08 August 2020
Ludicrous figures in the margin
‘Hours of the Virgin, decorated with shields of arms, and ludicrous figures in the margin’, was the description of Harley MS 6563 provided in the 1808 catalogue of the Harley Collection. Our catalogue records have come on a long way since then, but the lively marginal antics in this little Book of Hours still stand out. Already popular with viewers on the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, they can now be appreciated in full on our Digitised Manuscripts site.
Harley MS 6563 was made around 1320-1330 in Southern England, perhaps London, probably for a woman owner. Originally the manuscript must have been extensively illuminated, but sadly all the pages containing decorated initials or miniatures were removed in the early modern period. Yet almost all of its remaining pages feature drawings from the topsy-turvy world of medieval marginalia. In honour of its digitisation, let’s dive down the parchment rabbit hole to explore some of its marginal subjects and their possible meanings.
While endlessly inventive, this kind of playful marginalia found in manuscripts of the 13th-14th centuries tended to draw on certain reccurring themes which were common to medieval art of other media such as stained-glass windows, wall paintings, misericords and stone carvings, as well as popular literature of the time. The meanings of these themes are much debated and there are no definite answers, but this uncertainty makes marginalia all the more fun to puzzle over.
Crafty foxes
One much-loved character who makes a prominent appearance in the margins of this Book of Hours is the crafty fox, trickster and master of disguise, who was well-known to medieval audiences from the Renard the Fox stories and other animal fables. Two double-page scenes in the manuscript show a fox preaching to a flock of birds. The fox leans on a pilgrim’s staff and gestures emphatically while the birds gaze on in gullible wonder. Later in the manuscript we see the conclusion of the tale: a fox running away with an unlucky member of the congregation in his jaws.
In another double-page scene the fox appears as a schoolmaster, birch and rod in hand, teaching a dog pupil who holds a book up to his face as though attempting to read. As with his preacher guise, the fox once again assumes a position of authority to misguide the ignorant and unwary.
Such scenes might be understood as social satires commenting on the corruption and folly of the human world. There may be a lesson to be learned here, as the Nun’s Priest concludes his retelling of a Renard the Fox story in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ‘Taketh the moralite, goode men’ (take up the moral, good men)—although he is conveniently vague about what the moral actually is.
Animal musicians
One particularly well-represented subject in this Book of Hours is animal musicians. A whole musical troupe of cats, pigs, dogs and rabbits is shown in concert over a series of five leaves in the Penitential Psalms, and others also appear throughout the manuscript.
The animal musicians probably belong to the popular theme in medieval marginalia of ‘the world turned upside down’. The idea that animals are unable to appreciate music was commonplace in the Middle Ages. A proverb inherited from classical antiquity via Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy referred to someone who fails to understand something as ‘the ass which cannot hear the lyre’. Similarly, a Middle English poem listing impossibilities includes, ‘whan swyn be conyng in al poyntes of musyke’ (when swine are knowledgeable in all points of music), as we might say ‘when pigs might fly’. The animal musicians might therefore represent the impossible becoming reality.
Fighting snails
Another example of the inversion of reality is the ever-popular subject of figures fighting snails. In medieval marginalia, snails are notoriously hostile, as we see in this Book of Hours where a man attempts to fend off a large advancing snail with a club. On the following page, another man has cast down his sword and shield and begs for mercy before a ferocious mollusc.
Warrior women
But if anyone is able to triumph over such a formidable adversary, it is probably this naked woman warrior who is shown charging with a lance towards a snail. As part of the reversal of the social order in medieval margins, women, who were often expected to be subservient in medieval society, are sometimes shown as powerful militants and victors. Similarly, on another page a man surrenders to an armed woman.
Battle of the cats and mice
Role reversal is also the theme of the series of images for which this manuscript is best known: the battle of the cats and the mice. Over an eight-page narrative sequence, an epic war unfolds. First the mice besiege the cats’ castle, hurling rocks from a trebuchet and attempting to scale its walls. Then the cats attack the mouse castle, one firing a crossbow and another being crushed by a falling rock from the battlements. Next, a cat archer and a mouse lancer go head-to-head, and finally the mouse succeeds in impaling the unfortunate cat.
