400 to 1435

The codex, our common form of book with folded pages and bound cover, became widespread in the third century AD.  The codex tradition was well established by the Carolingian  and Byzantine period.

Throughout Christendom, the art of manuscript illumination flourished from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  Manuscript Illumination started around the first century AD and is related to Egyptian papyrology (the art of ancient writing and painting on papyrus). The pages of the books were made out of  goat or sheep skins - called parchment or vellum. According to Medieval historian, Julia De Wolf Addison, "The pigments used in Byzantine manuscripts are glossy, a great deal of ultramarine being used. The high lights are usually of gold, applied in sharp glittering lines, and lighting up the picture with very decorative effect. In large wall mosaics the same characteristics may be noted, and it is often suggested that these gold lines may have originated in an attempt to imitate cloisonné enamel, in which the fine gold line separates the different colored spaces one from another. This theory is quite plausible, as cloisonné was made by the Byzantine goldsmiths."

The early manuscripts were copied and embellished in monastic centers, called scriptoriums.  The most original and innovative works were created in the British Isles during the seventh and ninth centuries. After several centuries the monks became slipshod and careless when transcribing the holy works.  According to illumination scholar John W. Bradley," As time goes on, after the tenth century, it is noticeable that the more beautiful a manuscript becomes in its writing the less accurate becomes its Latinity. And so the monks who once were noted for learning, gradually lose their grip on Latin. The manuscripts executed in Benedictine abbeys became inaccurate—almost illiterate. Faults of ignorance of words; misrendering of proper names; blundering in the inept introduction of marginal notes and confounding such notes with the text, showing that the heart of the copyist was not in his work nor his head capable of performing it. His hand is simply a machine, which when it goes wrong does so without remorse and without shame. "

The early Medieval illuminators favored morose and emaciated figures, hollowed cheeks and deep-set eyes, wide and feverish, filled with love for Christ.  The miniature painting of the Irish, Gallic, and German monks was a melding together of painting and calligraphy. From the scrolls and flourishes purely calligraphic human forms are constructed.  These early depictions were severe as judges  with pitiless dignity, they stare from the pages like threatening tables of law, demanding submission, fear, and obedience, but according neither mercy, comfort, not redemption.

With the invention of the printing press, the art of manuscript illumination was doomed. What had once taken an illuminator  a year of work could now be accomplished in a day.