Colour your own medieval manuscript, part 2

Colour your own medieval manuscript, part 2

Durham Cathedral Library MS B.II.34 Florus of Lyons, Collectaneum in epistolas Pauli (Corinthians-Hebrews)

Welcome to the second instalment of ‘Colour your own medieval manuscript’. We hope you enjoyed Part 1 – Durham Cathedral Library MS A.IV.10 Matthew, glossed and have now honed your illuminating skills and gained an insight into what it was like to be a medieval artist!

This week we have a sadly neglected initial ‘P’ from the beginning of II Corinthians in Durham Cathedral Library MS B.II.34 Florus of Lyons, Collectaneum in epistolas Pauli (Corinthians-Hebrews), written in England in the late 12th century. We can only wonder at what caused it to be missed, as the rest of the manuscript has been beautifully painted. It is carefully drawn out, with entwined symmetrical foliage, along with curls, blossoms and the odd dragon. It should, perhaps, have looked like this one at the beginning of I Corinthians, on f.2r:

Coloured initial on f.2r of Durham Cathedral Library MS B.II.34
Coloured initial on f.2r of Durham Cathedral Library MS B.II.34 Florus of Lyons, Collectaneum in epistolas Pauli (Corinthians-Hebrews), click to open manuscript

Other examples of the colour scheme it might have had can be seen on f.125v, f.150r and f.185r. You can find out more about the decoration in the volume from its catalogue entry:

http://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/view?docId=ark/32150_s2r781wg06z.xml

Letters of a similar design can also be found in Durham Cathedral Library MS A.II.19, Peter Lombard, On the Epistles of St Paul, which may be familiar to those of you who have been lucky enough to get your hands on one of our DPLR project bookmarks. These initials use a variety of pinks (f.277v), reds (f.4v) and blues (f.200r), highlighted of course, in gold. (To lift up the fabric covers on the manuscript, click on the ‘Layers’ tab, and then check the ‘visible’ box on the second layer.)

You don’t have to use traditional manuscript colours, we’re just using this as an excuse to show you more of our amazing manuscripts, so it’s worth looking at this wonderful scribe (and the chap down at the bottom) as well: Durham Cathedral Library MS A.II.3 Bible, f2r. You can also see some lovely embellishments of the other initials on this page, why not add some to your image!

Coming next time: a full page image from Cassiodorus on the Psalms.