ANUSCRIPTS, n lurninated, are those whose text is heightened and brightened by vignettes and other decorations in colors, gold and silver. The verb to illuminate first occurs in the beginning of the 18th century; and means to decorate an initial letter, a word, or a text of a manuscript with gold, silver or brilliant colors, or with elaborate tracery, miniature illustrations and designs. The older verb was to enlumine (Old French en luminer; late Latin, inluminare; classic Latin, illuminare). It occurs, A.D. c. 1366, in Chaucer, A. B. C., 73, «Kalendeeres enlumyned ben»; A.D. C. 1400, 'Roman de la Rose,' 1695, «For it so welle was enlomyned"; A.D. 1430, Lydgate, Chron. Troy,' Prol., «For he enlumineth by craft and cadence this noble storye with many freshe coloure of Rhetorik.» Illumination dif fers from painting, according to Ruskin, 'Mod ern Painters' (1856, Vol. III, iv, viii, sec. 9), in that «illumination admits no shadows, but only gradations of pure colotir.» The earliest writing of many peoples was by means of pic tures. Witness the pictographs of Sumeria, that later evolved into Babylonian cuneiform script; the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt ; the crude scrawls of our American Indians; and the Aztec picture-writing, which still defies epigraphists. It was but natural that an art arose of embellishing these pictographs. Fif teen •centuries before Christ the papyrus rolls that contain the ritualistic 'Book of the Dead' were illuminated with brilliantly colored scenes. In due time the art of illumination passed over to peoples whose script was alphabetic; it always remained an art of beautiful writing. There is truth, though characteristically narrow and dogmatic in expression, in the saying of Ruskin, 'Lectures on Art' (1870, v. 138) : °Perfect illumination is only writing made lovely; the moment it passes into picture making it has lost its dignity and function." I. Illumination in the East. 1. In Egypt. — The earliest specimens of illumination are on Egyptian papyrus rolls. Ritual directions are in red; hence the mediaeval rubric. Profile portraits are inserted into the text. Agricul tural and household scenes are interspersed between hieroglyphic signs. From the Egyp tians the art of illumination reached the Hel lenic folk of Alexandria. A 4th century we. papyrus manuscript of the poems of Timothcus, found at Abilsir, has a bird as a punctuation mark. Not until the Christian era do minia
tures adorn the text. A 1st century A.D. Greek papyrus (Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris) shows a text that is adorned with miniatures in bold relief. A Berlin papyrus, Kaiser Fried rich Museum, illustrates the cure of a demoniac by Jesus. While in Hellenic Egypt the art of illumination thus progressed, the Coptic artists carried on a separate tradition from their an cient Egyptian forebears. A Coptic chronicle, dated 392 A.D. (Goleniseey collection) has a wealth of miniatures illustrative of the months, the provinces of Asia, the rulers of Rome, Lydia and Macedonia, together with the destruction of the Serapeum under the direction of the patriarch, Theophilus. The Morgan collection Of Sahidic manuscripts, of the 9th and 10th centuries, contains a dozen manuscripts with miniatures of the Virgin and her Son, angels, martyrs, saints, hermits; and almost all of the 58 manuscript volumes of this remarkable Cop tic library are illuminated with marginal dec orative schemes of animals and plants.
2. In The monks of Syria show the traditions of the Semitic orient in the illumina tion of manuscripts. Saint Augustine, 'Adv. Faustum> (xiii, 6, 18), refers to the miniature illustration of Persian parchments. From the 5th century, there were monastic schools for illumi nation in Mesopotamia and Syria. The Syriac Evangeliary, 586 A.D., the work of Rabbula at Zagba in Mesopotamia, now in the Lauren tian Library, Florence, is an exquisite work of art; the miniatures represent the Crucifixion, etc.; the marginal schemes are geometrical, and contain flowers, birds, etc. Some Hellenistic influence is noticeable; but Semitic traditions dominate in the Syriac school of illuminating. To this school belong also the extant Armenian illuminated manuscripts. Three evangeliaries, books of pericopic readings from the Epistles and Gospels, show the most beautiful work of Armenian miniaturists: that of Etschmiadzin, 10th century, copied from a 6th century model; that of Queen Mlke, 902 A.D., Monastery of the Mechtarists, Venice; and the Tiibingen Evangeliary, 1113 A.D. Mohammedan illumina tion copied Syriac in many Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts, chiefly of the (Aran. The decorative work is often rich in its red, blue and gold cufic characters.