MORE 15th C. Illum. Docs., Short Rant on Reference Materials
Rather B. Fishing
Here's the one ref I've got on the King's College Charter which
actually has a picture of the thing that you can go and look at. (My
apologies for getting the name of the college wrong in my earlier post
- sometimes I'm more dain bread than others.)
Document: The Foundation Charter of King's College, Cambridge, 1440.
The actual document is at the college in Cambridge (For once, a book
that bothered to tell me where the fool thing lives! Not all books
with good pictures are as nice about their documentation...)
Hand: a rather spikey black-letter book-hand, almost looks like a
fractur in character, but the spacing is closer to a quadratus.
Illumination: Down the margins partially, and across the top.
The photo-plate, unfortunately only shows the top left quarter of the
document. You can't tell if it's sealed, because the bottem isn't
visible. It is a legal doc, by the way, so it probably is sealed (my
opinion). It's got a lot of the same stuff as the patent of arms from
this period (the one I posted about earlier), ie the arms granted to
the college, cartoons of various of the granting authorities, gothic
bits, etc.
Where to find this photo-plate: p. 195., _The War of the Roses_, edited
by Elizabeth Hallam, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, c. 1988,
ISBN 1-55584-240-2
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Another illuminated document for which I'm trying to track down a
reference: a marrage contract which I saw at an exhibition at the UC
Berkeley Art Museum three and a half years ago. It was italian. It
was 15th Century. It was ILLUMINATED. And it was the actual marrage
contract! It had the most beautiful greens... I'll never forget
those greens... It had panels of illumination up the sides and across
the top. The top panel had a portrait of the bride and groom gazing
at one another. It wasn't as smaltzy as it sounds. I suspect the
mythical Mistress Aldith Agharad St. George has the catalog from that
show (we went together). She did an award of arms scroll in the style
of that contract within months of seeing it at the show. If Aldith
doesn't have a catalog, I'm calling Berkeley, ok?
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What's the Point, Twcs?
The point of all of this is that there were illuminated legal
documents in period. While the more bland documents surely
outnumbered these, the illuminated flavor of document was around
enough that some have survived (such that an amateur history type like
me can find references on them).
Please note, folks, that I found books with photo-plates of these, so
you can go and look at the pictures yourselves. It's not as good as
getting into the libraries themselves, but it's the next best thing to
being there...
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Biasing Results Through Choice of References
This also goes to show that academic references reproducing pictures
of many primary source documents are mostly targetted toward one topic
usually. The big references on documents in period tend to have lots
and lots of things like pipe rolls and writs, and other day to day
stuff with no illumination. (I even have a couple of these references
living in my bookcase.) References like that are either targetted at
showing examples of hands, or at showing examples of period legal
stuff. A search through these types of refs can and will leave a
person with the impression the documents were NEVER illuminated in
period. But again, the purpose of references like these is to make
photo-images of primary documents available to researchers far removed
from the original - and not to demonstrate whether people illuminated
on legal documents.
On the other hand, I knew about illuminated documents, especially
patents, because they are almost always treated in the better
references on English heraldry. And being a heraldry sink, I knew
where to start looking. Somehow, I get the feeling that if anyone has
done a study on 15th Century illuminated legal documents, it may be
more likely an art historian rather than a straight historian - just a
gut feeling, mind you - I have no facts to back this one up.
So researcher beware: sometimes even the best of references can bias
your research. Anyone out there ever read a delightful little book
called _How to Lie With Statistics_ ? If you have, you know then
exactly what I mean.
----------------------------
Twcs, A Renewable Resource?!?... ;->
Terry Nutter
and prayers for the blessings of Allah.
I have been fascinated by Twcs' argument on illumination of official
documents. In her two posts, she has cited references for:
1. A patent of arms for the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers of the
City of London, dated 1456;
2. A patent of arms for the Draper's Company of London, dated 1438;
3. A patent of arms for John Shakespeare, undated;
4. The foundation charter of King's College, Cambridge, dated 1440;
5. An Italian marriage contract, dated to the 15th century.
She proceeds then to argue:
>The point of all of this is that there were illuminated legal
>documents in period. While the more bland documents surely
>outnumbered these, the illuminated flavor of document was around
>enough that some have survived (such that an amateur history type like
>me can find references on them).
And:
>Biasing Results Through Choice of References
>This also goes to show that academic references reproducing pictures
>of many primary source documents are mostly targetted toward one topic
>usually. The big references on documents in period tend to have lots
>and lots of things like pipe rolls and writs, and other day to day
>stuff with no illumination. (I even have a couple of these references
>living in my bookcase.) References like that are either targetted at
>showing examples of hands, or at showing examples of period legal
>stuff. A search through these types of refs can and will leave a
>person with the impression the documents were NEVER illuminated in
>period. But again, the purpose of references like these is to make
>photo-images of primary documents available to researchers far removed
>from the original - and not to demonstrate whether people illuminated
>on legal documents.
Twcs is quite right that there were illuminated legal documents in period,
although they were exceptionally rare and generally quite late. However,
the matter is rather more complex than she suggests. Despite the exhortation
again source-biasing, what we have here is the pot calling the kettle black.
Twcs, no offense intended, your examples are a wonderful case of inference
from sampling error. First, the thread originally dealt not with "legal"
documents, but with "official" documents -- documents which originated in a
royal or noble chancery. All three of the patents which are cited were not
the calligraphed or illuminated in a royal chancery -- they were independently
commissioned from private artists and then submitted to the royal chancery
for sealing. Specifically, they were attempts by the increasingly uppity
bourgeoisie to go the traditional nobility one better. Second, the foundation
charter of King's College, Cambridge, did not originate in the royal chancery,
but was privately commissioned and presented to the crown for sealing, just
as the patents listed above. Third, a 15th-century Italian marriage contract
is as far from being an analogous exemplar for SCA award scrolls as the
Book of Kells -- it may have been a legal document, but it did not originate
in a royal or noble chancery as an "official" document.
What Twcs ignores is the actual origin of the documents in question and the
practice of privately commissioning calligraphy and illumination. I
respectfully submit that the source biasing is in precisely the opposite
direction -- art historical sources tend to focus on the unusual and uncommon
(particularly given the fact that beauty is not commonplace and that is
the fundamental focus of art -- aesthetics).
The problem with Twc's argument is that it obscures the purpose of research.
The fact that a handful of illuminated 15th-century documents exist is
probative of nothing, unless one buys into the "somebody, somewhere in period
did it, so it's okay to treat it as a modal practice" theory. Down that
slippery road lies justification of just about anything and the use of
research for the scoring of debating points. It is probably more useful,
and certainly more honest, to suggest that calligraphed and illuminated
SCA scrolls have absolutely nothing to do with the Middle Ages, but appeal
to our twentieth-century romanticized aesthetics, and so we have them
regardless of the modal practice in period, just because we like them
(and not because five out of thirty thousand exemplars can be jury-rigged
to justify the practice).
In Service to the Society,
Hossein Ali Qomi (Gregory Rose)