Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 20
ОглавлениеIN THE SCRIPTORIUM.
“This is well written, though I say it! I should not be afraid to display it, In open day, on the selfsame shelf With the writings of St. Thecla herself, Or of Theodosius, who of old Wrote the Gospels in letters of gold!”—Longfellow.
The Norman Conquest gave England to the Vikings, but they were Vikings with a difference. Still retaining their old name, they had changed their manners and almost their natures in the course of a hundred and fifty years. Rollo the Ganger, the Viking outlaw who had seized Rouen, threatened Paris, and forced a weak French king to give him a foothold in North France, was a barbarian of barbarians, but his descendants, mingling with the native inhabitants, developed into a race of courtly knights and zealous Christians. The old Norse fighting spirit still animated them; they were turbulent, quick to anger, eager for battle; and, with new weapons and new modes of fighting, were accounted the most masterly spirits of the age.
IN THE SCRIPTORIUM. (From a contemporary picture.) To List
Mother Church had obtained a great hold on these Normans. Their land was filled with monasteries in which the most learned men of the time spent their days in prayer, study, and good works; glorious cathedrals or splendid churches lifted their towers towards heaven in every village; square, gray strongholds perched high on windy heights overlooked many a league of carefully cultivated meadow and orchard. Normandy, the land of the Normans, was the home of learning and intelligence, of refinement in manners, language, and taste. For the sluggish-minded English, with their gluttonous feasts, their boisterous drinking bouts and shouts of roistering laughter, the Normans had nothing but contempt.
Normandy had a popular literature of its own, consisting mainly of poems of chivalry, versified tales of the adventures of Charlemagne, Roland, and other peers and paladins. Their jongleurs and trouvères sang in every hall, and embroidered their themes with threads of adventurous imagination. In every castle-yard tourneys were held, and agility and grace of person, skill in the management of horses and weapons, magnificence of dress and armour were daily displayed to feed martial vanity and to win the smiles of ladies fair. All these things were worlds apart from the dull, slow-moving current of old English life.
The Normans sought to make England Normandy. They filled all the high offices of state, and their language became the tongue of court, parliament, tribunal, and army. Only English boors spoke the national speech,
“in the country places,
Where the old plain men have rosy faces,
And the young fair maidens
Quiet eyes.”
Even before the Conquest learned abbots and bishops from Normandy had acquired authority in the English Church; now they dominated it. Latin was the language of church and cloister, as Norman-French was that of noble, judge, war-chief, and landowner. English had never strongly asserted itself as the language of culture and books, but now all chance of advancing it to that honourable position had apparently disappeared. For two centuries the English tongue suffered eclipse; all the written literature was in Latin.
Monastic life flourished greatly; many new monasteries were founded, and learning advanced with rapid strides. Historians, writers on Roman law, medicine, and theology were to be found in every cloister; busy scribes worked six hours a day copying the old books and inditing new ones; libraries were founded and made easily accessible to students. Winchester, St. Albans, Durham, and Glastonbury became great centres of intellectual life. A literary era began in England—but it was not English.
Let us peep into one of the monasteries of the time and see the work of book-making in progress. The scriptorium or writing-room was either a large chamber over the chapter-house or a number of separate alcoves in the cloisters. Each scribe was provided with a desk, ink, parchment, pens, pen-knives, rulers, pumice-stone for smoothing the surface of the parchment, awls for making guiding marks when lines were to be ruled, a reading-frame to hold the book that was to be copied, and weights to keep down the pages. Every scribe had a window to himself, for all the work was done by daylight. Strict silence was enforced, and only the higher officers of the monastery were allowed to enter the scriptorium.
“As some method of communication was necessary, there was a great variety of signs in use. If a scribe needed a book, he extended his hands and made a movement as of turning over leaves. If it was a missal that was wanted, he super-added the sign of a cross; if a psalter, he placed his hands on his head in the shape of a crown (a reference to King David); if a book containing the scripture lessons of the day, he pretended to wipe away the grease (which might easily have fallen upon it from a candle); if a small work was needed, not a Bible or service book, he placed one hand on his stomach and the other before his mouth! Finally, if a pagan work was required, he scratched his ear in the manner of a dog!”
When the scale and general style of the writing was fixed, the scribe plotted out his page, leaving spaces for all the work that was to be done in colour. Then, in a very neat handwriting, he began to copy the book before him letter by letter. When four pages were thus completed, the text was compared by another person with the original copy, and the parchments were handed over to the rubricator, who worked in the titles, concluding notes, lists of chapters, head-lines, directions to the reader, and so forth, in red or alternate red and blue letters. When this was done, the illuminator took the volume in hand.
Nothing can exceed the beauty of some of the illuminated books which have come down to us from these times. In many of them we see large decorated capitals, filled with flowers or delicately painted miniatures reproducing some familiar scene which attracted the artist's eye, such as a housewife at her loom, a blacksmith in his forge, a gay chaffering crowd at market.
“There, now, is an initial letter!
Saint Ulric himself never made a better,
Finished down to the leaf and the snail,
Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail!
And now, as I turn the volume over,
And see what lies between cover and cover,
What treasures of art these pages hold,
All ablaze with crimson and gold,
God forgive me! I seem to feel
A certain satisfaction steal
Into my heart, and into my brain,
As if my talent had not lain
Wrapped in a napkin, and all in vain.
Yes, I might almost say to the Lord,
'Here is a copy of Thy Word,
Written out with much toil and pain;
Take it, O Lord, and let it be
As something I have done for Thee.'
(He looks from the window.) How sweet the air is! How fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus in her quiet nook, For the margin of my gospel book.”
A Page of the Durham Book. To List
As the art of illumination advanced, every colour used by the illuminator came to possess a special significance. Thus the illuminator reserved liquid gold and purple for the name of the King of Kings.
“With grand lapis-lazuli, sprinkled with diamond dust, he set down the divine title of Jesus Christ the Saviour.... Mary the Immaculate Mother gleams forth with the pearly-white sheen of the dove's breast from a background of purest turquoise. No archangel but has his initial letter of distinctive characteristic splendour, from the glowing ruby of Michael, all glorious Captain of the hosts-militant of heaven, to the amethyst of Raphael, and Gabriel's hyacinth-blue.... No China ink is black enough to score down Judas, the betrayer of his Lord. While to the dreadful enemy of mankind are allotted the orange-yellow of devouring hellish flame and the livid blue of burning brimstone; and the verdigris-green, metallic scales of the Snake of Eden diaper the background of the letters, and the poisonous bryony, the henbane, and the noxious trailing vine of the deadly nightshade wreathe and garland them about.”
When the illuminators' work was done, the sheets were handed to the binder, who sewed them together with great firmness and encased them in solid wooden boards with raised bands across the back. In the days of which we are speaking the finest books received an ivory, silver, or even gold binding, and the sides were carved with figures or embossed with jewels.
All the books produced by the scribes were made for the rich and learned. The vulgar many never saw them save in the priests' hands or on the lecterns of their churches, nor could they have read them had they possessed them, for the art of reading was a prerogative of the clergy, and the language in which they wrote was not understanded of the people. The only literature for common folk was on the lips of men—the traditional tales handed down from father to son, the songs and stories of the gleemen or the lives of the saints recited from the pulpits. The age is very far distant when reading will become the commonest of all the arts, and toiling men will be able to consort with the “mighty minds of old” at the expenditure of a few pence.
