Miniatures

 

Thirteenth-century Paris witnessed the blossoming of a commercial book trade, one of whose most significant contributions was the “Paris Bible” – a direct ancestor of our modern Bible – in which, for the first time in history, the entire Scriptures were gathered into a single, textually standardized volume. Even a novice of medieval paleography might decipher what the present leaf is, thanks to the enduring influence of the Paris Bible. Directly above the text lies the running title, which identifies the biblical book – in this case, Chronicles (here in its Latin name “Paralipomenon”). On the recto, a line above the filigree initial ‘L’ appears the Roman numeral XXIX, indicating the chapter number. Thus, the leaf contains the final lines of I Chronicles 28 and the opening of I Chronicles 29, continuing onto the verso and followed by Jerome’s prologue to II Chronicles. The prologue is introduced by a large decorated initial ‘E’ (for “Eusebius ieronimus,” Jerome’s name in Latin). A tiny scroll mark next to the initial sheds light on the working methods of the Parisian book trade. The scribe placed this mark as a visual instruction beside the blank space he reserved for the illuminator when copying the text. Seeing the space and the instruction, the illuminator then completed it with an initial painted in rinceaux (vine scrolls).

 

The earliest published reference to the parent manuscript appears to be London, Sotheby’s, 5 December 1989, lot 79. By the time of that sale, it had already lost most of its leaves with historiated initials, including the present leaf. Also absent from the manuscript by the time of the 1989 sale were six sister leaves sold at Christie’s London on 3 December 2015 as lot 13. This manuscript and its dispersed leaves are stylistically related to the illuminators of the Sainte-Chapelle Group, christened by Robert Branner after the celebrated Third Gospel Book of Sainte-Chapelle (Paris, BnF, MS lat. 17326), commissioned during the reign of Saint Louis. Noteworthy is the close resemblance in the long-necked, often winged monsters that perch on nearly every illuminated page of the Gospel Book. Based on the palette and the style of ivy vines, our leaf can be attributed more specifically to two subgroups of artists active slightly later than those responsible for lat. 17326 – namely the Henry VIII Group and the Cholet Group (cf. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. bibl. fol. 14; Le Mans, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 262).

 

At an unknown date before the sale at Sotheby’s in 1989, the original manuscript was tampered with. Of the sixty-five initials then remaining in the volume, about eighteen had been partially cut out and then patched with fragments of other initials or sections of text – either from the same Bible or from other manuscripts. For example, in 1989, folio 435 included an initial of the Trinity tentatively ascribed to Branner’s Corpus Atelier in the Sotheby’s sale and coming from another thirteenth-century Bible; the Trinity was used to repair a hole in the parchment. The legal cutting pasted onto the present leaf is from a slightly later manuscript of Gratian’s Decretals (for more on the Decretals see Cat. no. 6). A miniature in Amiens (Bibliothèque Louis Aragon, MS 355) contains the identical composition, offering a close iconographic parallel and stylistically pointing to an origin in Toulouse around 1320. The miniature illustrates Causa XXI, in which Gratian rebukes priests for their worldly interests and delineates the boundaries between civil and canon jurisdiction. The Causa opens with an archpriest who becomes “the proctor of secular affairs,” adorning himself with bright and glittering garments. When his bishop attempts to correct him, he abandons his office and flees for refuge to a secular judge. The miniature neatly captures this narrative. On the left appears the confrontation between the bishop and the archpriest, the latter shown tonsured, dressed in bright garments, and accompanied by a secular judge. On the right, the archpriest engages in a conversation with that same judge.

 

Carefully trimmed to fit as a single-column miniature, neatly outlined to provide a frame, and placed under a striking decorated initial, the cutting is so well integrated into the leaf that only an attentive reading of the text reveals that it covers nine lines of script. But who pasted this seemingly unrelated miniature here, and for what purpose? The true reason for the insertion of the miniature will likely never be known. Perhaps simply to beautify an otherwise “plain” leaf? In this sense, the leaf itself becomes a “lost art,” echoing the spirit of this catalogue: just as the past owner who carefully pasted it there once participated in the book’s “visible marks of complex journeys,” so too do we, seeking to reconstruct and understand what no longer survives intact.