Saturday, 2 November 2013

The Middle Ages



Lindisfarne Gospel Page
Decoration Page at the beginning of Saint Matthew's Gospel

What is a gospel?

"A gospel recounts the life of Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings, which form the foundations of the Christian faith" Here
" Several gospels had been written by disciples of Jesus during the centuries following his death, but only four were authorised by the Council of Nicaea in 325 for inclusion in the Christian Bible. These four were attributed to St Matthew, St Mark, St Luke and St John, known as the four Evangelists. This page shows the first words of the 'Gospel of St Luke'. " Here
 Typically manuscripts would be worked on by whole teams of scribes and illustrators however this gospel was worked on solely by one monk who was named after his death in 721 as "Eadfrith Bishop of Lindisfarne" this gives the book a sense of connection as all the illustrations are in the same style rather than being a collection of different artists work in one book.

" with the exceptions of the rubrics and some contemporary corrections and additions to the text, the whole of the Gospels had been written out by a single scribe. furthermore the decoration is so closely linked to the writing, particularly in one or two places where the original scheme was sketched out and then changed before the page was finished, that it must have been the work of the scribe himself  " Janet Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels, page 14

Many people believe he died leaving his work unfinished however some of the unfinished designs are at the start of the manuscript and it has been thought that he left it unfinished and purposefully made tiny mistakes in his work to show that nothing and nobody can ever achieve perfection other than God. I believe this theory as Christianity teaches us that God created the world and everything within it and he achieved perfection doing this and nobody can be better than God.

What makes this gospel so valuable? 

" Apart from its intrinsic value as a remarkable survival of an ancient and astonishingly beautiful work of art, the manuscript displays a unique combination of artistic styles that reflects a crucial period in England's history. " Here
" A word by word translation into Old English, (Anglo-Saxon), was added between the lines during the third quarter of the 10th century by a priest named Aldred, afterwards Provost of Chester-le-Street, giving us, in addition, the earliest surviving version of the gospels in any form of the English language. " Here

How was this created?
" Aldred's inscription, added in the 10th century, recorded that the Lindisfarne Gospels were bound by Ethelwald and the cover decorated with an impressed design. 
A jewelled casing was added to the book by Billfrith the hermit priest. Both Ethelwald's and Billfrith's work has disappeared, probably removed by Henry VIII’s commissioners when the dissolution of the monasteries was ordered in around 1536. "    Here

The pages themselves were made from Vellum :
" The word vellum is Old French for calf skin, however vellum is made from either calf or goat skin and parchment from sheep skin. The skilled process is much the same whichever skin is used. The skin of the animal is shorn, washed and laid fleece-side down in water for 24 hours before being soaked in a lime bath for three days. " More Here
" Before writing, 4 large sheets of vellum were stacked, and folded in half, to form a gathering of 8 leaves, 16 pages. To make the book, gatherings of 4 sheets of vellum were sewn onto leather cords, the ends of which were threaded into thick wooden boards and secured with wooden dowels. Then the boards and spine would have been covered with damp leather. " Here
Once the sheets were prepared and folded the frame for the writing could be marked out using small pinprick holes either using a sharp round stylus or the point of a small knife. then each sheet was separately marked with ruled lines for writing with a hard dry point, this is to be as not noticeable as possible. It is assumed Eadfrith used a double pointed instrument because each pair of line guides (top and bottom) is the same width.


The script was written in the formal script of "insular majuscule"
"The manuscript which he was making was intended not for the use of students in a library  but for ceremonial use in church, where it wold be carried in procession and used for reading, perhaps not every day but certainly on special festivals " Janet Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels, page 22
This script was developed in early Christian Ireland from where it spread to England because of missionaries travelling to Northumbria. It was wrote with consistant broad nibs and held parallel to the guide lines that were drawn onto the page. The layout of the writing is written in two columns and it is possible that this is because Eadfrith had seen earlier Italian books.

