The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating: Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and author — John Shaqi
The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating: Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and authorWyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
History
The History, Theory, and Practice of Illuminating: Condensed from 'The Art of Illuminating' by the same illustrator and author
Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
Alphabet; Illumination of books and manuscripts; Initials
As respects the third class of Augustinian books--the Gospels--the case is
far different; for the accredited and traditional originals are, in every
respect, such as would be likely to have been produced at Rome or at
Constantinople, but most probably the former, during the pontificate of
Gregory the Great. Fragments of the most important of these Gospels are
preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. They are
written in black ink generally, with occasional lines in red, in the
ancient manner. Two pages only of illuminations are left, though it is
evident that the volume once contained a large and complete series. The
most important of these represents St. Luke, clad in tunic and toga, seated
under just such a triumphal arch as is frequently to be met with in the
Roman Mosaics of the 5th and 6th centuries.[35] The second illuminated page
comprises a series of small square pictures, framed round with the simple
red line of the oldest Latin manuscripts.
The other Augustinian fragmentary Gospel is to be found among the Hatton
manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: it is without any other
illumination than the contrast of red and black ink, and a few ornaments
about some of the initial letters. The evidence, upon which it may be
assumed that these volumes were either brought to this country by St.
Augustine, or formed some of the "codices multos,"[36] sent by Gregory the
Great to the mission on its establishment, rests not only upon the
antiquity and purely Latin character of the fragments, but on the fact that
both Gospels contain entries in Saxon of upwards of one thousand years old,
connecting them with the library of the Abbey of St. Augustine at
Canterbury; and, furthermore, they correspond with the description given by
a monk of that monastery, who, writing in the reign of Henry V., dwells
upon the "primitie librorum totius Ecclesie Anglicane" preserved in that
library, as the very Gospels in the version of St. Jerome, brought to
England by St. Augustine himself.
The Martyrology, the apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and the Expositions
which completed the series, cannot be now identified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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