Scribe

The scribe is in charge of copying the text of the book, which has to be done with great precision and care. The scribe uses a pen made from either a reed or a feather cut to form a point. Quills were also used because they have a natural reservoir for ink. Due to the nature of the pens , scribes would hold the pen almost horizontal to produce finer lines and prevent ink form spilling onto the page.

A page of beautiful caligraphy from Kirby 1.

Quells were used for the calligraphy in the book; the scribes also used lead wires or a stick of dried pigment paste called an crayon (Asplund par. 3) for the preliminary setup of the page. Script was drawn in many different styles depending on the school. One of the styles involved only capital letters, while others had letters that stretched over three or four lines. The lines in the book were always set ahead of time as guidelines for the scribe. First the pages had to be pricked with a penknife to guide the ruling of the page. The ruling was then done using either a lead point or paint to form the ruling lines. The type and color of the rulings changed over time; in the twelfth century a lead point was primarily used and in fifteenth-century book of hours the rulings were mostly done in pink (Asplund par. 3; "Illuminated").

The Illuminator

The illuminator comes into play only after the text has been laid out and the rubrics set in place. An illuminator paints the miniatures, initials and does the gilding. Illuminators usually work from a layout that was pre-drawn on the page in crayon (Asplund par. 3) by the master illuminator.

The large picture here is a minture and the large D with a flower inside is an intial.

There would often be two to three illuminators working on a book. The lesser illuminators were made to draw the marginalia or the small initials. Once they were finished the head illuminator would draw the large-scale miniatures and some of the initials. Before any of this intricate illumination could be done the gilding had to be applied. Gilding is done by taking gold or silver leaf and sticking it to the page with glair, animal gelatin or honey. Then the gold is burnished by polishing the metal with a smooth heavy object to make the metal shine. Because burnishing process might damage the paints gilding must be done before paint is applied so that the paint does not get damaged (Asplund par. 3,4,5; BNF; Brown; Diringer 22-26).

The Rubricator

This page features a rubric in red ink at the top of the page and a historiated intial of the disembowling of Erasmus

A rubric is a title or a heading that is not part of the text. It is so removed from the actual writing of the text that separate person was assigned to the task of making the rubrics for a book. The name derives from the red ink that they often used to make the rubric stand out. The rubricator adds the rubrics just after the book is laid out, using the same variety of tools as the scribe. In fact it was very common for the scribe to do the job of the rubricator as well. This occurs more often in the smaller artisan groups that were not related to the church (Brown, "Illuminated").

Techniques used in Kirby I

Kirby 1 is a fascinating book because of its rich history and beautiful artwork. It is a Flemish book of hours made in the 1480’s. Flanders is known for producing very fine books during the fourteenth and fifteenth century (Mitchell 42-3). There were two predominate schools in fifteenth-century Flanders, the school that tended towards the French style of illuminations and the school with Germanic influence. The most general way to tell the difference between the schools is by their use of color, the French school uses a lot of blue where the German school tends to use green more. In the late fifteenth century most of the schools in Flanders were closer to the French style. This can be seen readily in Kirby 1, in which blue predominates the backgrounds of the miniatures, initials and the borders (Diringer 431,436-42; Mitchell 42-3).