This triumph of the mice over the cats may also be understood as social commentary. In Boccaccio's Decameron, the artist and trickster Bruno paints a fresco of a battle of cats and mice in the house of the foolish doctor Simone. The doctor considers it a very fine piece, little knowing that Bruno and his friend Buffalmacco are actually swindling him. In the story, the cat’s defeat by the mice may reflect the wealthy doctor’s humiliation by the artists.
Rabbit huntsmen
The idea of the hunted becoming the hunter also underlies the manuscript’s images of a rabbit huntsman, who in one instance takes aim at a very sorry-looking spotty dog. The same theme of killer rabbits taking revenge on the hounds is found in the margins of the Smithfield Decretals.
The rich man and Lazarus
Yet there is also religious imagery with serious moral messages, such as scenes of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar from the Gospel of Luke (16:19–31). First we see three fashionably dressed diners at a feast shooing away a beggar on the facing page while dogs lick the sores on his legs. On the following pages, the rich man is shown on his deathbed accompanied by a devil, while the beggar is shown dying outdoors with an angel at his side.
This parable is also an instance of role reversal in that the rich man suffers torments in death, whereas the beggar is received into comfort, yet here the message is clearly sincere. That at least one of the manuscript’s owners found it disturbingly real is suggested by the way in which they attempted to rub out the figures of the devil and angel.
To us it may seem strange to place scenes of cartoon violence alongside religious imagery with such urgent moral messages. But for medieval audiences, perhaps this was all part of a visual culture in which the sacred and profane, the entertaining and didactic, and the ludicrous and meaningful were more intricately intertwined than today.
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03 August 2020
Treasures on Tour: an Armagh gospel-book on display in Belfast
Last year we announced the digitisation of two of the Library's most important medieval Irish manuscripts, the Harley Irish Gospels. This year we're loaning one of them, the Gospels of Máel Brigte (Harley MS 1802), to the Ulster Museum in Belfast as part of the British Library’s Treasures on Tour programme.
As we discussed in the previous blog post, the manuscript has a number of fascinating features. Its detailed colophons reveal that it was made by a 28-year-old scribe named Máel Brigte, working in Armagh in 1138. Máel Brigte also mentioned contemporary events in his colophons, including a great storm that happened two years earlier and the killing of King Cormac Mac Carthaig by Toirdelbach Ua Briain in 1138, which he called 'a great crime'.
The main texts of the manuscript are the Gospels, which are splendidly illustrated with evangelist symbols and decorated initial letters painted in vibrant colours. Unusually, the animal symbols of the evangelists are depicted sideways, as though standing on a vertical ground. Perhaps this was designed to make the figures fill the space, or to remind the viewer to mentally reorient themselves before beginning to read the Gospel text.
In addition to the Gospels, the pages of the manuscript are filled with other rare and interesting texts, including commentaries, poems and exegesis. A particularly intriguing example is an Irish poem on the names and descriptions of the Three Magi (f. 5v), which seems to be one of the earliest texts that describe one of the magi as being black. According to the poem, Melcho was the elder magus, who had grey hair, wore a yellow mantle, a green tunic and speckled sandals, and presented gold; Caspar was youthful and beardless, wore a purple mantle, yellow tunic and green sandals, and presented Frankincense; while Patifarsat was a dark-skinned man (fer odor) who wore a white-spotted mantle and yellow sandals, and presented myrrh.
On f. 9v another Irish poem describes the appearance of Christ and the Apostles, stating that Christ had brown hair and a long red beard.
The Gospels of Máel Brigte is now on display in the Saints and Scholars gallery at Ulster Museum for the next three months. The Treasures on Tour programme is generously supported by the Helen Hamlyn Trust. The British Library is working with other libraries, museums and galleries across the UK to share our collections with thousands of people every day, and the Library will be announcing additional loans as part of Treasures on Tour over the coming months.
