Editing Illuminated manuscript (section)

== Patrons==
At least in earlier periods, monasteries were the biggest manufacturers of illuminated manuscripts. They produced manuscripts for their own use; heavily illuminated ones tended to be reserved for liturgical use in the early period, while the monastery library held plainer texts. In the early period manuscripts were often commissioned by rulers for their own personal use or as diplomatic gifts, and many old manuscripts continued to be given in this way, even into the [[Early Modern]] period.<ref name="Kauffmann2018" /> Especially after the book of hours became popular, wealthy individuals commissioned works as a sign of status within the community, sometimes including [[donor portrait]]s or [[heraldry]]: "In a scene from the New Testament, Christ would be shown larger than an apostle, who would be bigger than a mere bystander in the picture, while the humble donor of the painting or the artist himself might appear as a tiny figure in the corner."<ref name="DeHamel2001"/> The calendar was also personalized, recording the feast days of local or family saints.

By the end of the Middle Ages even many religious manuscripts were produced in secular commercial workshops, such as that of [[William de Brailes]] in 13th-century Oxford, for distribution through a network of agents, and blank spaces might be reserved for the appropriate heraldry to be added locally by the buyer.  The growing genre of luxury illuminated manuscripts of secular works was very largely produced in commercial workshops, mostly in cities such as Paris, [[Ghent]], [[Bruges]] and north Italy.