Before printing, every book in Europe was copied by hand, most of them by monks and nuns in a monastery's writing room, the scriptorium. Pages were made of vellum or parchment, calfskin or sheepskin soaked, scraped and stretched thin. A decorated book is called an illuminated manuscript, from the Latin for "lit up," because gold and bright colors seem to glow on the page.
On the islands of Britain and Ireland, monks of the 600s to 800s created a style called Insular (from Latin insula, "island"). It mixed the interlace and spirals of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon metalwork with Mediterranean book design. Two masterpieces stand out.
Looking closely: A Lindisfarne carpet page. A whole page with no words, covered edge to edge like a rug, so it is called a carpet page. A cross in red, blue and gold stands out against a dense field of interlace: ribbons, and the twisting bodies of birds and beasts, that weave over and under each other without a break. It was laid out with compass and ruler and then filled by hand. A note added in the 900s says Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, wrote the book; so the book is "attributed to" him.
Looking closely: The Chi Rho page. This page begins the story of Christ's birth in Matthew's Gospel. Two Greek letters, Chi (X) and Rho (P), the first letters of "Christ" in Greek, swell to fill nearly the whole page, and every stroke of them is packed with spirals, knots and tiny figures. Look closely and you find faces, angels, and animals hidden in the ornament, including cats watching mice and an otter with a fish. Where the book was made is debated: on the island of Iona, off Scotland; at Kells in Ireland, where monks fled after Viking raids; or partly at both.
Key idea
Why it works
Worked example: Read the page
- A full page of pure ornament, like a rug: a carpet page.
- In the Lindisfarne Gospels, carpet pages come before each Gospel, like a doorway.
Answer: A carpet page, placed before a Gospel.
Common mistake