| Popis: |
The illuminations that accompany the Gerona Beatus Commentaries on the Apocalypse have long been considered pictorial accompaniments to the written text of the New Testament Book of Revelations that function as visual aids for readers. This is only partly true, for several of the Beatus manuscripts contain illuminations that do not pertain to the Apocalypse but to other books of the Bible, though the text is absent. The Gerona Beatus, the most elaborately decorated of the Beatus manuscript family, is such an example, containing not only depictions of Old Testament stories but also a series of illustrations of the life of Christ not found in other manuscripts of its family. Produced in 975 AD, the Gerona Beatus continues the tradition of medieval apocalyptic thought in which the Antichrist was perceived of as embodied in the Muslim presence in Spain of the eighth through the fifteen centuries. As instruments of learning and meditation used by monks and other religious during the monastic practice of lectio divina, the Gerona Beatus illuminations functioned as more than simple graphic accompaniments, for they recreated a new narrative in which the reader could visualise the fulfilment of Biblical prophecies from both the Old and the New Testaments. By presenting the reader with a series of emotive symbols, depictions of Christ, and the images of the Apocalypse, the artists created a supernarrative in which various books of the Bible come into contact with one another and symbolically carry the reader into a ritual time in which earthly temporality ceases and a heightened level of spiritual understanding, which Saint Augustine calls visio spiritualis, is achieved. Through lectio divina, it was believed, the reader could access divine wisdom and, in so doing, prepare his soul for visio intellectualis, or divine understanding of God. The social climate in Spain the late tenth century caused concern among the Christian religious, who believed that Christ’s Second Coming was near and that the Church would soon conquer the perceived evil of Islam. The Gerona Beatus aided the religious to prepare themselves for that victory and for the Final Judgment that they believed imminent. |
