Skip to content
IUScholarWorks Journals
95.05.05, Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts

95.05.05, Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts


This handbook, illustrated with 56 color and 31 black-and-white illustrations, is much more than the title of the book suggests. The author, a curator in the manuscript department of the British Library, has produced a thorough glossary of the terms that anyone who works with medieval books will find valuable. Excellent reproductions from MSS in the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library are used to make the definitions offered even more clear and understandable.

The subjects covered include "the contexts of production and the people involved...; the physical processes and techniques employed (codicology); the types of text encountered...; and the terminology applied to the elements, styles, and forms of illumination" (5). Under production, the glossary offers terms like "scribe," "scriptorium," "stationer"; the types of texts run from liturgical books and related works (e.g., Books of Hours), to literary, legal, and scientific texts. It deals with works created in the West from late antiquity until the establishment of printing, with the majority of the illustrations referring to Latin codices.

Two valuable sections precede the alphabetical list of terms. First, illustrations of the external and internal binding structure of the medieval book, show the various elements of the book covers with their technical names. This is followed by an example from a Book of Hours showing the elements of illumination and terms used in discussing the illuminated page.

Some of the definitions are brief (e.g., "Attribute"), others (e.g., "Bestiary" and "Calendar") run to several pages. In all cases cross-references are clearly marked by setting the item in capitals. General terms, like "Byzantine" and "Carolingian," are also considered.

The portable format (128 pages, 23.3 X 15.5 cm.) will make it a valuable book for consultation by museum-goers (for whom it was originally intended), students, and scholars interested in manuscript production. It will also prove a useful supplement to the author's recent palaeographical handbook, A Guide to Western Manuscripts from Antiquity to 1600 Toronto, 1990.