Rubricating -- Initial Pages or Title Pages -- Prefaces & Notes in Colour -- Pages with Coloured Headings -- Page or Column Heading & Initial -- Versals in Column or Marginal Bands -- Stanzas or Verses marked by Versals -- Music with Red Staves -- Tail-Pieces, Colophons, &c. -- Rubricating: General Remarks.
"_Red, either in the form of a pigment or fluid ink, is of very ancient and common use. It is seen on the early Egyptian papyri; and it appears in the earliest extant vellum MSS., either in titles or the first lines of columns or chapters. The Greek term was_ [Greek:melanion kokkinon]; _Latin_ minium,[26] rubrica."--(Thompson's "G. & L. Palæography," p. 51.)
_Rubricating_, or the adding of Red, _or other coloured_, letters, line-finishings, or signs, to a MS. or Book, in which the main body of the text is already completed in black, constitutes in itself a very useful and effective form of decoration. It is, moreover, a connecting link between plain writing and illumination proper; and we may safely assume that the artists who made the beautiful illuminations of the Middle Ages were trained as _scribes_ and _rubricators_.
Fig. 89 represents an _Initial Page_ in Red Capitals. (The same arrangement may of course be used [p128] with a variety of colours and with gold: see Note (4) below). Such a page is, as it were, an "illumination" to _all_ the pages, following it in black text.
Title Pages came into fashion after printing was introduced. Early MSS. commonly began with the _opening words_ written in large, decorated capitals, the _title_ sometimes being written quite small, near the top of the page: other details were commonly put in the _colophon_ in early books (see p. 142).
When the title is more important, in a literary sense, than the opening sentence, it may be well to follow the modern fashion. But when there is a finely worded opening sentence--perhaps the key-note to the rest of the text--while the title is merely for reference, it seems reasonable to magnify and illuminate the actual beginning of the book rather than the mere name of it (see p. 365).
NOTE (1).--In fig. 89 the title--(JESU CHRISTI) _Evangelium Secundum Joannem_--is written in as a decoration of the initial word; the old form "IH[=V] XP[=I]" is used for "Jesu Christi" (these letters, it will be noticed, are here employed to lighten the large capitals, see p. 208).