6. CHAPTER VI.
INK OF THE WEST.
REMARKS OF ARCH-DEACON CARLISLE—WHEN READING AND WRITING CEASED TO
BE MYSTERIES—ORIGIN OF THE WORDS CLERK AND SIGN—SCARCITY OF
MANUSCRIPTS —FOUNDING OF IRISH SCHOOLS OF LEARNING IN THE SEVENTH
CENTURY—MONKS NOT PERMITTED TO USE ARTIFICIAL LIGHT IN PREPARING
MSS.—OBSERVATIONS OF MADAN ABOUT THE HISTORY OF WRITING DURING THE DARK
AGES—INK-WRITTEN MSS. TREASURES.
THE ancient history of the art of writing in more
northern sections of the Western world, William
Nicolson, Arch-Deacon of Carlisle, author of "The
English Historical Library," London, 1696, tells very
quaintly:
"The
Danes register'd their more considerable
transactions upon Rocks; or on parts of them, hewen into various Shapes
and Figures. On these they engrav'd such Inscriptions as were proper for
their Heathen Alters, Triumphal Arches, Sepulchral Monuments and
Genealogical Histories of their Ancestors. Their writings of less
concern (as Letters, Almanacks, &c.) were engraven upon Wood: And
because Beech was most plentiful in
Denmark, (tho Firr and Oak be
so in
Norway and
Sweden) and most commonly employ'd in
these Services, form the word
Bog (which in their Language is the
Name of that sort of Wood) they and
all other Northern Nations have the Name of
Book. The poorer
sort used Bark; and the Horns of Raindeer and Elks were of ten finely
polish'd and shaped into Books of several Leaves. Many of these old
Calendars are likewise upon Bones of Beasts and Fishes: But the
Inscriptions on Tapestry, Bells, Parchment and Paper, are of later
use.
"Some other Monuments may be known to be of a Danish
Extraction, tho they carry nothing of a Runic Inscription. Few of
their Temples were cover'd; and the largest observ'd by Wormius
(at Kialernes in Island) was 120 foot in length, and 60 in
breadth.
"The next Monument of Age is their Edda Islandorum; the
meaning of which Appellation they that publish the Book hardly pretend
to understand. As far as I can give the Reader any satisfaction, he is
to. know that Island was first inhabited (in the year 874) by a
Colony of Norwegians; who brought hither the Traditions of their
Forefathers, in certain metrical Composures, which (as is usual with Men
transplanted into a Foreign Land) were here more zealously and carefully
preserv'd and kept in memory than by the Men of Norway
themselves. About 240 years after this (A. D. 1114) their History began
to be written by one Sæmund, surnam'd Frode or the
wise; who (in nine years' travel through Italy, Germany
and England) had amass'd together a mighty Collection of
Historical Treatises. With these he return'd full fraught into
Island; where he also drew up an account of the affairs of his
own Country. Many of his Works are now said to be lost: But there is
still an Edda, consisting of several Odes (whence I
suspect its Name is derived) written by many several hands, and at
different times, which bears his Name. The Book is a Collection of
Mythological Fables, relating to the ancient State and Behaviour of the
Great Woden and his followers, in terms poetical and adapted to
the Service of those that were employ'd in the composure of their old
Rhymes and Sonnets.
"There is likewise extant a couple of Norwegian Histories
of good Authentic Credit; which explains a great many particulars
relating to the Exploits of the Danish Kings in Great
Britain, which our own Historians have either wholly omitted or very
darkly recorded. The former of these was written soon after the year
1130, by one Theodoric a Monk, who acknowledges his whole Fabrick
to be built upon Tradition, and that the old Northern History is no
where now to be had save only ab Islendingorum antiquis
Carminibus.