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28 July 2020
Picturing the Old Testament in the Rochester Bible
So far in this series of posts on the great Romanesque Bibles held by the British Library, I have focused on those made on the Continent: the Worms Bible, Arnstein Bible, Stavelot Bible and Floreffe Bible. Today’s blog is about an English example, from the former cathedral priory of St Andrew, Rochester, in the second quarter of the 12th century. Unlike the others, which are all in two huge volumes, only part of the Rochester Bible survives, now divided between the Royal collection in the British Library and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. Both portions are fully digitised and available online on the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site (Royal MS 1 C VII), and on the Walters Art Museum's site (MS W.18).
Together these two parts constitute one of only eleven known extant English Romanesque display Bibles. Although it is slightly smaller than the Continental manuscripts featured, measuring 395 x 265 mm, the Rochester Bible is still a larger format than most other manuscripts from the period. The Royal portion of the Bible includes only the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth and I–IV Kings (I–II Samuel and I–II Kings in modern Bibles), while the Walters portion contains the New Testament. Four of the seven books have historiated initials (letters containing identifiable scenes or figures) depicting events described in the first chapters of these books. These historiated initials occur only in the Royal portion of the Bible, at the beginning of four of its seven books: Joshua, and I, II and IV Kings.
In contrast to the incredibly complicated theological artwork of the Stavelot Bible and Floreffe Bible, the illustrations of these books initially appear to be more straightforward. For example, I Kings (I Samuel) begins with a discussion of Elkanah (Elcana in the Vulgate) and his two wives. Each is labelled in the initial with their names above. To his left, Peninnah (Phenenna) holds two children, and in contrast, the childless Hannah (Anna), to his right, holds one hand to her face, perhaps in a gesture of sorrow. This is a succinct summary of the first verses: ‘There was a man of Ramathaimsophim, of mount Ephraim, and his name was Elcana, . . . And he had two wives, the name of one was Anna, and the name of the other Phenenna. Phenenna had children: but Anna had no children’. (I Kings 1: 1-3).
Similarly, the initial at the beginning of IV Kings illustrates the second chapter of the text, which describes how, after seeing ‘a fiery chariot’ with ‘fiery horses’, Elias (Elijah) ‘went up by a whirlwind into heaven’ (IV Kings 2:11). Yet as C.M. Kauffmann has noted, the choice of this subject for the illustration rather than an event from the first chapter of the book underlines the significance of the Ascension of Elijah as a prefiguration of Christ’s Ascension.
The imagery for the book of Joshua may be viewed as another layered interpretation of the text. The initial shows two men conversing: one young and beardless, and the other with grey hair and beard. The older man is handing the younger man a book. In order to fit the figures into the initial ‘E’, the artist presented the scene sideways—a relatively rare solution—and used the bar of the ‘E’ as a column, creating a setting within a building. Unlike Elkanah and his wives, the figures are not labelled. Nevertheless, it seems likely that this scene represents the transmission of the law from Moses to Joshua, as set out a few verses later:
Take courage therefore, and be very valiant: that thou mayst observe and do all the law, which Moses my servant hath commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayst understand all things which thou dost. Let not the book of this law depart from thy mouth: but thou shalt meditate on it day and night, that thou mayst observe and do all things that are written in it: then shalt thou direct thy way, and understand it. (Joshua 1:7-8).
So this too, could have Christian significance as a reference to the Old Law that will be fulfilled in the New. It also echoes the actions of the blessed man of Psalm 1, who meditates on the law day and night, and who was understood by some Church Fathers to be a prefiguration of Christ. Further, as Lucy Freeman Sandler remarked, this verse begins next to the decorated initial in the right-hand column of the page, and the word ‘law’ (legem) appears only three lines lower than the image of the book in the initial (private communication).
Together, therefore, these initials enhance not only the elegant presentation of the Word, but also its interpretation.
Kathleen Doyle
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Further reading:
Walter Cahn, Romanesque Bible Illumination (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982), no. 33.
C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190 (London: Harvey Miller, 1975), no. 45.
C. M. Kauffmann, Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700-1550 (London: Harvey Miller, 2003), pp. 87, 94, pl. 62, Appendix 2.
