on one side at least, sometimes on both. Once begun, the tinting of the vellum extended to other colours. For works of the highest rank the favourite was a fine purple, the imperial colour of the Roman and Greek emperors. For chrysography, or gold-writing, the tint was nearly what we call crimson. For arguriography, or silver-writing, it became the bluish hue we call grape-purple. On the cooled purples vermilion ink was used instead of, or together with, the gold or silver. As the usage began with the Greeks, we may be sure that it came originally from Asia.
The Emperor Nero, once having heard that an Olympic Ode of Pindar in letters of gold was laid up in one of the temples at Athens, desired that certain verses of his own should be similarly written and dedicated on the Altar of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome. This was an imperial luxury several times repeated by other princes.
After the official establishment of Christianity it became a common practice to have the greater liturgical books executed in the same costly fashion. And between the time of Constantine and that of Basil the Macedonian many a burning homily was directed against the custom, denounced as a sinful extravagance, which no doubt it was, but in vain until the fashion had worn itself out.
It might fairly be expected, this being the case, that many examples of this kind of codex would still be in existence. But owing to war, fire, robbery, and other misfortunes but very few remain. One of the oldest and finest is the so-called Codex Argenteus, or Silver-book, now kept at Upsala, in Sweden, containing portions of the Gospels of the Mæsogothic Bishop Ulfilas. Originally the effect of the stamped or burnished silver on the rich purple of the vellum must have been very splendid, but now the action of the air has blackened it, as it has done in many other instances where silver was used in illumination. Even gold will gather tarnish, and in several such MSS. has turned of a rusty red. Gold ink was not invariably confined to tinted vellum; it was often used on the plain ground. The copy of the Old Testament in Greek, presented by the high priest Eleazar to King Ptolemy Philadelphus, was a roll of fine white vellum, upon which the text was written in letters of gold.
To enter upon the antiquities of Greek palæography would lead us too far from our track in view of the brevity of our present survey. We therefore with some reluctance turn from this interesting topic to our more immediate subject. We may remark, however, that the great majority of Greek MSS. are written on vellum. In the eleventh century are found instances of what is called charta bombycina, or cotton-paper, appearing more plentifully in the twelfth century, but on the whole vellum is the chief material of Byzantine illuminated books. Much has been said about the want of life and total lack of variety of treatment in this school of art. To a very great extent the charge is just, yet it could scarcely be otherwise. The one circumstance which compelled Byzantine work to remain so long as if cast in one unalterable mould, and thus to differ so strangely from that of Western artists, was due to the fact that in very early Christian times the scribes and illuminators were enrolled into a minutely organised corporation originating primarily in monasticism, but by no means confined to the monastic Orders. Lay guilds existed, the regulations and methods of which were rigid beyond modern belief. So that, as a class, Byzantine art has acquired the reputation of a soulless adherence to mechanical rules and precedents, depriving it of originality and even of individuality, and therefore excluding the remotest scintilla of artistic genius. Of the great crowd of examples of ordinary work this may be true, but it certainly is not true of the best, by which it has the right to be judged, as we shall see from the examples referred to by-and-by. Certainly there is one invaluable particular in which Greek MSS. are superior to those of the West, Latin or otherwise. That is, they are much more frequently signed with the names, localities, and dates of the copyists and illuminators.
It will be some help towards our knowledge of this school if we divide its existence into chronological sections or periods.
1. From præ-Christianity to the Age of Justinian, i.e. down to the year 535. (Justinian reigned from 526 to 564.)
This period marks the decadence of ancient art, but carries with it the characteristics and methods of the ancient Greek painters.
2. From the Age of Justinian to the Iconoclastic paralysis of art under Leo III. the Isaurian, i.e. 564 to 726. (Leo reigned from 717 to 741.)
During this period vast numbers of illuminated liturgical books were destroyed for religious or fanatical reasons, just as in our own Cromwellian times numbers of Horæ, Missals, etc., were destroyed as papistical and superstitious.
This Edict of 726 did not absolutely put an end to all art in MSS. It only had the effect of excluding images of God, Christ, and the saints, as in Arabian and Persian MSS., leaving the artist the free use of flowers, plants, and line ornament, after the manner of the Mohammedan arabesques.
3. From Leo III. to the Empress Irene, who restored the worship of images in part, i.e. from 741 to 785. (Irene ruled from 780 to 801.)
This was a period of stagnation, though by no means of extinction of art.
4. From Irene to Basil I. the Macedonian, i.e. from 801 to 867.
A half-century and more of rapid renaissance to the most brilliant epoch of Byzantine art since the time of Justinian, if not the zenith of the school.
Basil I. was a great builder—building, in fact, was his ruling passion—so that it may be said that he took Justinian for his model both as a ruler and as a patron of the arts. (He reigned from 867 to 886.)
5. From Basil the Macedonian to the Fall of Constantinople, i.e. from 886 to 1453.
Allowing for a few flashes of expiring skill in various reigns, this may be considered as a period of gradual but certain decline to a state worse than death, for though the monks of Greek and Russian convents still kept up the execution of MSS., it was only with the driest and most lifeless adhesion to the Manual. This so-called art still exists, but more like a magnetised corpse than a living thing.
Examples of the first period are seldom met with. We have one signal specimen in the British Museum Add. MS. 5111, being two leaves only of a Gospel-book, and containing part of the Eusebian canons, or contents-tables of the Four Gospels, etc. The work is attributed to the time of Justinian himself. It is of the kind already referred to as probably affording the model of work to the early illuminators of France and Ireland, and as being like the Gospel-book of Hormisdas and those brought to England by Augustine in 596. Another example of the same Eusebian canons is found in Roy. MS. 1 E. vi.
Of the fourth period—i.e. the ninth century—perhaps the most typical example is the Menologium (a sort of compound of a calendar and lives of the saints), now in the Vatican Library (MS. Gr. 1613). This MS. shows that the revival under Basil the Macedonian was a return not to Roman, but to ancient Greek art, the facial types being of the purest classical character.
In some of them we see the horizontal frown of the Homeric heroes (σύνοφρυς Οδυσσευς), and of the Georgian and Armenian races shown in the features of the Emperor Johannes Ducas. We have, too, the large Hera-like eye with its mystic gaze, which, in later Byzantine work, becomes first a gaze of lofty indifference, as in the portraits of the emperors and empresses, and lastly a stony and expressionless stare; still, if possible, more stony and glaring when transferred to Celtic and Carolingian Gospel-books. (See chapter on Carolingian Illumination.)
Of
