The aesthetics of texts: medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Abstract

Books, as we know them today, emerged from earlier records made successively on tablets, papyrus, and scrolls. Around the 4th century, the first form of a book appeared: a codex written on parchment (sheepskin). A more sophisticated form, the illuminated manuscript (text supplemented with decoration) created on vellum (calfskin) succeeded the codex after the fall of the Roman Empire. It remained a dominant form of written text between the years 600 and 1600 (1, 2). The next major change took place in the 15th century: after the invention of moveable type printing technology by Gutenberg, paper-based books succeeded the illuminated manuscripts. In the 7th and 8th centuries, the demand for the written word was mostly ecclesiastical, stemming from the requirement for exact transmission of the religious message during the Christianization of Northern Europe. Important centers of manuscript production emerged in monasteries associated with the cult of an Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Cuthbert (ca. 634–687) in the region of today's Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England (3, 4). There, the monastic culture was grounded in Celtic tradition, and with it came a distinct kind of art now recognized …