Historical essay on the art of bookbinding/Bibliopegia
BIBLIOPEGIA.
ngelus Roccha, whom Morhof accuses of having introduced extraneous and uninteresting matter in the frequently quoted “Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana” (Rome, 1591), infers from a passage of chapter xxxi of Deuteronomy that the malady of bibliomania existed in the times before the deluge. It certainly was nearly coeval with the art of writing; and that fascinating department of bibliomania, the art of bookbinding, with the art of making square books (codices), when Phillatius, to whom, says Trotzius, the grateful Athenians erected a statue, invented a process by which the sheets of a book were made to adhere together. The covers were originally of wood, ivory or metal, with a view to solidity only. It was a simple process, and yet there were then, as at present, good, bad and indifferent bookbinders, for, in one of his letters to Atticus, Cicero requested the assistance of two slaves, reputed skilled workmen (lignatores librorum).At a time when the possession of a book was that of “a treasure for aye” it was natural that the art of its exterior decoration progressed as rapidly as the art of its interior decoration. The founder of the first organized monastic community, Saint Pachomius (fourth century), exacted it in strict rules for the preservation of the books of his monastery; and the “Notitia Dignitatum Imperii” (about 450) mentions the fact that certain officers of the Oriental Empire carried in public ceremonies large square books of the Emperor’s instructions for the administration of his provinces, bound in red, blue or yellow leather, and ornamented with a gilt or painted portrait of the Emperor.
In the sixth century the art of bookbinding was the art of goldsmiths and enamellers, as the art of bookmaking was the art of calligraphs and illuminators. Seneca had criticized the luxurious ornamentation of books; it had been censured by Petrus Acotantus; St. Jerome exclaimed, “Your books are covered with precious stones, and Christ died naked before the gate of his temple;” but the exhortations of profound philosophers and austere monks availed little in the growing passion for superb books. Zonaras, the Byzantian historian, says in his “Annals” that Belisarius found among the treasures of Gelimer, King of the Vandals, the books of the Scriptures, “glittering with gold and precious stones.” A similar binding, two plates of gold ornamented with colored stones and antique cameos, is of the Greek Scriptures, which Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards, gave, fifty or sixty years after the death of Belisarius, to that cathedral of Monza which possesses the famous Iron Crown, mainly of gold, but with a thin band of iron, said to have been hammered from a nail of the true cross.
The celebrated copy of the Pandects of Justinian, which is to be found in the Laurentian library of Florence, is of the sixth or seventh century. The volume is a folio bound with wooden boards, covered with red velvet and ornamented with silver corners. It was not known to Dibdin, who says in the Eighth Dialogue of his “Bibliographical Decameron” that there are no specimens of binding in velvet before the fourteenth century, at which time it is expressly noticed by Chaucer in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales:
“A twenty bokes clothed in black and red,
Of Aristotle,—”
Astle tells of a famous “Textus Sancti Cuthberti,” written in the seventh century, adorned in the Saxon times by Bilfrith, a monk of Durham, with a silver cover, gilt and precious stones, described by Simeon Dunelmensis: “A booke of Gospeiles, garnished and wrought with antique worke of silver and gilte, with an image of the Crucifix, with Mary and John, poiz together, cccxxij oz.”
Several books bound during the reign of Charlemagne, presumably under the supervision of the great Alcuin, are specially noted for the gorgeousness of their exterior decorations; and they were also masterpieces of calligraphy in letters of glittering gold on purple vellum, by the Emperor’s daughters, Gisela and Rothruda; by Alcuin and his pupils at Aix-la-Chapelle. The book of Gospels which Ada, sister of Charlemagne, gave to the abbey of Saint Maximin of Treves was studded with gems encircling an agate five inches in width and four in length, with an engraved representation of Ada, the Emperor, and his two sons. That monument of the bibliogestic art of the eighth century, described by Mabillon in his “Annales Ordinis Benedictini” (1703–39), is not extant. Nor is the engraved silver gilt case or coffer which originally enclosed the celebrated Book of Hours of Charlemagne. It is, by the way, improperly called a Book of Hours, as it is composed of extracts from the Gospels applicable to every day in the year. The calligraphist Gottschalk (Godefalcus) labored for twelve years in its execution. It was terminated in 781, and presented by the Emperor to the abbey of St. Sernin, the most ancient monastery of Toulouse. The book is extant in the library of the Louvre. It was presented to Napoleon I. by the city of Toulouse; but the casket was stolen in 1793 from the abbey of St. Sernin. The custom of enclosing valuable bindings in valuable caskets was a prevailing one, but the caskets have been prizes for pillagers, and assuredly could not have been of greater interest to the book-lover than the “carved oak box (in book form), with Milton’s initials on the side, manufactured from the old timber taken from the poet’s residence in Barbican when demolished in 1864, with a certificate of authcenticity, enclosing a work of Frischlini, with John Milton’s autograph initials on the title page,” of a recent English catalogue.
A very interesting list might be made of noted manuscripts, the bindings of which have been stolen, and of stolen manuscripts the bindings of which are extant. The precious volumes which were jealously guarded “in the secret jewel-house,” with the awe-inspiring relics, were purloined as well as the cathenare, cathenizare or catenati, the chained volumes of the monasteries.
