With respect to the secular scribes, who sometimes worked in the
monastery, sometimes at their own homes, in those days when the monastic
orders still did most of the book-production, there were three classes
of specialists. These were the _Librarii_ or ordinary copyists; the
_Notarii_ or law-scribes, whose business lay in copying deeds, charters,
and such-like instruments, and taking notes in the courts; and
_Paginators_ or _Illuminatores_. It sometimes happened, as we have said,
that in some monastery or other, no monastic was found qualified to
undertake any of these duties. It then fell to the prior or abbat to
seek the assistance of professional outsiders. The paging and
rubrication, putting in initials in the spaces left by the common
scribe, and, if needed, the addition of pictures or marginal drawings
and ornaments, caricatures, heraldic illustrations, etc., were the
proper work of the illuminator, but it often happened that the same man
had to do the whole work from the commencement to the finish. The
Chronicon Trudonense tells us: "Graduale unum propria manu formavit,
purgavit, pinxit, sulcabit, scripsit, illuminavit, musiceque notavit
syllabatim." Several of our old English chronicles, of which the MSS.
exist in the British Museum and elsewhere, seem to be of this
description.
Reference has been made to the _scriptoria_ at Winchester, _i.e._ at St.
Swithun's and the New Minster. It is the latter foundation which is
usually referred to in speaking of Winchester work. The Monastery of the
Holy Trinity or the New Minster was founded in the first year of his
reign by King Edward, son of Alfred, no doubt in obedience to his
father's wish, if not absolutely in the terms of his will. Its first
charter is dated 900 (for 901) and the second in 903. In the latter
document the abbey is spoken of as dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and to St. Peter, and is amply endowed under the
Augustinian Rule. In 965, not without trouble and resistance, it was
converted into a Benedictine abbey. In 968 Ethelgar, who had been
trained at Glastonbury and Abingdon, became abbat, and from this time
the New Minster became famous for both discipline and the production of
MSS. As we walk along the High Street of Winchester now we find the
story in moss-grown stones or other memorials how, among other methods,
William the Norman punished the monks for their English warlike
proclivities by walling them up nearly close to their church with the
walls of his royal palace. In the old time, when the two monasteries
stood side by side--St. Swithun's is close behind the New Minster--"so
closely packed together," says the old chronicler,[37] "were the two
communities of St. Swithun and St. Peter that between the foundation of
their respective buildings there was barely room for a man to pass
along. The choral service of one monastery conflicted with that of the
other, so that both were spoiled, and the ringing of their bells
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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