Ottonian Manuscript Illumination

After the collapse of the Carolingian empire in the 880s, the east Frankish kingdom (roughly equivalent to modern-day Germany with parts of Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands) experienced a period of pronounced instability in which political authority became largely decentralized in the hands of local dukes. Despite the challenges posed by crumbling political structures and repeated foreign incursions (Vikings from the north and Magyar attacks from the east), one such duke was particularly effective at building alliances and establishing stability in the region. This man, Henry I (also called Henry the Fowler), was a duke of Saxony, and his election as king of East Francia in 919 essentially established a new line of rulers that would continue to hold power in the region for more than a century. This dynasty, known as the Ottonians after their penchant for the name Otto, succeeded in transforming a kingdom into an empire by bringing northern Italy under their authority. This transformation was marked by the imperial coronation of Otto I, son of Henry I, which took place in 962 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. As emperors, the Ottonians looked back not only to Imperial Rome, but also to the model established by the Carolingian empire. Just as Charlemagne and his successors cultivated learning and the production of manuscripts, so too did the Ottonians. The production of illuminated manuscripts, however, seems to have taken time to develop—picking up only toward the end of the 10th century. Unlike the Carolingians, there were never “court schools” of painting. Rather, illuminated manuscripts were produced at important monastic centers, many of which were closely tied to the imperial family. As an art-historical category, Ottonian manuscript illumination generally refers to book painting produced in the Holy Roman Empire from the mid-10th to late-11th centuries—that is, several decades after the end of the Ottonian dynasty proper, in 1024. The majority of these illuminated manuscripts are biblical or liturgical books, many of which were intended to function as gifts or as ceremonial objects to be used on high feast days. As such, painters often made extensive use of gold, purple, and other precious materials, which transformed the books into veritable treasures. Indeed, the finest examples of Ottonian illumination count among the most spectacular survivals of art from the entire Middle Ages. Traditionally, scholarly accounts of these objects have been written largely as histories of style. To a certain extent, this is due to the dearth of factual information about when and where so many of the manuscripts were created. Nevertheless, scholars have begun to approach the corpus from several different perspectives, and now that so many manuscripts have been digitized in their entirety and are freely available online, this splendid body of material is accessible to an extent that was never possible before.