The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald (review)

Reviews 201 Dutton, Paul Edward and Herbert Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings of theFirst Bible ofCharles the Bald (Recentiores: Later Latin Texts an Contexts), A n n Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997; cloth; pp. xii, 137; 1figure;5 colour, 37b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$67.00. In this compact work, Dutton and Kessler set a cultural artefact the Carolingian ninth century in a series of contexts, ranging from the codicological to the political to the cosmic. Their study reveals how intellectual traditions and immediate economic concerns motivated the artistic judgements of a scriptorium in producing one of the most admired early medieval codices. The collaborators happily join the benefits of their disciplines: Kessler, a scholar of late antique and Carolingian art history, and Dutton, a student of Carolingian literary and political history, produce an enlightening study of the role of intellectual and monastic reactions to the major issues of Carolingian politics. The so-called 'First Bible of Charles the Bald' is a de luxe codex of the Old and N e w Testaments, produced by the scriptorium of the monastery of St-Martin in Tours, and presented to Charles, grandson of Charlemagne, in the 840s, early in the young king's reign. Later given away by its honorand as a gift to the cathedral of Metz in 869, the codex n o w rests in Paris, enjoying the shelf mark Bibliotheque Nationale, M S lat. 1. The codex is lavishly produced, featuring eight full page illuminations (seven set at the head of major individual books; an eighth, placed at the very end, portraying, in anticipation, the presentation of the book to the king), plus seven pages of poetry produced specifically for the occasion of the presentation of the book to Charles. Most of the illuminations also feature short poetic labels (tituli), some of which were also probably written specifically for this codex and the ceremony of its offering to the king. 202 Reviews Dutton and Kessler study the relationship between these poems and illustrations, to show that there was a single 'architect' behind the design of the whole codex, w h o that was, what his motives were, and h o w he set about achieving his ends. A significant portion of the book is the Appendix, which presents the written and pictorial texts: for the poetry, a n e w edition of the original poems and tituli (the standard edition is Ludwig Traube's in the Monumenta Germaniae historica of 1896) with facing-page English translation, followed by line-by-line commentary and notes; for the illustrations, plates showing all the illustrations and the pages of poetry, five in colour, and comparanda. Readers are rightly advised to familiarise themselves with the contents of this appendix first, before beginning on the preceding study. O n the basis of vocabulary and style, Dutton and Kessler identify the anonymous poet of all three dedicatory poems, and of the new tituli, as Audradus Modicus, a priest and canon of St-Martins known to have been involved in the production of other manuscripts in the scriptorium, and later the author of an extensive collection of poems, Liber revelationum, discussed in Dutton's The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (1994). Audradus, it is argued, was notjust the author, but also the 'architect' of the whole codex, closely directing the illuminators in their imagery, and making major decisions to rearrange the traditional structure of a biblical codex to accommodate his vision and n e w dedicatory poems. Through a careful chronological reconstruction, the authors show that the codex was probably presented to Charles the Bald late in 845, possibly at Christmas, near the end of drawn-out negotiations between the king and the canons of the monastery regarding their property holdings, and theirrightsto self-government through election of an abbot from their o w n ranks. The latter issue was particularly topical. As nobles consolidated their holdings and offices in each of the three Frankish Reviews 203 kingdoms defined by the Treaty of Verdun of 843, and withdrew from others, Adelard, the former Count of Tours and lay abbot of StMartins , ended his tenure of both positions in the course of...