What “illuminated” means
A manuscript is any book written by hand. Most medieval manuscripts were plain: black or brown ink on parchment, with perhaps a red heading here and there. An illuminated manuscript is one that was decorated with gold or silver, bright paint, or both. The word comes from the Latin for “to light up,” and it fits, because gold leaf on a page really does catch the light as the book is turned.
Strictly speaking, scholars often reserve “illuminated” for books with gold or silver. Books with only colored paint are sometimes called painted or decorated. In everyday use, though, the term covers the whole range, from a psalter with a few colored capitals to a royal prayer book where almost every page glitters.
Decoration usually falls into a few categories:
- Decorated initials, the large opening letter of a text or section, sometimes only colored and sometimes containing a scene or a figure.
- Borders, painted frames or vines around the text.
- Miniatures, small paintings that illustrate a story or a sacred moment. The word does not mean “tiny” at first. It likely comes from minium, the red lead pigment used for lettering and outlines.
- Marginal images, the creatures, jokes and everyday scenes in the margins.
The period and the place
The tradition runs across the whole Middle Ages. Decorated books were being made in Ireland, Britain and the Frankish lands in the early centuries, and the practice continued until printed books largely replaced hand-copied ones in the later fifteenth century. The invention of the printing press did not end decoration at once. Some printed books were given hand-painted initials and borders, and wealthy owners continued to commission manuscripts for decades afterward.
Europe was not the only place that made richly decorated books. The Byzantine world, the Islamic world and Jewish communities all had their own traditions. This guide concentrates on Western Europe.
Who made them
Early on, most books were produced in monasteries. A monk might copy the text, while another monk, or the same one, handled the decoration. Over time, as towns grew and demand rose, lay professionals took over much of the work. By the thirteenth century there were commercial workshops in cities such as Paris, and the trade in books was tied to the growth of medieval universities, which needed large numbers of textbooks.
A single book often involved several people:
- A parchment maker, who prepared the skins.
- A scribe, who copied the text.
- An artist or several, who drew and painted the decoration.
- A binder, who sewed and covered the finished pages.
Some workers are known by name, because they signed their work or are recorded in accounts. Many more are anonymous. Women also took part, especially in convents, though the surviving evidence is uneven.
Who owned them
Ownership shifted over the centuries. Churches and monasteries owned the earliest great books, which were used in worship or kept as treasures. Kings and nobles later became major patrons, and their books could be gifts, status symbols and objects of private prayer. In the later Middle Ages wealthy merchants, townspeople and professionals also commissioned or bought books, often in modest versions of the grand designs.
Books were expensive. Parchment alone meant the skins of many animals, and the labor of copying a long text by hand could take months. A decorated book was a major investment, which is one reason many were inscribed with the owner’s name or coat of arms.
The main types
Gospel books contain the four Gospels and were central to church services. In the early period they were often the most lavish books a community owned.
Psalters contain the Psalms and were used by clergy and, later, by lay people for daily prayer. Many have an opening page for each major section, with large decorated initials.
Bibles appeared as single volumes in some periods and as many volumes in others. Large pulpit Bibles and small portable ones both survive.
Liturgical books such as missals, breviaries and antiphonaries held the texts and music for services. They were practical working books, though many were handsomely decorated.
Books of hours are the best-known late medieval type. They offered a lay person a set of short prayers for the hours of the day, along with a calendar and other devotions. They were made in great numbers and range from plain to extraordinary.
Secular books also received decoration: romances, chronicles, law texts, herbals, medical treatises and bestiaries. Their illustrations often show how people at the time imagined knights, kings or animals. Some of the texts they copy belong to what we now call medieval literature.
What the images were for
Pictures served several purposes. They marked divisions in a text, helped a reader find a place, and expressed devotion. Some historians point out that images could also guide readers who were less comfortable with Latin. The images draw on a wide vocabulary of Christian imagery, and many are easier to read if you know the stories behind them.
Not every image has a clear purpose. The marginal creatures, hybrid animals and odd scenes in some late books are still debated. Scholars have proposed jokes, moral lessons, decorative play and more, and none of these explanations fits every case.
Why so few survive
Manuscripts were vulnerable to fire, flood, war, neglect and reuse. Parchment was valuable enough that old books were sometimes cut up for binding scraps. Many surviving books owe their condition to being treasured, shut away and rarely handled. What survives is a fraction of what was produced, and it leans toward grand and well-protected books.
Where to go next
The subject branches in many directions: the materials and the order of work in a workshop, the artistic styles of different regions, famous surviving books, the care these fragile objects need today, and the people who produced them. Each of those is a topic of its own, and each rewards a closer look once the basics here are clear.