The (CUA Studies in Early Christianity) early Christian book

1. The Word Made Visible: The Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument

John Lowden The Word Made Visible The Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument Introduction In a paper entitled “The Beginnings of Biblical Illustration,” first published in 1999, I attempted to survey all the surviving biblical manuscripts that contain images made up to about the mid-seventh century.1 There proved to 13 In memory of Peter Lasko (1924–2003). I am grateful to Philip Rousseau for the invitation to deliver this paper, and for organizing a most stimulating and instructive conference. Claudia Rapp’s chapter in this volume in particular should be read as a kind of diptych with the present one. I also received helpful comments after repeating the lecture at a joint meeting of the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies and the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London. In preparing the lecture, acquiring slides and photographs, discussion before and after the event, and for advice, information, and assistance of various kinds, I am most grateful to Susan Boyd, Evangelos Chrysos, Carol Downer, Anne Duggan, Helen Evans, Carol Farr, David Ganz, Neil Grindley, Judith Herrin, Susan Holman, Tim Kirk, Kevanne Kirkwood, Marie-Pierre Lafitte, Jen Lindsay, Vrej Nersessian, Uschi Payne, Nicholas Pickwoad, Julian Raby, John L. Sharpe, Barrie Singleton, and William Voelkle. The library of the Warburg Institute proved, as ever, invaluable. The annotation is primarily to recent works and those containing extensive further bibliography. 1. The paper appears in Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, ed. John Williams (University Park, Pa., 1999; paperback ed., 2002), 9–59. A limited account, based largely on the publications of Kurt Weitzmann, has recently been provided by Ioannis Spatharakis, “Early Christian Illustrated Gospel Books from the East,” in The Impact of Scripture in Early Christianity, ed. J. den Boeft and M. L. van Pollvan de Lisdonk (Leiden, 1999), 102–21. In the same collection note also the articles of A. Provoost, “Le caractère et l’évolution des images bibliques dans l’art chrétien primitif,” 79–101; and P. C. J. van Dael, “Biblical Cycles on Church Walls: Pro Lectione Pictura,” 122–32. See also Barbara Zimmermann, “Die Codexillustration als neuer Kunstzweig: Spiegel einer geänderten Funktion des Buches in der Spätan- be only fourteen such books, some of them mere fragments. By focusing on broadly codicological topics, such as planning and layout, rather than questions of date and place of origin, I observed and sought to emphasize the extraordinary range and unpredictability of the material. For example, the two illuminated Genesis manuscripts (the Cotton Genesis and the Vienna Genesis ), despite a basic similarity, are totally different from each other in many important ways. Most of the surviving illuminated manuscripts from the period comprise gospel books, or fragments of such books, but even with these it is impossible to use one, for example, to hypothesize about the (missing) contents of another, because they show such disparity. On the basis of my survey, I reconstructed a scenario for the use of images in early Christian books different from the theory that has long held the field. Instead of considering the survivals as more or less selective and corrupt (in the philological sense), as late copies of numerous earlier “perfect” lost archetypes —the equivalent of authorial “originals”—I proposed a less prescriptive view, in which the surviving material was varied, unpredictable, and by implication creative (albeit not in a romantic manner). According to this theory images only began to appear in biblical books at a relatively late date, say, in the fifth century; illustrated biblical books were always rare, and they were in part a response to—not the explanation for—the ubiquitous presence by the fifth and sixth centuries of Christian images throughout the public and the often overlooked private spheres.2 Since writing that paper I have considered the question of the “public” for images in luxury books in a variety of historical contexts,3 observing how most tike?” in The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World, ed. Leonard V. Rutgers et al. (Leuven, 1998), 263– 85; Barbara Zimmermann, “Illustrierte Prachtcodices: Bücherluxus in der Spätantike,” in Epochenwandel ? Kunst und Kultur zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Norbert Zimmermann and Franz Alto Bauer (Mainz, 2001), 45–56; Barbara Zimmermann, Die Wiener Genesis im Rahmen der antiken Buchmalerei: Ikonographie, Darstellung, Illustrationsverfahren und Aussageintention (Wiesbaden, 2003), esp. 1–53. 2. On Christian images in the private sphere, see, for example, Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, 2d...