Detail from a rare Blackletter Bible (1497) printed and rubricated in Strasbourg by J.R.Grueninger.

Rubrication was one of several steps in the medieval process of manuscript making. Practitioners of rubrication, so-called rubricators, were specialized scribes who 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". Photograph of a page from a rare Blackletter bible (1497) printed in Strassburg by J.R.Grueninger. ... Photograph of a page from a rare Blackletter bible (1497) printed in Strassburg by J.R.Grueninger. ... Blackletter in a Latin Bible of AD 1407, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. ... The word Bible refers to the canonical collections of sacred writings of Judaism and Christianity. ... 1497 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... City flag City coat of arms Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Region Alsace Department Bas-Rhin (67) Intercommunality Urban Community of Strasbourg Mayor Fabienne Keller  (UMP) (since 2001) City Statistics Land area¹ 78. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ... This is about scribe, the profession. ... An ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for colouring a surface to render an image or text. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

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. Rubric can refer to: In typography, rubric refers to a section of red text In academia, rubric is a grading scheme In liturgy, rubric refers to instructions indicating actions to be performed rather than words to be said A rubric is also an authoritative rule, an explanatory or introductory commentary...

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. A canto is a significant section of a long poem or the highest part in a piece of choral music. ... In the strictest definition of illuminated manuscript, only manuscripts decorated with gold or silver, like this miniature of Christ in Majesty from the Aberdeen Bestiary (folio 4v), would be considered illuminated. ... General Name, Symbol, Number gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 6, d Appearance metallic yellow Atomic mass 196. ... Prism splitting light Light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength that is visible to the eye (visible light) or, in a technical or scientific context, electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength[1]. The elementary particle that defines light is the photon. ...

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. Annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. ... The term margin has many meanings: In telecommunication, margin has the following meanings: In communications systems, the maximum degree of signal distortion that can be tolerated without affecting the restitution, without its being interpreted incorrectly by the decision circuit. ... Codicology is the study of a codex, an older handwritten book. ... Provenance is the origin or source from which anything comes. ...

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.

External links

• Manuscript Studies: Decoration and Illumination
• Paging Through Medieval Lives
• The Making of a Manuscript