" 'Tis a very discouraging Censure which Sir William
Temple passes upon all the Accounts given us of the Affairs of this
Island, before the Romans came and Invaded it. The Tales (says
he) we have of what pass'd before Cæsar's Time, of Brute and his
Trojans, of many Adventures and Successions, are cover'd with the Rust
of Time, or Involv'd in the Vanity of Fables or pretended Traditions;
which seem to all Men obscure or uncertain, but to be forged at pleasure
by the Wit or Folly of their first Authors, and not to be regarded. And
again; I know few ancient Authors upon this Subject (of the British
History) worth the pains of perusal, and of Dividing or Refining so
little Gold out of so much course Oar, or from so much Dross. But some
other Inferiour People may think this worth their pains; since all Men
are not born to be Ambassadors: And, accordingly, we are told of a very
Eminent Antiquary who has thought fit to give his Labours in this kind
the Title of Aurum, ex Stercore. There's a deal of Servile
Drudgery requir'd to the Discovery of these riches, and such as every
Body will not stoop to: for few Statesmen and Courtiers (as one is
lately said to have observ'd in his own Case) care for travelling in
Ireland, or Wales, purely to learn the Language.
"A diligent Enquirer into our old
British Antiquities
would rather observe (with Industrious
Leland) that the poor
Britains, being harass'd by those
Roman Conquerours with
continual Wars, could neither have leisure nor thought for the penning
of a Regular History: and that afterwards their Back-Friends, the
Saxons, were (for a good while) an Illiterate Generation; and
minded nothing but Killing and taking Possession. So that 'tis a wonder
that even so much remains of the Story of those Times as the sorry
Fragments of
Gildas; who appears to have written in such a
Consternation, that what he has left us looks more like the Declamation
of an Orator, hired to expose the miserable Wretches, than any
Historical Account of their Sufferings."
Palgrave asserts that reading and writing were no
longer mysteries after the pagan age, but were still
acquirements almost wholly confined to the clergy.
The word "clericus" or "clerk," became synonymous
with penman, the sense in which it is still most
usually employed. If a man could write, or even
read, his knowledge was considered as proof presumptive
that he was in holy orders. If kings and great
men had occasion to authenticate any document, they
subscribed the "sign" of the cross opposite to the place
where the "clerk" had written their name. Hence
we say, to sign a deed or a letter.
Books (MSS.) were extremely rare amongst the
Scandinavian and northern nations. Before their
communication with the Latin missionaries, wood appears
to have been the material upon which their
runes were chiefly written: and the verb "write,"
which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to
scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the
usage.
Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods,
one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English
word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably
a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed
in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards
supplied the place of these materials. Real paper,
manufactured from the pellicle of the Egyptian reed
or
papyras, was still used occasionally in Italy, but
it was seldom exported to the countries beyond the
Alps; and the elaborate preparation of the vellum,
upon which much greater care was bestowed than in
the modern manufacture, rendered it a costly article;
so much so, that a painstaking clerk could find it
worth his while to erase the writing of an old book,
in order to use the blank pages for another manuscript.
The books thus rewritten were called "codices rescripti,"
or "palimpsests." The evanescent traces of
the first
layer of characters may occasionally be
discerned beneath the more recent text which has been
imposed upon them.
In Ireland, first known as the Isle of Saints, was
founded in the seventh century a great school of
learning which included writing and illuminating,
which passed to the English by way of the monasteries
created by Irish monks in Scotland. Their earliest
existing MSS. are said to belong to that period. In
the Irish scriptoriums (rooms or cells for writing) of
the Benedictine monasteries where they were prepared,
so particular were the monks that the scribes were
forbidden to use artificial light for fear of injuring the
manuscripts.
Most interesting and entertaining are the observations of
Falconer Madan, a modern scholar of some repute. Of the history of
writing in ink during the "Dark Ages" he says:
"In the seventh and eighth centuries we find the first
tendency to form national hands, resulting in the Merovingian or
Frankish hand, the Lombardic of Italy, and the Visigothic of Spain.
These are the first difficult bands which we encounter; and when we
remember that the object of writing is to
be clear and distinct, and that the test of a good style is that it
seizes on the essential points in which letters differ, and puts aside
the flourishes and ornaments which disguise the simple form, we shall
see how much a strong influence was needed to prevent writing from
becoming obscure and degraded. That influence was found in Charles the
Great.
"In the field of writing it has been granted to no person but
Charles the Great to influence profoundly the history of the alphabet.
