A manuscript with ornamental borders, capitals, and illustrations is known as an illuminated manuscript. These manuscripts are almost always handwritten, and all of the illuminations are done hand as well. The art of creating illuminated manuscripts largely vanished with the invention of the printing press, as these ornate and beautiful volumes were more expensive and time consuming to produce than printed material.
The earliest extant examples of illuminated manuscripts date from around the fifth century CE, when many Christian texts, including the Bible, were printed in this format for distribution. Such manuscripts would have been prohibitively expensive, available only to wealthy individuals and the Church. Monasteries and churches that possessed such a manuscript would have made it available for study to those who could not afford such luxuries.
Illuminated manuscripts flourished in the Middle East as well, particularly after Islam’s rise to power. Religious texts were all lavishly reproduced patient, painstaking scribes, and some of the best examples of surviving manuscripts of this type are religious in nature. Illumination reached its pinnacle during the Medieval Era, and for a time, personalized prayer books known as Books of Hours were very popular among the European elite. Throughout the Renaissance, these manuscripts were produced on a smaller scale, until they eventually died out.
Illuminated manuscripts were traditionally created in monasteries monks with exceptional aesthetic sensibilities, or in professional scriptoria, which were essentially medieval copy centers. These manuscripts were created first replicating the text in black ink and then adding hand-illuminated illuminations. Monks copied works of philosophy and other texts in addition to religious texts, preserving works from Ancient Greece and Rome.
An illuminated manuscript, definition, contains gold and silver leaf, as well as a vibrant color palette of rich blues and deep reds. At the most basic level, the manuscript has ornamental capitals, but many also have heavily decorated borders and miniature paintings depicting scenes from the book; some nobility members even had their portraits inserted into such miniatures. The Book of Kells is a well-known illuminated manuscript known for its intricate decorations.
From the time monks scraped the vellum to make the pages to the day the finishing touches were put on the often heavily jeweled and inlaid binding of the book, an illuminated manuscript could take months or years to complete. Each manuscript is a unique and valuable work of art; museums all over the world compete for the best specimens, and a few lucky private collectors even have their own manuscripts.