When: Saturday 18th February 2012
Where: British Library
Why: I love a good illumination.
This might not sound like the most thrilling of ways to
spend an afternoon (and it did take almost a whole afternoon, thanks to the
‘horseshoe of doom’ – more on that later), but there are some cool little
things in the manuscripts that our monarchs have passed on to us over the
centuries. Why would you want to paint a half-man half-eagle on a Biblical
passage? Who can say. But I digress. We were looking at manuscripts once owned
by English monarchs from between the 8th and 16th
centuries, beautifully decorated and illustrated, and taken mainly from the Old
Royal library that George II gave to the nation in 1757 (how kind). There were
over 150 of the things, and let me tell you, it is possible to be manuscripted
out. I had illumination fatigue by the end of the three hours it took to get
round that room. We spent a good forty minutes trying to get round the
aforementioned ‘horseshoe of doom’, which comprised of about ten of the most
exciting manuscripts. They were indeed beautiful and golden and shiny and
colourful and a gorgeous insight into the artistry of the Middle Ages etc, but
when you’re stuck behind a slow-moving queue of elderly ladies with magnifying
glasses, you start to question your existence somewhat.
Anyhow, one interesting bit was the illustration of the baby
Caesar being born (famously by caesarian), and having him pointed out to us by
yes, you’ve guessed it, a lady with a magnifying glass. I also really loved a
map drawn over about eight pages of a pilgrim’s journey from England to the
Holy Land, with brilliantly out of scale drawings of each important stop, and
culminating in a map of Britain with London smack bang in the middle (where I
actually used to think it was – respect, ancient map drawer).
We learned about psalters and ladies’ prayer books, as well
as the massively elaborate gospel books. The manuscripts not only displayed the
wealth of the monarch and the artistic prowess of his country, but aided them
in understanding what it meant to be royal. Apparently they often contained genealogical
texts, the coronation books set out the formal ceremonies of monarchy, and of
course the biblical content also helped demonstrate their divine right to rule
and underpinned their authority. The ‘mirrors for princes’ were instructions
for appropriate royal behaviour and also sometimes contained information on the
lives of influential saints, manuals for warfare, bestiaries and of course the
apocalypses, to give moral direction to their current actions in preparation
for the end of time. Which I thought was nice.
I know so little about the kings and queens of the past, so
this was a genuinely diverting insight into the monarchy’s scholarly interests
over the centuries. I also didn’t realise how many of the monarchs were French,
and there were lots of olde Frenche texts which I’m sure would have been even
more thrilling for a scholar of such things. I did test myself on some of the
Latin ones though and didn’t do too badly, which pleased me (for those of you
who don’t know me, I, Brixpig, am a shallow Classicist, which means that I did
a lot of Latin and Greek at school and uni, but can’t remember quite a lot of
it, even now).
Some advice: if you go, don’t use up all your energy at the
beginning – we looked too long and too intensely at the early stuff, and so had
no energy left at the end to get involved with the old sheet music, which
looked quite cool. Also, by then they wanted to close and were shunting us
urgently into the gift shop and out the door. Recommended if you need somewhere
to take your nan, or if you’ve got a new magnifying glass you’re desperate to
try out. Or if you’re just a bit of a nerd, like me.
Brixpig x
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