Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Adorned with the figures of humans, animals, or birds, often for narrative purposes. Used especially of initial letters in manuscripts and of the capitals of columns.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Decorated with figures of animals, flowers, human beings, etc., as the large illuminated letters of medieval manuscripts, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries woodcut initial-letters for books, or as surface-ornament in carving, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
illuminated withdecorative designs that represent parts of the followingtext
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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It will be a historiated letter, like one from an ancient Book of Hours where inside is a miniature scene from a story.
The Memory Palace Mira Bartók 2011
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It will be a historiated letter, like one from an ancient Book of Hours where inside is a miniature scene from a story.
The Memory Palace Mira Bartók 2011
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A late thirteenth-century Dominican Psalter now at Nuremberg, probably from a Bavarian house, has the most elaborate illumination cycle of the group. 91 There is copious use of gold illumination and bright colors that highlight the nineteen full-page miniatures and ten historiated initials in the manuscript.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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The introit for the first Sunday in Advent, Ad te levavi, was usually one of the most elaborately decorated as this introit opened the Temporale and hence the gradual proper. 99 None of the graduals of German Dominican women were decorated with miniatures, only decorated or historiated initials.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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Of the seventy-two miniatures and historiated initials in the manuscript, thirty-four contain John the Evangelist.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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Of the twenty examples, only four contain miniatures or historiated initials, but all the examples have decorated initials.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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In the similar pair of Unterlinden graduals there are six historiated and illuminated initials each, all marking the same liturgical passages. 100 A third gradual from that house has no such initials, although it mirrors the other two manuscripts in all other respects. 101 Instead, more simplified decorated initials mark important passages in the text.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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In manuscripts the divisions are denoted by the use of large initials and in more elaborate manuscripts by historiated initials or miniatures.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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The other illuminated gradual contains the same sequence of historiated initials, but with less detail. 139 John is no longer in the company of his venerators, but he remains the only saint depicted in the Sanctorale of the gradual.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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Like Psalters they often contained historiated initials or at least decorated initials that marked important liturgical events such as Christmas.
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008
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