With rare insight and rarer taste he discountenanced the prevalent
Merovingian hand, and substituted in eclectic hand, known as the
Carolingian Minuscule, which way still be regarded as a model of
clearness and elegance. The chief instrument in this reform was Alcuin
of York, whom Charles placed, partly for this purpose, at the head of
the School of Tours in A. D. 796. The selection of an Englishman for the
post naturally leads us to inquire what hands were then used in England,
and what amount of English influence the Carolingian Minuscule, the
foundation of our modern styles, exhibits.
"If we gaze in wonder on the personal influence of Charles the
Great in reforming handwriting, we shall be still more struck by the
spectacle presented to us by Ireland in the sixth, seventh and eighth
centuries. It is the great marvel in the history of writing. Modern
historians have at last appreciated the blaze of life, religions,
literary, and artistic, which was kindled in the `Isle of Saints' within
a century after St. Patrick's coming (about A. D. 450); how the
enthusiasm kindled by Christianity in the Celtic nature so far
transcended the limits of the island, and indeed of Great Britain, that
Irish missionaries and monks were soon found in the chief religious
centres of Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy, while foreigners
found their toilsome way to Ireland to learn Greek! But less prominence
has been given to the artistic side of this great reflex movement from
West to East than to the other two. The simple facts attest that in
the seventh century, when our earliest existing Irish MSS. were written,
we find not only a style of writing (or indeed two) distinctive,
national, and of a high type of excellence, but also a school of
illumination which, in the combined lines of mechanical accuracy and
intricacy, of fertile invention of form and figure and of striking
arrangements of colour, has never been surpassed. And this is in the
seventh century—the nadir of the rest of Europe!
"It is certain that Alcuin was trained in Hiberno-Saxon
calligraphy, so that we may be surprised to find that the writing which,
under Charles the Great, he developed at Tours, bears hardly a trace of
the style to which he was accustomed. En revanche, in the
ornamentation and illumination of the great Carolingian volumes which
have come down to our times, we find those constant, persistent traces
of English and Irish work which we seek for in vain in the plainer
writing.
"This minuscule superseded all others almost throughout the
empire of Charles the Great, and during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh
centuries underwent very little modification. Even in the two next
centuries, though it is subject to general modification, national
differences are hardly observable, and we can only distinguish two large
divisions, the group of Northern Europe (England, North France, Italy,
and Spain). The two exceptions are, that Germany, both in writing and
painting, has always stood apart, and lags behind the other nations of
Western Europe in its development, and that England retains her
Hiberno-Saxon hand till after the Conquest of 1066. It may be noted that
the twelfth century produced the finest writing ever known—a large,
free and flowing form of the minuscule of Tours. In the next century
comes in the angular Gothic hand, the difference between which and the
twelfth century hand may be fairly understood by a comparison of
ordinary German and Roman type. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries the writing of each century may be discerned,
while the general tendency is towards complication, use of abbreviations
and contractions, and development of unessential parasitic forms of
letters.
"The Book of Kells, the chief treasure of Trinity College,
Dublin, is so-called from having been long preserved at the Monastery of
Kells, founded by Columba himself. Stolen from thence, it eventually
passed into Archbishop Ussher's hands, and, with other parts of his
library, to Dublin. The volume contains the Four Gospels in Latin,
ornamented with extraordinary freedom, elaboration, and beauty. Written
apparently in the seventh century, it exhibits, both in form and colour,
all the signs of the full development and maturity of the Irish style,
and must of necessity have been preceded by several generations of
artistic workers, who founded and improved this particular school of
art. The following words of Professor Westwood, who first drew attention
to the peculiar excellences of this volume, will justify tile terms made
use of above: `This copy of the Gospels, traditionally asserted to have
belonged to Columba, is unquestionably the most elaborately executed MS.
of early art now in existence, far excelling, in the gigantic size of
the letters in the frontispieces of the Gospel, the excessive minuteness
of the ornamental details, the number of its decorations, the fineness
of the writing, and the endless variety of initial capital letters with
which every page is ornamented, the famous Gospels of Lindisfarne in the
Cottonian Library. But this MS. is still more valuable on account of the
various pictorial representations of different scenes in the life of our
Saviour, delineated in a style totally unlike that of every other
school.' "