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The flourished initials
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 July 2009
Extract
An analysis of pen flourishing surrounding initials in a manuscript can provide useful evidence about the manuscript's place of origin and date. The reason for this lies in the technique of the flourisher: it is pen work that appears to have been no more skilled than that of the scribe. Indeed, it could on occasion have been the work of the copyist himself, or at least one of the same calibre working by his side. Because flourishing appears no more skilled as a technique than is writing, it would seem to require a training that is no more specialized. This is important when a comparison is made with the training, skill and payment of the artist-illuminator also employed in book production: in these respects the scribe and flourisher would be in the same category, but not in that of the artist. The writing and the flourishing could have been carried out at the same time, or with very little time lag between the two; there would have been no necessity to hold up production at this stage for the arrival of the artist-illuminator, who was presumably a more rare and highly paid workman.
- Type
- Further Observations on W1
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- © The Plainsong and Medieval Music Society 1981
References
Notes
1 See, for example, my article ‘Minor initial decoration used to date the Propertius fragment MS. Leiden Voss.lat.0.38’, Scriptorium, 28 (1974), pp.235–247 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Here I used my method of comparing decoration of initials to date a Propertius manuscript and demonstrated my reasons for deciding that the Propertius fragment was contemporary with a group of manuscripts once owned by Richard de Fournival.
2 ‘13th-century Paris and Oxford university manuscripts’, B.Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1970 (Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Bodley B.Litt.d.1457)Google Scholar. The number of manuscripts covered in this first phase of my work was 93, classed as ‘Key’ or ‘Probable’ depending on the nature of the evidence of place of origin and date of writing.
I am at present engaged in research for a book on minor initial flourishing which will expand my coverage of manuscript sources to include those of Germany and Italy; and which will extend the date to c.1400.
3 My thesis outlines the method for analyzing decoration, and contains descriptions of all components found in French and English 13th-century manuscripts. In a ‘Catalogue of Components’ I give diagrammatic demonstrations of the components and list the manuscripts in which I have identified them.
4 In dating flourishing by the period in which components are normally used one must naturally allow for such imponderables as the age of the flourisher and the stage in his career at which he is working. In the same way, the place of origin of the manuscript cannot be judged from the flourishing with absolute certainty if one allows for the possibility that the flourisher may be working outside the country where he was trained.
5 A description of this group of components and a list of manuscripts in which it appears is given on pp.20–22 of the ‘Catalogue of Components’ of my thesis.
6 See Vaughan, Richard: ‘The handwriting of Matthew Paris’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1953), pp.390–1Google Scholar; and Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), pp.7–11 Google Scholar.
7 Description and complete edition, with music, in Wordsworth, C.: Pontificale ecclesiae S.Andreae. The Pontifical Offices used by David de Bernham, Bishop of St.Andrews (Edinburgh, 1885)Google Scholar. On the liturgical tradition represented by the manuscript see Frere, W.H.: Pontifical Services, Alcuin Club Collections, iii–iv (London, 1901), ppGoogle Scholar.
8 The place where the pontifical was written is not known. By identifying the hand of one flourisher in more than one manuscript it is sometimes possible to determine the place of origin of the group of manuscripts – provided one of the group has localizing evidence. I demonstrate this possibility in ‘Comparison of minor initial decoration: a possible method of showing the place of origin of 13th-century MSS.’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 03 1972, pp. 23–30 Google Scholar.