07 July 2020
The 800th anniversary of the translation of Thomas Becket
On 29 December 1170, Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. The event shocked Christendom, and Becket was canonised as a martyr just three years later. On this day 800 years ago his body was translated (moved) from the crypt in Canterbury Cathedral to a new shrine in the Trinity Chapel.
Becket’s murder was recorded in a letter written by John of Salisbury (d. 1180), who was an eyewitness to the event. A copy of this letter is included in an early collection of letters assembled by Alan, the prior of the Cathedral from 1179 –1186 and later abbot of Tewkesbury (d. 1202), where it is illustrated by the earliest known representation of the murder (Cotton MS Claudius B ii).
Becket rose from relatively humble beginnings as the son of a London merchant to serve as chancellor to Henry II (r. 1154–89) from 1154, before becoming archbishop in 1162. Thereafter, he clashed with the King in defence of the autonomy of the Church. Thomas fled into exile in France in 1164, returning to England in early December 1170. Upon his return, tensions with the King still were unresolved, and a few weeks later, four knights left Henry’s court in Normandy and forced themselves into the Archbishop’s presence.
The images included in this manuscript narrate the sequence of events. In the upper register the Archbishop is at table when a messenger announces the arrival of the four knights, outside the door to the right. Below, having taken up arms, the knights enter the cathedral and attack Becket while he is kneeling before an altar. The knight wielding the sword may be Reginald Fitzurse, if the small animal head on his shield can be identified as a bear (ursus is ‘bear’ in Latin). To the right are four prostrated figures who venerate St Thomas at his tomb, perhaps representing the later penitence of the knights.
In many English medieval calendars this translation date is included as a feast day. For example, the Luttrell Psalter made for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell features an entry for ‘the translation of St Thomas, martyr’. This entry escaped later censorship following the November 1538 Proclamation issued jointly by Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell by which Becket was characterised as a ‘rebel and traitor to his prince’ rather than a saint, and accordingly that ‘his name, shall not be observed, nor the service, office, antiphons, collects, and prayers in his name read, but rased and put out of all the books.’ The date of Becket’s martyrdom on 29 December in the Luttrell Psalter, however, was struck out by a single, rather discreet, line.
Another calendar in which the translation survives on 7 July is an early 15th-century example from the diocese of Norwich. Here the image is of Becket as a young man in a bishop’s mitre, holding a sword representing the weapon of his martyrdom together with a cross-topped staff.
To discover more about Thomas Becket, you can read our earlier blogposts about Becket’s translation, Becket's martyrdom and erasing references to Becket in manuscripts. The letter collection (Cotton MS Claudius B ii) was digitised thanks to funding from The Polonsky Foundation England and France 800-1200 project, and you can view the manuscript's collection item page or read more about medieval saints in manuscripts on the project website.
Kathleen Doyle
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Part of the Polonsky Digitisation Project
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04 July 2020
Our latest list of digitised manuscripts
Long-term readers of our Blog may know that we periodically publish lists of our digitised manuscripts, the last of which was published in January 2020. With the arrival of summer, we are releasing a new update to our lists of manuscript hyperlinks. We hope this makes it easier for you to explore our amazing digitised treasures online.
An historiated initial 'D'(eus) with a man watching the sunrise, from a Book of Hours, c. 1260-70 (England, Oxford or West Midlands?): Egerton MS 1151, f. 38r (detail)
There are now over 3,600 Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts on the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts website. Here is a full list of all the items currently available, as of July 2020:
PDF: Download Full-list-digitised-mss-jun-2020
Excel: Download Full-list-digitised-mss-jun-2020 (this format cannot be downloaded on all web browsers).
