As cultures became
more dependent on the written word, it became necessary to create documents
that were more portable. Following the papyrus scrolls that ranged from 15 – 40
feet long when unwound, leather-bound books gradually replaced the scrolls and
their parchment with skins of sheep and goats. Vellum was made from calfskin
and was used for special copies of books as it was made with extra care as it
would be fully washed, covered with lime to remove hair and stretched, scraped,
dusted with chalk and polished with pumice. This of course sparked the
handwritten alphabet to evolve once again.
After the Romans had
developed and refined their take on the alphabet, Uncials, which is Latin for inch high, were introduced in the Middle
Ages and commonly used between 400 – 800 AD; they were a form of capital letter
that had a squared shape with rounded strokes that were used in Western Europe.
Later on smaller half-uncials appeared which closely resemble our modern
lowercase letters with extended ascenders and descenders; these were named
Carolingian and with the introduction of increased spacing the scripts
readability improved.
Faded Uncial Script from France 700 AD.
Charles the Great, the
King of Franks, controlled most of Europe in the late 700’s AD and appointed an
English monk to oversee standardized lettering practices for copying texts.
Uncials were used at the beginning of sentences and Carolingian script, which
share features of half-uncials, were now a uniform part of the alphabet.
Early Carolingian and a later development of
its final form.
The style developed
into Romanesque hand and later became the Gothic style in Germany in 900 AD, the
appearance of this lettering was very thick, angular and tightly set within
words to save space. Gothic is often referred to as Blackletter as it is an all-encompassing
term used to describe the scripts of the Middle Ages in which the darkness of
the characters overpower the whiteness of the page. The tittle above the
lowercase i was added to distinguish
it from similar strokes such as those in m,
n and u. The thick and fine
strokes were created using pens made from a reed or quill from the wing of a
large bird, they were cut with a broad end, or nib, shaped like a chisel. Common
script was not as strict as it was used for practical purposes but a more
precise and artistic hand was needed to write important texts and books. The
letter u was created separately from v in the 10th century, w was later created in the 12th century to accommodate more European languages where v could not serve and j
evolved from a modified i in the 15th century which brought the Roman alphabet to 26 letters in total.
Lower and uppercase forms of German Gothic
script.
The continuous
warfare, poor crops, and abnormally cold temperatures helped to plunge Europe
into The Dark Ages, but the church played a very important role in protecting
ancient works as monks were heavily involved in the reproduction and preservation of the literature that had been inherited
from earlier writers, writers whose works had been accepted as classics–
the Rule of St. Benedict. These scribes would have excellent literacy skills
and knowledge of the Latin language alongside brilliant eyesight and good
penmanship. They worked in rooms known as scriptoriums in European monasteries,
these were devoted to the painstaking craft of writing, copying and
illuminating of manuscripts. Before the scribes could begin copying they had to
cut large and irregular sheets of vellum into smaller, uniform lengths, rubbing
them smooth with a pumice stone; they also had to finely rule each page for
adequate spacing between lines before they could begin transcribing.
These scribes’ works
suffered from human error in the form of translations and writing mistakes as
they were not allowed to talk, nor were they allowed to correct mistakes in the
script they were copying from, which is why errors grew in each generation of a
manuscript. Creating a book was extremely tedious and time consuming which
meant that they were rare and expensive, the scribes would need to have warm
fingers and light to keep a steady hand so they sat by windows in the summer and
candles in the winter and night. They would fulfill their scribe duties inside
the cold and dark scriptorium walls for hours on end when they weren't fetching
new writing materials and so were always in the same position where their
backs, eyes and hands would become tired or cramp easily.
The hard work caused scribes to leave records of their experiences in the margins or back of the books they were writing, jotting remarks of frustration about the conditions of which they worked or the tools they were using.
The church was the
only place to educate people as universities were only starting to form, so the
major themes of the handwritten manuscripts were religion (predominantly
Christianity which helped protect and preserve Christian unity), art and
literary characters. The knowledge from books was known only to royalty or the religious order. The subject of the book, how and who it was to be used by
influenced the size, lettering, and decoration of the pages. A Bible would be
used for the conducting of church services and would be rather large with
beautiful decorations, while one destined for personal use might be smaller and
less decorated depending on the income of the owner. After the text had been
checked for scribal errors the rubricator would add titles, initial capitals
and paragraph marks; rubric comes from the Latin word for red, because these important headings were often inked in red. When
the manuscript was ready it would be sent to an illuminator, but it was
possible that one scribe could have completed the whole process by himself. Books
came to be illuminated in the medieval period, pages were literally enlightened
by the addition of gold, vivid colours, and ornamental letters. The term illumination comes
from the Latin illuminare, which
means to light up, an illuminated manuscript is one decorated with gold or
silver because they reflect light, however, many are richly decorated with
colours and no gold or silver. The term illumination is often used in general
and not a completely accurate way to refer to all of the artistic
embellishments.
It took years for a scribe to complete a
particularly detailed manuscript with coloured initials and miniature artworks that
were given the name miniatures.
