While this website is at last sufficiently complete to no longer warrent an "Under Construction" notice, it is still an ongoing project; thus, new information is frequently posted, and reader input is not just welcome but sincerely sought.
Please email me with any comments or suggestions.
These pages shall be dedicated to the creation and
study of illuminated
manuscripts. If you do not know
what these are, then you are lucky! For here is a
place where you may learn, if you so desire.
You and I may boldly stride into our local
Waldenbooks (blech), Borders (much better), or local
used bookstore in a university town (best) and
procure as many books as our wallets may sustain.
It's very easy for us to gather impressive libraries
in our homes; a modern bibliophile may easily
indulge his or her passion for the written word.
This was not always true. While Gutenberg's printing
press certainly improved the situation, books
remained the province of the well-to-do for the
majority of the history of the codex. Before the
printing press, books were created by hand.
Someone had to sit there and copy every letter of
every word of every page if a second copy of a
particular book was to be made. It doesn't take much
effort to imagine the scarcity of books prior to
printing.
Illuminated Manuscripts are a particular type of
book. "Illuminated" refers to a type of decoration,
"Manuscript" refers to the text--written by
hand (but, at this site only, may also include early
printed works that
have been decorated by hand) and bound as a codex--in
book form rather than as a scroll or a collection of
leaves. Thus, in short, an illuminated manuscript is
generally a book created no later then the historical
period referred to as the Renassaince, usually hand
written and painted.