Beautiful, Decorative, and Sometimes Crude: Illuminated Manuscripts and Marginalia

Illuminated manuscripts are manuscripts that are covered with painted ornaments presented under several forms. These documents are perhaps most commonly associated with the European Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the concept of, and the techniques used for, the production of the illuminations were introduced at a much earlier period of time. In addition, there are a few surviving manuscripts from the Late Antique period which have illuminations in them.

Early Examples of Illuminated Manuscripts

Painted ornaments found in the illuminated manuscripts were first introduced as miniatures in Rome as early as the 1st century BC. For example, portraits were sometimes painted onto texts. Although historians of the past have written of their existence, there are no available examples of such manuscripts from this period of history known today.

Thus, the earliest samples of illuminated manuscripts are from the 4th and 5th centuries AD. Some examples include: The Vatican’s ‘Virgil’, which has 50 miniatures, the Bible of Quedlinburg, which contains the most ancient Christian miniatures known today, as well as some papyri from Egypt.