MANUSCRIPTS, ILLUMINATION OF. The art, of embellishing manuscripts with miniatures and ornaments, an art of the most remote antiquity. The term miniature, so often used indiscriminate ly to such ornamentation, as well as minute painting on ivory or other material, is derived from (cinnabar, red lead), whence ininiarc, to write or design in red. The Egyptian papyri of the ritualistic class, as old as the Eighteenth Dynasty, especially the Book of the Dead, are ornamented with vignettes or miniatures, attached to the chapters, either de signed in black outlines, or painted in primary colors in tempera. Except these papyri, no other manuscripts of antiquity were, strictly speaking, illuminated; such Greek and Roman ones of the first century as have reached the present day be ing written only. Pliny, indeed, mentions from Varro that authors had their portraits painted on their works, and mentions a biographical work with numerous portraits introduced, but all such have disappeared in the wreck of ages. the oldest illuminated manuscripts which have survived dating from the fourth century. Saint Jerome complains of the abuse of the practice. as shown by filling up books with capital letters of preposterous size. The art of illuminating manu scripts with gold and silver letters is supposed to have been derived from Egypt, but it is re markable that no papyrus has any gold or silver introduced into it. The artists who painted in
gold, called ehrysographi, are mentioned as early as the second century. There were, in fact, from the beginning two distinct classes of illuminated manuscripts: (1) those with decorative letters and (2) those with figured compositions. These were often crossed, and figures painted within and around the letters. The purely figured il lustrations, similar to the larger compositions in mosaic and fresco. originated in early Byzan tine art, and the decorative letter style was a. specialty of the northern races, especially Irish and Saxon. One of the oldest manuscripts of this style is the Codex Argenteus of Ulphilas (c.500 A.D.), and the charter of King Edgar (A.D. 966) shows the use of these letters. The principal late Roman illustrated manuscripts are the two Ver gils of the Vatican, the Iliad of the Ambrosian (Milan), and the Roman Philocalian Calendar at Vienna, all belonging to the fourth century or the early part of the fifth, and illustrating, the last phase of the secular school. There exist also a few copies of originals of this date or earlier. such as the Terence plays at the Vatican and Bibliotheoue Nationale and the Calendar of _tra ins at Boulogne. Of Greek classic descent are the exquisite pictures in the Viennese manuscript of the medical writings of Dioscorides, not exe cuted till A.D. 505.