HISTORIATED INITIALS IN THE SAINT JEROME PROLOGUES IN 12TH – 13TH CENTURIE ILLUMINATED BIBLES

The article discusses the images of St. Jerome in the historiated initials in Latin Bibles. The iconographic variability of illustrations to the Jerome Prologues to the books of Holy Scripture, in 12th – 13th century manuscripts, demonstrates the lack of unified iconographic schemes for their themes during the period discussed. At the same time these illustrative sources show the processes of change in the formation of iconography: the traditional iconographic schemes used in medieval illuminated manuscripts (portraits of the author, dedication scenes) and their further transformation in new contexts, reveal such major themes as the connection of images with text and the functions of the image and the initial in the book.

The Performative Manuscript: Art, Agency and Public Ritual in Ottonian Mainz

The German city of Mainz under Archbishop Willigis (975–1011) witnessed a major flourishing of the arts, particularly in the field of architecture. During this period, a benedictional, now in St Gall, was also commissioned. Its only figurative content is an image of Christ in Majesty on its first folio. Taken as a case study, analysis of this permits an approach to the barely-explored concept of performativity in early medieval illuminated manuscripts. This Maiestas Domini, the list of blessings contained in the book and contemporary depictions of religious ceremonies invites consideration of the joint role that image and manuscript played in the dynamic liturgical rites during which the benedictional was handled.

Breaking the Contract between God and the Visual-Literary Fusion: Illuminated Manuscripts, William Blake and the Graphic Novel

This essay follows three different stages of the fusion of images and words in the tradition of the book. More specifically, it tackles the transformation undergone by the initially religious combination of visual figures and scriptural texts, exemplified by medieval illuminated manuscripts into the spiritual, non-dogmatic, illuminated books printed and painted by poet-prophet William Blake in a manner that combines mysticism and literature. Eventually, the analysis reaches the secularized genre of the graphic novel that renounces the metaphysical element embedded in the intertwining of the two media. If ninth-century manuscripts such as the Book of Kells were employed solely for divinely inspired renditions of religious texts, William Blake’s late eighteenthcentury illuminated books moved towards an individual, personal literature conveyed via unique pieces of art that asserted the importance of individuality in the process of creation. The modern rendition of the image-text illumination can be said to take the form of the graphic novel with writers such as Will Eisner and Alan Moore overtly expressing their indebtedness to the above-mentioned tradition by paying homage to William Blake in the pages of their graphic novels. However, the fully printed form of this twentieth-century literary genre, along with its separation from the intrinsic spirituality of the visual-literary fusion in order to meet the demands of a disenchanted era, necessarily reconceptualize the notion of illumination.

Medieval illuminated manuscripts: Online images and resources

With their rich representation of medieval life and thought, illuminated manuscripts serve as primary sources for scholars in any number of fields: history, literature, art history, women’s studies, religious studies, philosophy, the history of science, and more.

Der codierte Christus Figuration als Bild-Text-Dynamik im De laudibus sanctae crucis des Hrabanus Maurus

Among the early medieval illuminated manuscripts of the ninth century, the De laudibus sanctae crucis (Cod. Reg. Lat 124) by Hrabanus Maurus offers one of the most complex interplays of image-text relationships based on carmina figurata. It unfolds different levels and strategies of figuration. The specific aspects and qualities of its iconic practice can be described as a kind of coding. The coded subject and leitmotif of the cycle, which affects and gives structure to all other miniatures, is the central figure of Christus triumphans. The essay focuses on the detailed description and analysis of this symbiotic dynamic of a figural impulse that combines seeing, reading, and imagination into a meta-concept of figuration.