St Michael the Archangel defeats the dragon and rescues a soul from its mouth, from the Prayer-book of Archbishop Arnulph II of Milan (998–1018): Egerton MS 3763, f. 104v
During this period of Covid-19 lockdown, the Library's Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern team has been busy as ever, working to make more manuscripts available online. All the images included in this blogpost are from manuscripts that we have digitised since January 2020. Here is a list of our most recent additions published over the last 6 months:
PDF: Download Digitised_mss_jan2020_june_2020
Excel: Download Digitised_mss_jan2020_june_2020
A petition of soldiers, complaining to their commander about pay (Diospolis Parva (Hiou), Egypt, 169–168 BC): Papyrus 638, f. 1r
A print of the Colosseum in Rome from the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (Italy, 1538): Cotton MS Augustus III/2, f. 53r
You can also read about some of the most significant items that have been published online in the following blogposts:
- The St Albans Benefactors' Book: precious gifts and colourful characters (Cotton MS Nero D VII)
- An atlas fit for a Tudor queen (Add MS 5415 A)
- Henry VIII: the possessions of a Tudor monarch (Harley MS 1419/1 and Harley MS 1419/2)
- Surveying Lord Burghley’s Atlas (Royal MS 18 D III)
- The Pageants of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (Cotton MS Julius E IV/3)
- Did Henry VIII believe in unicorns? (Sloane MS 1047)
Many images of our manuscripts are also available to download from our Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts which is searchable by keywords, dates, scribes and languages.
The arrival of Ulysses and Diomedes at Scyros, from an illustrated manuscript of Statius’ Thebais and Achilleis (Paris, 1st quarter of the 15th century): Burney MS 257, f. 239v
We hope you enjoy exploring our digitised manuscripts!
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24 June 2020
Chyryse: a midsummer night's recipe
Coinciding with the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist (24 June), midsummer was a time for celebrations both religious and secular in medieval society. These included church-going, holding pageants, lighting bonfires, singing, dancing, gathering flowers and feasting.
A taste of these medieval festivities survives in a recipe for chyryse, or cherry pudding, found in several medieval culinary collections. Some versions of the recipe specify that the cherries are to be picked on the feast of St John the Baptist, when they are at their best. The cherry harvest was closely associated with the festivities of midsummer and in medieval literature, the expression 'cherry time' was often used to signify short-lived good times.
For midsummer this year, I am experimenting with recreating chyryse from the British Library's copy of the Forme of Cury (Add MS 5016, m. 5), a recipe book composed by Richard II’s chief cook around 1390. Medieval recipe books are not quite as user-friendly as modern ones, often providing no quantities, obscure ingredients and bafflingly vague instructions. This, however, is all part of the fun.
The recipe
Take almaundes unblanched, waisshe hem, grynde hem, drawe hem up with gode broth. do þerto thridde part of chiryse. þe stones take oute and grynde hem smale. make a layour of gode brede & powdour and salt and do þerto. colour it with sandres so that it be stondyng, and florissh it with aneys and with cheweryes, and strawe þeruppon and serue it forth.
Take unblanched almonds, wash them, grind them, draw them up with good broth. Add a third part of cherries, take out the stones, and grind them small. Make a layour (thick sauce) of good bread and powder (spice mix) and salt and add. Colour it with sandalwood so that it is standing (thickened) and flourish it with aniseed and with cherries and strew on top and serve it forth.
Method
To make this recipe, I mixed together 100g ground almonds and 150ml red wine (the recipe calls for 'gode broth', i.e. animal stock, but some alternative versions use wine instead, which seems like a better option). I heated them gently in a pan. After removing the stones, I roughly pureed a large punnet of cherries with a hand blender and added them to the pan. I grated a slice of wholemeal bread to make breadcrumbs, which I added to the mixture along with a spice mix of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and salt (the recipe does not specify which spices, but this is an authentic medieval blend). Not having any sandalwood to dye it, I left out that step. I gently simmered the mixture for about 20 minutes until it thickened, then refrigerated it overnight. I served it with a garnish of aniseed and halved fresh cherries.
The verdict
Chyryse is like nothing I've eaten before, but I really like it. The mixture itself is not very attractive, although the garnish certainly helps. Its grainy texture is unlike most modern puddings, with semolina probably being the closest comparison. The strong fruity cherry flavour is warmed by the earthy spices. The aniseed is an especial winner, its liquorice kick perfectly complementing the mellow sweetness of the cherries. Once I'd got over its initial strangeness, I found chyryse to be a bewitching midsummer delight.
