“A Late Antique Manuscript with Initials” by C. Nordenfalk. In order to gain a correct idea of the origin and characteristics of mediaeval initial ornamentation it is necessary to acquire an intimate knowledge of the principles on which it was practised in the art of book production in late antiquity. Only a small number of Late Antique manuscripts illuminated with initials have been preserved. Attention has been drawn to some of these by E. H. Zimmermann in his Vorkarolingische Miniaturen, Berlin 1916, but many important ones have been overlooked. Perhaps the most important one of all is the MS of Paulus Orosius' Historiæ; adversam paganos in Florence, Biblioteca Laurentiana, Plut. LXV, 1 which the paper here summarized first introduces into art-historical discussion. The illumination of the MS consists—apart from a large number of initials (figs. 3-6, 8-12, 14-16)—of decorative borders surrounding the colophons (figs. 1-2). A strong Greek influence is discernible in the design of one of these borders (fig. 2) —cf. J. Ebersolt, La miniature byzantine, Paris-Brussels 1926, Pl. XLV, 1. The initials are generally put at the beginning of a new page. This is a markedly “Western” principle of division, met with in even the earliest preserved Latin MS with initials, the so-called Vergilius Augusteus. In the Orosius MS, however, this principle is not strictly followed throughout; at the same time the principle is applied which is common in Greek MSS of inserting an initial to mark the transition to a fresh subject. An analysis of the structural form of the individual initials reveals the employment of two principles governing the method of combining the ornamentation with the body of the letter. The ornaments represent either expletive or appendant forms. The expletive ornaments consist mainly of complementary patterns of the same kind as those which surround the colophons in Greek MSS of the 5th and 6th centuries (cf. fig. 7). Similar ornamentation may also be employed in conjunction with initials in Greek MSS of late antiquity (fig. 13). It is highly probable, therefore, that the expletive ornaments in the initials of the Orosius MS may be traced back to Greek prototypes. The same applies to the appendant ornaments, the majority of which consist of concrete forms: fish, birds, leaves, crosses (figs. 4, 8-12, 14-16). The closest parallel to this initial design is to be found in a couple of ornamental letters in Wiener Dioscurides (fig. 17) and in the initial in the Job MS in Patmos already referred to (fig. 13). An initial design on the uncial A is particularly common in the Orosius MS, a fish taking the place of the small loop attached to the main support of the letter (figs. 8, 14-16). In this case the appendant ornament is more than merely an appendix. It plays a direct part, however subordinate it may be, in the formation of the body of the letter. This type of initial is highly significant from an evolutional point of view, seeing that it throws a bridge over to the Merovingian “fish-bird initial” (fig. 18). Manifestly, it was late antique MSS of the same type as the Orosius Codex that constituted the true basic forms out of which the Merovingian style of initial was evolved. Moreover, the strong Greek influence that is discernible in the ornamentation of the Orosius MS indicates that the origin of this style of initial is to be found in the Eastern Mediterranean area. This lends further support to the assumption that the Merovingian and the Oriental fish-bird initials are ultimately traceable back to common late antique prototypes. The Orosius MS may also possibly give us a hint as to the route by which the Eastern fish-bird initial found its way to the bookilluminating art of Western Europe. Below the colophon at the end of the fifth book the writer has added the following subscriptio: Confectus codex in statione magistri Uiliaric antiquarii. Uiliaric is a form of name that is met with in Gothic records dating from the 6th cent., issued at Ravenna, and as the Orosius MS, which is dated by E. A. Lowe on palaeographical grounds in the first half of the 6th cent., may probably be adjudged, in view of its manifest dependence upon the Greek art of book illumination, to have emanated from the eastern parts of North Italy, one is tempted to assume that it originated in some Gothic writer's study at Ravenna. Were this the case, it would strikingly confirm Strzygowski's assumption, made on quite different grounds, that the Goths were instrumental in spreading the fishbird initial to the West. Finally, our knownledge of the late antique style of initial, which formed the basis of the Merovingian, affords us a further means of forming a clearer judgment as to the latter's characteristic development. A detailed discussion of this question, however, would require a special study of the subject.
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