How Decorated Initials Made Early Book Pages Pop

Dear reader, artist, lover of old books and the history of science and art,

Decorated initials, this essay’s subject, are truly visual things, so instead of starting with an explanation or general description, we ask you to look at this figure.

This captivating page draws the reader in with its large capital letter—the initial— which is the main source of its beauty. In more modern terms, “A[n initial] letter can pop abruptly out of a quiet text . . . to act as a multimedia hub bursting with . . . energy and intensity.” No wonder that while initials are most commonly featured in old books, they can be found in new publications as well; the aesthetic value they bring to the page is evident in any age.

A whole story or little world is condensed in some of these miniature images! And while most of the tiny objects, plants, and figures are easy to identify, the meaning of others may be ambiguous, if not mysterious. The observer, who must lean close to examine the details, can get carried away with imaginative interpretations. Some scholars indeed have gone so far as to search for hidden meanings in book decorations. For example, Harold Bayley, in his New Light on the Renaissance (1909), claimed that printers’ type ornaments and paper watermarks communicated coded information to members of persecuted religious sects. The meaning of initials’ various design elements, however, is more overt and straightforward.

Initials are first identified as either plain or decorated. Of course, a plain initial can still be decorative in its size, style, color, or shape, but variation among them is relatively limited. There are two main categories of plain letterforms, distinguished by their style of script or typeface: Antiqua, following the rounded lines of classical Roman letters, and the angular Gothic or Fraktur, originating from the German medieval calligraphic hand. Naturally, the plain letterform is the basic element of decorated initials as well.

Decorated initials’ embellishment, patterns, designs, and themes give rise to myriad categories, and these groupings can help us interpret the visual message of an initial and sometimes its relation to the text. Historians of the subject developed special terminology to describe the variety of initials.

Ornamental initials feature any kind of decoration. Within this largest group, inhabited initials contain human or animal forms that cannot be identified as references to a known story, while historiated ones include identifiable figures or scenes and may connect thematically to the text they start. Pictorial initials go even further: they function as illustrations, intentionally and exactly matching texts’ subjects. The subject matter of initials often alludes to—among many other sources—ancient mythology or the Bible, hence the additional categories of mythological and biblical. The classifications of floriated and floral speak for themselves, while the term calligraphic specifies an initial richly embellished with curves and curls, shaped like it has been drawn with a quill. Another few categories refer to the imagery that appears in the ornamentation; examples include armorial and heraldic initials depicting weapons and crests. Certain moods and atmospheres of decorations also lead to descriptors such as grotesque, comical, or pastoral. Moreover, some historians talk about symbolic initials, a category that may apply to any decorated capital letter. 

Why have these large letters developed and taken on so many varied forms? What is their function?

Functionally, initials belong to the category of capital letters but come in larger and variable sizes, and often feature color and ornamentation. While regular uppercase letters indicate—among other things—the beginning of sentences, initials mark the start of longer portions of text, including chapters, subchapters, and paragraphs. This was especially important in the Middle Ages, when books were often read aloud and the reader needed to know where to pause or emphasize the beginning of a new section. In other cases, initials helped readers to quickly find specific places in liturgical books during religious services. Large decorative letters are easily remembered and recognized, and so guide the reader to various parts of the text. In this respect, they function like bookmarks that denote certain pages within a volume. Bookmarks, too, can appear in unusual forms—for example, as small leather balls attached to the fore edge of a Renaissance tome.

As “pointers in a text,” initials are part of rubrication, a marking system used predominantly in old manuscripts and early printed books. In rubrication, typically red (rubrum means “red” in Latin) markers were added to indicate the ends and beginnings of sentences, paragraphs, sections, and chapters. In other words, rubrication “signals to the reader the structure of the text.” If paragraph signs were not red, they may not be noticed. Similarly, if initials were not large and sometimes colored and adorned, they would be more difficult to see. Initials not only help articulate the text, but also create a hierarchy: larger initials mark the beginnings of chapters, and smaller ones head subchapters. Rubrication, added by hand, remained effective for a while even when—because of printing—books became monochromatic at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But how do we explain examples in which the rubrication alternates between red and blue. Do the red paragraph marks mean something distinct from the blue ones?

In fact, there is no functional or semiotic difference between the blue and red markings; aesthetics alone inspired this color design. Similarly, aesthetics had much to do with the use and development of initials as well. They became fleuron, or the “flower of the page.” Throughout their long history, these beautiful “flowers” have bloomed into an almost distinct art form.

Thus, we have arrived at a general question of art: what is more important, form or function? We argue that in the case of decorated initials, their functions (as “pointers in a text,” as dividers, as interpretive aids) and their artistic form are equally significant and frequently inseparable. The basic element within an initial, the actual capital, should conform to the most important practical task, that is, to be a legible letter. Even though the decoration may convey varied new messages, the letter itself should remain familiar. Well-designed decorated initials perfectly combine function and form as well as the customary and the extraordinary.

Read more in Abcedarium, which is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit Smithsonian Books’ website to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from Abcedarium © 2018 Smithsonian Institution