The Anglo-Saxon to English translation is written in a similar font that developed from insular majuscule known as "insular minuscule", it was developed as a time saving form of script from the majuscule. Minuscule was often used for business and legal documents or for transcribing less formal books.
Sources




Book of Kells opening page of the Gospel of Mark 

Photograph: 

The image above is one of the opening pages of the Gospel of Mark in the Book of Kells, at the start of each gospel there is three decorative pages, one page with the symbol of the evangelists (shown below), another with an image of the saint and the last page showing the first letters in the first word taking up the whole of the page (shown above.)

The symbols 

Evangelists symbols

" the symbols traditionally associated with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the Book of Revelations, they are described thus 'and around the throne were four beasts...and the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.' The lion represents Mark, the calf Luke, the man is Matthew and the eagle is attributed to John. " Here

The symbols were thought to represent the four stages in Christs life:

" the man symbolises the Nativity, the lion shows His royalty and majesty, the calf, as a sacrificial animal represents His sacrifice on the cross, and the eagle His ascending to Heaven " Here
Decorated in the ornate lettering in the opening pages of the Gospel of Mark is a drawing of two entwined snakes

" The snake is prominent throughout the manuscript as a symbol of Jesus’ rebirth and resurrection, due to the shedding of its skin. Here, snakes interlace sinuously at the tops and tails of the first two letters, their heads meeting to form crosses, emblematic of Jesus’ crucifixion " Here
" Today, the snake is usually used as a symbol of evil, but when the book of Kells was made snakes were seen as wise " " The shedding of a snakes skin was a symbol of rebirth "
 Here

Origin of the Book

" The place of origin of the Book of Kells is generally attributed to the scriptorium of the monastery founded around 561 by St Colum Cille on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland. In 806, following a Viking raid on the island which left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. It must have been close to the year 800 that the Book of Kells was written, although there is no way of knowing if the book was produced wholly at Iona or at Kells, or partially at each location. " Here
" The last few leaves of the Manuscript, which in all probability would have furnished us with full information as to scribe, illuminator, and place of origin, have been missing for many years " Sir Edward Sullivan, The Book of Kells, page 4

Creating the pages

The pages of the book were created the same as in the Lindisfarne gospel, however Sir Edward Sullivan said in his book :

" it is at times finely polished, but more often it is hard and not well cleaned. Goats, sheep and calves supplied the skins, but the irish preparation of them was by no means the best " page 35

Coloured dyes were used as inks and each colour was painted on the same way writing would have been.
" These bright ornamentations were produced with a range of animal, vegetable and mineral based inks. The text for example was written with ink derived from the pulp of oak apples mixed with iron sulphate while red and white lead, chalk and woad were readily available to the illustrators. Deep blues could be produced by using lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan, pinks came from the turnsole plant (called Folium), bright red from a Mediterranean insect (Kermes) and yellow Orpiment from arsenic sulphide. " Here 
" Professor Hartley  who has gone into the matter more thoroughly than others, gives his conclusions in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, N.S., Vol. IV., 1885 : " A very careful examination of the work shows that the pigments mixed with gum, glue or gelatine are laid on somewhat thickly - there is no staining of the vellum and no mingling of tints. There is, however, as was pointed out to me, a painting of blue over a ground of green " Sir Edward Sullivan, The book of Kells page 47
Professor Hartley also came to his own conclusions about some of the materials that were used as dyes :

  • Black is lamp black, or fish bone black
  • Bright red is realgar (arsenic disulphide)
  • Yellow is orpiment (arsenic tersulphide)
  • Emerald Green is malachite
  • Deep Blue is Lapis-Lazuli 
  • Reddish-Purple is finely ground glass coloured with gold (this sparingly used as it is expensive)

Palaeographers believed the writing tools to be sharp metallic pens or reeds, but Dr Keller rejected that theory believing that the pens were instead quills made of swans, geese, crows and other native birds. Dr Kellers idea is now widely accepted. Taken from The book of Kells by Sir Edward Sullivan.
Sources





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