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***disclaimer: this recipe was made in my own time and at my own expense. No Library resources were used in the making of this chyryse! ***
13 June 2020
Layers of meaning in the Floreffe Bible
Throughout the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical communities reading the Bible understood it on more than one level. In this they were following the advice of the Church Fathers, who advocated interpreting the Bible morally and allegorically, in addition to literally. For example, in a prefatory letter to his Moralia in Job, Gregory the Great (d. 604) explained that understanding a text is like constructing a building:
For first we lay the historical foundation; then through typological signification we raise a citadel of faith in the structure of the mind; finally, through moral interpretation we cloth the building with colour.
The most sophisticated biblical illustrations incorporate layers of meaning into their designs in this way. In the late 11th and 12th centuries, this kind of complex composition was particularly popular in the Meuse valley, in modern day Belgium. This method, often with numerous inscriptions and biblical quotations embedded in the image, was employed to decorate metalwork caskets, crosses and reliquaries, in addition to books.
One of the most elaborate and complex examples of this type of decoration in any medium occurs in a large two-volume Bible made in the Premonstratensian abbey of Floreffe, on the river Sambre near Namur, c. 1170. The Bible is another ‘giant’ Romanesque Bible, measuring 475 x 330 mm, like the Worms, Stavelot and Arnstein Bibles explored on this blog recently. It is fully digitised and available online: Add MS 17737 and Add MS 17738.
The second volume begins with the book of Job illustrated with a stunning double-page painting. Parts of the image are straightforward literal renderings of verses from the first chapter of Job. For example, near the top of the left-hand page seven men and three women are seated together at a long table covered with different dishes. This party is made up of Job’s children: his seven sons ‘made a feast by houses, every one in his day. And sending, they called their three sisters, to eat and drink with them’ (Job 1:4).
Above the feasting scene, Job is shown offering a sacrifice to God, with the hand of God emerging making a sign of blessing. The text recounts that after each feast, Job would do this for his children ‘ne [forte] peccaverint filii mei et benedixerint Deo in cordibus suis’ (in case perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, Job:1:5), as quoted on the scroll that he holds in his left hand.
In contrast, the images below this become increasingly layered in meaning. The central image depicts the three theological virtues, Faith, Charity and Hope surrounded by personifications of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit in roundels. This corresponds to a moral interpretation of Job made by St Gregory in his Moralia in Job. St Gregory explained that Job’s three daughters are to be understood as the three theological virtues, and his sons as Seven Gifts of the Spirit mentioned in Isaiah 11:2.
The eighth roundel contains the right hand of the Lord, which proclaims Dextera Domini fecit virtutem (The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength, Psalm 117:16), and points directly below to a figure of Christ, with rays extending diagonally to twelve seated nimbed men. This image adds a further level of allegorical interpretation of the biblical text, in which the seven sons of Job are equated with the Apostles, who at Pentecost are filled with the sevenfold grace. (As explored by Anne-Marie Bouché, 'The spirit in the world: the virtues of the Floreffe Bible frontispiece: British Library, Add. Ms. 17738, ff. 3v-4r' in Virtue & Vice: The Personifications in the Index of Christian Art, ed. by Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2000), pp. 42-65.)
Below the Apostles is another interpretation of the seven virtues. The scene depicts the seven Corporal Acts of Mercy derived from Matthew 25:35-36 and Tobit 1:17, here illustrated by scenes of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing shelter for the homeless and visiting the prisoner.
On the opposite page is an image of the Transfiguration, during which Christ, flanked by Moses and Elijah, is ‘transfigured’ to appear in glory to Sts John, Peter and James (Matthew 17:1-9; Mark 9:2-8; and Luke 9:28-36). It is situated directly above a scene of the Last Supper conflated with Christ washing Peter’s feet. Like the facing page, numerous inscriptions interpret the images and their relationship to the forthcoming text. Directly above the two scenes a titulus explains that: ‘that which Moses veiled, behold the voice of the fathers reveals, and that which the prophets covered, Maria brought forth (Quem Moyses velat vox ecce paterna revelat. Quemq[ue] prophetia tegit est enixa maria).
