When textual critics study a New Testament manuscript,
their primary focus is the text that it contains. Dr. Karen York, who served until January 2018
as the Director of the Curatorial Department of the Museum of the Bible,
explores manuscripts with a different focus in the book The Bible Illuminated: How Art
Brought the Bible to an Illiterate World.
Dr. York briefly describes, in short chapters, the artwork found in 61
Biblical manuscripts, and readers are given full-color examples of the artwork
found in each one – often in the form of full-page illustrations. Len Woods also contributed to the book.
Novice
manuscript-admirers will likely find their vocabularies expanded by the rare
terms that are encountered from the outset; before the end of the first three
chapters (on the Rossano Gospels, the Vienna Genesis, and the Book of Durrow),
readers will encounter words such as folio, scriptio
continua, evangelistary, insular, colophon, canon table, and sacristy. Fortunately most of these terms are
accompanied by their definitions, making this book a rather helpful
introduction to the jargon of manuscript-studies; by the time attentive readers reach the
end of the book, they will be familiar with medieval book-production.
Fewer than half of the manuscripts featured in The Bible Illuminated are of much
interest for text-critical purposes – most are Latin, a few are Hebrew, and over
a dozen are Latin devotional books – but for the story of medieval art, every
one is interesting. The Book of Kells is
featured, of course, along with the Harley Golden Gospels, the Theodore Psalter
(one of the few Greek volumes described in the book), and volumes such as the
Winchester Bible and the Luttrell Psalter.
(Alas, the Bury Bible is not featured.)
Readers are likely to not only gain an appreciation of the
use of art in medieval Bibles (and related books) but also gain some
fascinating details about specific manuscripts, such as information about the
cover of Codex Aureus of Echternach, or the story about how the Sarajevo
Haggadah survived World War II, or the historical background of the Psalter of Queen Melisende.
One could perhaps wish for a greater geographical variety
of sample-books; it would have been nice to see a page from the Ethiopic Garima Gospels, and a few examples of Armenian ornamentation and illustration, and at
least one example of art in a manuscript from Egypt . This shortcoming, however, by no means
diminishes this book’s value as an illuminating review of primarily European art in primarily
European manuscripts.
The Bible
Illuminated: How Art Brought the Bible
to an Illiterate World is published by Worthy Books, in association with
the Museum of the Bible. It is available
online at Amazon for about $8.00, and I was able to find it (as of early
October 2018) for about the same price at a local Ollie’s store. The lavish pictures alone are well worth the price;
this book is an art gallery you can hold in your hands.
Post-script: Worthy Books also sells bookmarks that feature art from a few of the volumes featured in The Bible Illuminated, including the Rice Psalter and the Hours & Psalter of Elizabeth de Bohun. I imagine that they would complement the book attractively on a coffee table.
Post-script: Worthy Books also sells bookmarks that feature art from a few of the volumes featured in The Bible Illuminated, including the Rice Psalter and the Hours & Psalter of Elizabeth de Bohun. I imagine that they would complement the book attractively on a coffee table.
Thanks James! I want to get this book. Our Ollie's doesn't have it but I'll find it online.
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