Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers and liturgical books such as psalters and courtly literature, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories, and deeds.
The earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts are a small number from late antiquity, and date from between 400 and 600 CE. Examples include the Vergilius Romanus, Vergilius Vaticanus, and the Rossano Gospels. The majority of extant manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance. While Islamic manuscripts can also be called illuminated and use essentially the same techniques, comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted.
Most manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment until the 2nd century BCE, when a more refined material called vellum, made from stretched calf skin, was supposedly introduced by King Eumenes II of Pergamum. This gradually became the standard for luxury illuminated manuscripts, although modern scholars are often reluctant to distinguish between parchment and vellum, and the skins of various animals might be used. The pages were then normally bound into codices, that is, the usual modern book format, although sometimes the older scroll format was used, for various reasons. A very few illuminated fragments also survive on papyrus. Books ranged in size from ones smaller than a modern paperback, such as the pocket gospel, to very large ones such as choirbooks for choirs to sing from, and Atlantic bibles, requiring more than one person to lift them.
Paper manuscripts appeared during the Late Middle Ages. The untypically early 11th century Missal of Silos is from Spain, near to Muslim paper manufacturing centres in Al-Andalus. Textual manuscripts on paper become increasingly common, but the more expensive parchment was mostly used for illuminated manuscripts until the end of the period. Very early printed books left spaces for red text, known as rubrics, miniature illustrations and illuminated initials, all of which would have been added later by hand. Drawings in the margins would also allow scribes to add their own notes, diagrams, translations, and even comic flourishes.
The introduction of printing rapidly led to the decline of illumination. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century but in much smaller numbers, mostly for the very wealthy. They are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages; many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, and the best preserved. Indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting.
History
Latin Europe
Art historians classify illuminated manuscripts into their historic periods and types, including Late Antique, Insular, Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance manuscripts. There are a few examples from later periods. Books that are heavily and richly illuminated are sometimes known as "display books" in church contexts, or "luxury manuscripts", especially if secular works. In the first millennium, these were most likely to be Gospel Books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is the most widely recognized illuminated manuscript in the Anglosphere, and is famous for its insular designs. The Romanesque and Gothic periods saw the creation of many large illuminated complete bibles. The largest surviving example of these is The Codex Gigas in Sweden; it is so massive that it takes three librarians to lift it.Other illuminated liturgical books appeared during and after the Romanesque period. These included psalters, which usually contained all 150 canonical psalms, and small, personal devotional books made for lay people known as books of hours that would separate one's day into eight hours of devotion. These were often richly illuminated with miniatures, decorated initials and floral borders. They were costly and therefore only owned by wealthy patrons, often women.
As the production of manuscripts shifted from monasteries to the public sector during the High Middle Ages, illuminated books began to reflect secular interests. These included short stories, legends of the saints, tales of chivalry, mythological stories, and even accounts of criminal, social or miraculous occurrences. Some of these were also freely used by storytellers and itinerant actors to support their plays. One of the most popular secular texts of the time were bestiaries. These books contained illuminated depictions of various animals, both real and fictional, and often focused on their religious symbolism and significance, as it was a widespread belief in post-classical Europe that animals, and all other organisms on Earth, were manifestations of God. These manuscripts served as both devotional guidance and entertainment for the working class of the Middle Ages.
The Gothic period, which generally saw an increase in the production of illuminated books, also saw more secular works such as chronicles and works of literature illuminated. Wealthy people began to build up personal libraries; Philip the Bold probably had the largest personal library of his time in the mid-15th century, is estimated to have had about 600 illuminated manuscripts, whilst a number of his friends and relations had several dozen. Wealthy patrons, however, could have personal prayer books made especially for them, usually in the form of richly illuminated "books of hours", which set down prayers appropriate for various times in the liturgical day. One of the best known examples is the extravagant Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry for a French prince.
File:Books in the monastery museum.jpg|275px|thumb|Illuminated manuscripts housed in the 16th-century Ethiopian Orthodox Church of Ura Kidane Mehret, Zege Peninsula, Lake Tana, Ethiopia
Up to the 12th century, most manuscripts were produced in monasteries in order to add to the library or after receiving a commission from a wealthy patron. Larger monasteries often contained separate areas for the monks who specialized in the production of manuscripts called a scriptorium. Within the walls of a scriptorium were individualized areas where a monk could sit and work on a manuscript without being disturbed by his fellow brethren. If no scriptorium was available, then "separate little rooms were assigned to book copying; they were situated in such a way that each scribe had to himself a window open to the cloister walk."
By the 14th century, the cloisters of monks writing in the scriptorium had almost fully given way to commercial urban scriptoria, especially in Paris, Rome and the Netherlands. While the process of creating an illuminated manuscript did not change, the move from monasteries to commercial settings was a radical step. Demand for manuscripts grew to an extent that monastic libraries began to employ secular scribes and illuminators. These individuals often lived close to the monastery and, in instances, dressed as monks whenever they entered the monastery, but were allowed to leave at the end of the day. Illuminators were often well known and acclaimed and many of their identities have survived.
File:Képes krónika első lapja.jpg|thumb|400x400px|Chronicon Pictum, the "Illuminated Chronicle" from the court of King Louis the Great of Hungary from 1358
Greek Europe and the Islamic world
The Byzantine world produced manuscripts in its own style, versions of which spread to other Orthodox and Eastern Christian areas. This distinct Byzantine style of illumination had a characteristic color palette along with different ways of preparing pigments and ink and a unique finish to the vellum writing surface which was not as conducive to long term preservation as the more texture Western style. With their traditions of literacy uninterrupted by the Middle Ages, the Muslim world, especially on the Iberian Peninsula, was instrumental in delivering ancient classic works to the growing intellectual circles and universities of Western Europe throughout the 12th century. Books were produced there in large numbers and on paper for the first time in Europe, and with them full treatises on the sciences, especially astrology and medicine where illumination was required to have profuse and accurate representations with the text.The origins of the pictorial tradition of Arabic illustrated manuscripts are uncertain. The first known decorated manuscripts are some Qur'ans from the 9th century. They were not illustrated, but were "illuminated" with decorations of the frontispieces or headings. The tradition of illustrated manuscripts started with the Graeco-Arabic translation movement and the creation of scientific and technical treatises often based on Greek scientific knowledge, such as the Arabic versions of The Book of Fixed Stars, De materia medica or Book of the Ten Treatises of the Eye. The translators were most often Arab Syriac Christians, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq or Yahya ibn Adi, and their work is known to have been sponsored by local rulers, such as the Artuqids.
An explosion of artistic production in Arabic manuscripts occurred in the 12th and especially the 13th century. Thus various Syriac manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such as Syriac Gospels, Vatican Library, Syr. 559 or Syriac Gospels, British Library, Add. 7170, were derived from the Byzantine tradition, yet stylistically have a lot in common with Islamic illustrated manuscripts such as the Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī, pointing to a common pictorial tradition that existed since circa 1180 in Syria and Iraq which was highly influenced by Byzantine art. Some of the illustrations of these manuscript have been characterized as "illustration byzantine traitée à la manière arabe".
The Persian miniature tradition mostly began in whole books, rather than single pages for muraqqas or albums, as later became more common. The Great Mongol Shahnameh, probably from the 1330s, is a very early manuscript of one of the most common works for grand illustrated books in Persian courts.