the
detail and so exquisite the finish. Vasari states that Julio Clovio
devoted nine years to painting twenty-six miniatures in the Breviary of
the Virgin now in the royal library at Naples. The library at Rouen has
a large missal on which a monk of St. Andoen is said to have labored
for thirty years. These books were among the most valued possessions of
the churches, and their bindings were enriched with gold and pearls and
colored stones. The wealthy churches had many such volumes; Gregory of
Tours states that from Barcelona in 531 A.D. Childebert brought twenty "evangeliorum capsas" of
pure gold set with gems. Several of these superbly bound volumes are
yet in existence, in the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice ; in the
treasury of the cathedral at Milan; among the imperial Russian
collections in the Ourejenaya Palata at Moscow, etc. ; and they furnish
probably the most reliable examples of artistic jewel work of the Dark
Ages.
The
most remarkable specimen of these books in America is doubtless the
Ashburnham manuscript of the Four Gospels, now owned by J. Pierpont
Morgan, Esq., which affords an interesting example of the jeweler's
art. For many centuries it belonged to the Abbey of the Noble
Canonesses, founded, in 834, at Lindau, on Lake Constance. After an
extended examination, Mr. Alexander Nesbit concluded that the rich
cover of the manuscript was probably made between 896 and 899 by order
of Emperor Arnulf of the Carolingian dynasty. Most of the ninety-eighf
pearls appear to be from fresh water, and probably all of them were
obtained from the rivers of Europe. This is one of the few remaining
pieces of the magnificent ecclesiastical jeweling of that period.
After
the death of Charlemagne, internal dissensions, separations and the
division of the Empire into the nations of Europe, annihilated
commerce, oppressed the people, and impoverished the arts. In the ninth
century, the Normans pillaged many of the palaces and churches in
Angoulême, Tours, Orléans, Rouen, and Paris, and destroyed or carried
away large treasures. The tenth and the eleventh centuries were indeed
the Dark Ages in respect .to the cultivation of the arts ·, yet even
during that period the churches of western Europe received many gems
from penitent and fear-stricken subjects. The heart of man, filled with
the love of God, laid its earthly treasure upon the altar in exchange
for heavenly consolation. Pious faith dedicated pearls to the
glorification of the ritual; altars, statues, and images of the saints,
priestly vestments, and sacred vessels, were surcharged with them. The
great museums and the imperial collections contain some beautiful and
highly venerated objects of this nature.
In the meantime pearls of small size and of fair luster had been
collected in the rivers of Scotland, Ireland, and France, the headwaters