This tour de force of biblical interpretation explored visually demonstrates the sophistication of the accompanying illustration to a grand monastic Bible.
To read more about the decoration of this Bible, see the recent post about the opening to the Gospel of St Mark.
Kathleen Doyle
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02 June 2020
The monumental art of the Stavelot Bible
Around fifty years before the making of the Worms Bible, which we featured recently on the blog, another giant Bible was produced at the abbey of St Remaclus at Stavelot, not far from Liège, in modern-day Belgium. Both volumes of the awe-inspiring Stavelot Bible are digitised and available online as Add MS 28106 and Add MS 28107.
The monk Goderannus recorded that he and brother Ernesto spent four years working on the Stavelot Bible, and he was precise about what had been achieved in that time. He stated that the writing, illuminating and binding (scriptura, illuminatione, ligatura) had all been completed in 1097.
Despite this specificity, scholars still disagree on whether the two monks (or Ernesto at least) were the artists as well as the scribes of this impressive work. Some speculate that the artists were paid laymen instead of monks, and hence were omitted from the long colophon. Moreover, the difference in style between initials and other painting included in the work suggests that more than two people may have been involved in their production—one scholar identified five different artists.
What is clear, however, is the quality and the sheer monumentality of the painting included in the Stavelot Bible. Its most famous image, which opens the New Testament, is the huge full-page vision of Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the Four Evangelists. This painting is a powerful icon-like frontal presentation of Christ at the end of time. Christ’s feet rest on the globe of the world divided into three parts (a medieval ‘T-O’ map, of the orbis terrarum, which looks like the letter ‘T’ inside the letter ‘O’), and he holds a golden cross in his left hand. For contemporary viewers, this image may have recalled large scale paintings in church apses, as John Lowden suggested.
The tall standing or seated prophets and Evangelists depicted at the beginning of their texts are equally expressive and prepossessing. These include unusual standing Evangelists holding scrolls before the prefaces to their Gospels, such as the image of St Luke above.
Painting on a much smaller scale is featured in the Bible's historiated initials. The most complex symbolism is reserved for the long initial ‘I’ (In principio) of Genesis that opens the first volume of the Stavelot Bible. Many small pictures cluster in and around the initial, and depict not the Days of Creation, as is typical in Genesis initials, but rather a series of scenes that provide a visual commentary on the story of salvation.
The words In principio read downwards in the centre, but all of the image sequences begin at the bottom of the page. The central group of roundels start with the Annunciation and culminate with an image of Christ in Majesty at the top. The Crucifixion forms the central part of the composition, and all around are other images from both the Old and New Testaments.
On the left side of the initial is the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Noah building the Ark, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and Moses receiving and then breaking the Tablets of the Law, below Christ preaching and angels. Related events fit in around these scenes, such as the Worshipping of the Golden Calf below Moses.
To the right of the central axis is an extended rare depiction of one of Christ’s parables, that of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-6), in which the kingdom of heaven is likened to a householder who hires labourers to work in his vineyard at different times of the day. All around the medallions in which the hiring process is enacted the labourers are engaged in pruning and caring for the vines.
This creative and unusual interpretation suggests a relatively high level of familiarity and understanding of the biblical text. In turn, this implies that if brothers Goderannus and Ernesto did not complete the illumination of the Bible themselves, they may have designed and supervised the work of those who did.
You can read more about the Stavelot Bible and find out about two other manuscripts from Stavelot in our previous blogposts. For another giant Romanesque Bible, see our recent blogpost on the Arnstein Bible.
Kathleen Doyle
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Further reading
Wayne Dynes, The Illuminations of the Stavelot Bible (New York, 1978).
John Lowden, ‘Illustration in biblical manuscripts’, in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, 4 vols (Cambridge, 2012- ), II: From 600 to 1450, ed. by Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (2012) pp. 446-81 (p. 454).
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