Treasure binding

A treasure binding or jewelled bookbinding is a luxurious book cover using metalwork in gold or silver, jewels, or ivory, perhaps in addition to more usual bookbinding material for book covers such as leather, velvet, or other cloth. The actual bookbinding technique is the same as for other medieval books, with the folios, normally of vellum, stitched together and bound to wooden cover boards. The metal furnishings of the treasure binding are then fixed, normally by tacks, onto these boards. Treasure bindings appear to have existed from at least Late Antiquity, though there are no surviving examples from so early, and Early Medieval examples are very rare. They were less used by the end of the Middle Ages, but a few continued to be produced in the West even up to the present day, and many more in areas where Eastern Orthodoxy predominated. The bindings were mainly used on grand illuminated manuscripts, especially gospel books designed for the altar and use in church services, rather than study in the library.

The vast majority of these bookbindings were later destroyed as their valuable gold and jewels were removed by looters, or the owners when in need of cash. Others survive without their jewels, and many are either no longer attached to a book, or have been moved to a different book. Some survive in major libraries; for example, the Morgan Library in New York City, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, the British Library in London, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. As the carved ivory reliefs often used could not usually be recycled, these survive in much larger numbers, giving a better idea of the numbers of treasure bindings that once existed. Other examples are recorded in documentary sources but though the books survive the covers do not. The Book of Kells lost its binding after a robbery, and the fate of the missing cover of the Book of Lindisfarne is not recorded.

In the Eastern Orthodox churches treasure bindings have continued to be produced, mainly for liturgical gospel books, up to the present day, and exist in many artistic styles. Other styles of binding using gems, and typically pearls, have a covering of velvet or other textile, to which the gems are sewn or otherwise fixed. These were more likely to be for the private books of a grand person, especially the prayer books and books of hours of female royalty, and may also include embroidery.

The techniques for producing jewelled bookbinding have evolved over the course of history with the technologies and methods used in creating books. During the 4th century of the Christian era, manuscripts on papyrus or vellum scrolls first became flattened and turned into books with cut pages tied together through holes punched in their margins. Beginning in the 5th century, books were sewn together in this manner using leather thongs to make the bind stronger and longer lasting with wooden boards placed on top and bottom to keep the pages flat. These thongs then came to be laced into the boards and covered entirely by leather.

Boards afforded the opportunity for decorative ornamentation, with metal casings set into the wood for the installation of precious gems, stones, and jewels. The cover material would then be laid over the casings by hand and cut around the rim of the casings to reveal the jewels. The books typically bound were gospels and other religious books made for use within the church. In the Middle Ages, the responsibility of creating adorned books went to metalworkers and guilders, not the bookbinders, who worked with sheets of gold, silver, or copper to create jewelled and enamelled panels that were nailed separately into the wooden boards.

Metalwork book furniture also included metal clasps holding the book shut when not in use, and isolated metal elements decorating a leather or cloth cover, which were very common in grander libraries in the later Middle Ages. Decorative book clasps or straps were made with jewels or repoussé metal from the 12th century onward, particularly in Holland and Germany. In Scotland and Ireland from the 9th century or earlier, books that were regarded as relics of monastic leaders were enshrined in a decorated metal reliquary box called a cumdach, and thereafter were probably not used as books. These were even carried into battle as a kind of standard, worn around the neck by a soldier like a protective amulet. Jewelled slipcases or boxes were also used to house small editions of the Qur’an during this time period.

In fashion in the 16th century were "books of golde": small, devotional books adorned with jewelled or enamelled covers worn as a girdle or around the neck like pieces of jewellery by the English court. These pieces can be seen in portraits from the period and records of jewels from the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.

Treasure bindings were a luxury affordable only by wealthy elites, and were commissioned by wealthy private collectors, churches and senior clergy and royalty, and were often commissioned for presentation by or to royal or noble persons. The earliest reference to them is in a letter of Saint Jerome of 384, where he "writes scornfully of the wealthy Christian women whose books are written in gold on purple vellum, and clothed with gems". From at least the 6th century they are seen in mosaics and other images, such as the 6th-century icon of Christ Pantocrator from Saint Catherine's Monastery and the famous mosaic of Justinian I in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. The ivory panels often placed in the centre of covers were adapted from the style of consular diptychs, and indeed a large proportion of surviving examples of those were reused on book covers in the Middle Ages. Some bindings were created to contain relics of saints, and these large books were sometimes seen suspended from golden rods and carried in the public processions of Byzantine emperors. Especially in the Celtic Christianity of Ireland and Britain, relatively ordinary books that had belonged to monastic saints became treated as relics, and might be rebound with a treasure binding, or placed in a cumdach.