Rubrication
Rubrication was one of several steps in the
medieval process of
manuscript making. Practitioners of rubrication, so-called
rubricators, were specialized
scribes that received text from the manuscript's original scribe and supplemented it with additional text in red
ink for emphasis. The term
rubrication comes from the
Latin rubrico, "to color red".
The practice usually entailed the addition of red headings to mark the end of one section of text and the beginning of another. Such headings were sometimes used to introduce the subject of the following section or to declare its purpose and function. Rubrication was used so often in this regard that the term
rubric was commonly used as a generic term for headers of any type or color, though it technically referred only to headers to which red ink had been added.
Rubrication may also be used to emphasize the starting
character of a
canto or other division of text. This particular type of rubrication is similar to
flourishing, wherein red ink is used to style a leading character with artistic loops and swirls. However, this process is far less elaborate than
illumination, in which detailed pictures are incorporated into the manuscript often set in thin sheets of
gold to give the appearance of
light within the text.
Quite commonly the manuscript's initial scribe would provide notes to the rubricator in the form of
annotations made in the
margins of the text. Such notes were effectively indications to "rubricate here" or "add rubric". In many other cases, the initial scribe also held the position of rubricator, and so he applied rubrication as needed without the use of annotations. This is important, as a scribe's annotations to the rubricator can be used along with
codicology to establish a manuscript's history, or
provenance.
Later medieval practitioners extended the practice of rubrication to include the use of other colors of ink besides red. Most often, alternative colors included blue and green.
*
Manuscript Studies: Decoration and Illumination*
Paging Through Medieval Lives*
The Making of a Manuscript
