Beatus

Beatus de Liébana was a Spanish monk of the Monastère of San Martín de Turieno, today Santo Toribio de Liébana, in the comarca of Liébana) in the Pics of Europe (Area of Cantabrie), died in 798, author, inter alia, of a Comment of the Apocalypse which was one of the most famous works of the Spanish Early middle ages , because of its theological but so political dimension.

One calls Beatus the handwritten Spanish of the 10th century and 11th century, more or less abundantly illustrated, where are copied the Apocalypse Jean and the Comments of this text written at the 8th century by the Beatus monk.

For including/understanding well the major importance which this work could have, it is essential to know the historical context of it in a detailed way, as well as the contents and the interpretation which was made by it.

History of the Asturies

Roman and Cruel

In 379 the emperor Gratien chooses a general “Spanish”, Théodose (or Théodose Ier, known as Théodose Large the) to make the emperor of the East of it. This last, after having eliminated a usurper in Occident in 388, reign on the totality of the Roman Empire.

Convert with the Christianity in 380, it makes the official religion of it. He prohibits the Hérésie arienne, the Culte S pagan and the Manichéisme.

The unit is of short duration: with its death, the Empire is shared between its two sons.

The December 31st 406, pushed by the Huns, of the Germanic people cross the the Rhine and break on Gaulle. The Suèves are established in Galicia (north-western of the Spain), the Vandales and the Alains go down towards the Andalusia.

During this time, Alaric, chief of the Visigoths, seizes Rome in 410. Its successor, Ataulf, wife in 414 Official reception Placidia, girl of Théodose. But, driven out by the government of Ravenne, it passes to Spain. Consequently, the wars between Barbares will multiply in the Iberian peninsula.

But at the same time, these people romanisent themselves, and some (Visigoths and Francs) are linked with the imperial troops to stop Huns of Attila in 451 close to Orleans (of the catalaunic Champs battles, where Théodoric dies).

A little later the king of the Visigoths, Euric, seizes all Spain and becomes the first sovereign independent of these people. The Roman Empire does not exist any more. Faithful to the Arianisme, constrained Euric the king suève of Asturies to be converted.

Spanish arianism and the return to Christianity

In 325, a bishop of Cordoue had made convene by the emperor Constantin the oecumenical first Concile with Nicée to make condemn these theses subordinationnists (Christ subordinate to God). This major fact proves that there was already a strong arienne presence in Spain before the arrival of the Barbares.

The Visigoths, ariens them also, will contribute to more install the heresy in the peninsula. Although accounting for only 5% of the population in addition Christian, they make arianism the religion of State. The Office S are known as in language goth. The Archbishop arien of their capital Tolède, is Primat of Spain.

The catholic Clergé takes refuge in rural environment. One sees to be built oratorical S, Ermitage S, Monastère S in the back-country. The people remaining largely faithful to Christianity, the urban population rarefy and the cities are closed again on themselves.

In the last quarter of the 6th century, the king Visigoth Léovigilde Marie with Theodosia, the catholic sister of Isidore of Seville. He seeks to reconcile the Visigoths and the “Hispano-Romans”, and adopts the Symbole of Nicée with regard to the Nature of Christ. One of its sons marries a catholic grand-daughter of Clovis. Another son, Ricarède, convert with Christianity into 587 and abjure officially the arianism during the Concile of Tolède and 589, involving with him the queen, all the court and the bishops Visigoths heretics.

The archbishop of Tolède remains primacy of Spain, and the Église is supported by the sovereigns. Those name the bishops who, in return, exert a control on the royal administration.

But the Visigoths must deal with epidemics, famines, incursions of the Francs. Wars of succession devastate the country. An applicant with the throne of Tolède, Akhila, taken refuge with Ceuta (Morocco), with the unfortunate idea, to secure the victory over its enemy Rodrigue, to ask for the assistance of troops of the the Maghreb. Thus, in 711, Tariq ibn Ziyad crosses the strait whose name from now on is associated with his.

Expansion of the Islam and catholic resistance

The 7000 men of Tariq were not Arab but Berbères whose Arabs who occupied the recently North Africa got rid thus to put an end to resistances. And it is this antagonism between these two people which will weaken the new Masters Musulmans of Spain.

In three years, the peninsula is occupied, except for part of the Cantabric Cordillera (future kingdom of Asturies) which forms in the North-West of the country a kind of fortress whose tops reach often more than 2000 meters, and even more than 2600 meters to the Picos de Europa. Very early the catholic refractories come, in particular of Tolède, to take refuge there. There, Peeling, is made elect chief of revolted with whom it will attack the Berber garrisons.

Quietly installed with Cordoue, or occupied with Raids in the South of France, the Moslem forces do not worry about the rebellion at the beginning. Nevertheless, a forwarding is sent in Asturies. But there, Peeling, pretending to flee, attracts Arab Berbères and in the throats of Covadonga, the face in parts, and finishes exterminating the greatest number of it towards Liébana. The kingdom of Asturies is consolidated then around Oviedo, then of Previa (with a few kilometers in the North-West of Oviedo), with Pélage as king.

Arabs and Mozarabs

While the Asturies are reinforced and become populated more and more, the catholics living under the Moslem yoke find themselves in the same situation as formerly under the cane of the Visigoths ariens. Subjected to taxes which are raised only for them, they do not have the right to build new churches, to found new convents. This time still, many is those which take refuge in the campaigns, the occupants remaining in the cities. Again the hermitages appear in the moved back places. The Christians living out of Moslem ground cannot practice their religion that if they made Allégeance near a chief Moor.

In 789 the king asturien Bermude Ier again transfers its capital to Oviedo, and, in spite of the bag of this city in 794, the Reconquête starts.

It is in this historical context, and an area where exiled brought a very rich culture, in particular on the artistic level, which Beatus (Beato for the Spaniards), monk in a convent of the valley of Liébana, writes its comment of the Apocalypse.

The comment of the Apocalypse ( In Apocalypsin )

Description

It is a work of scholarship but without much originality, made especially compilations. Beatus draws more or less long extracts in the texts of the Pères and Doctorss of the Church, in particular holy Augustin, holy Ambroise, holy Irenee, holy Isidore. It adds to it the comment of the Livre of Daniel by holy Jerome.

The organization is judged by certain awkward, and the sometimes redundant or contradictory text. Far from a work emanating of a strong and major personality, we are in the presence of a somewhat timorée production, not testifying to a great mind of innovation, but being erased rather in front of the tradition. How such a book, written in 776 and altered ten years later, did have such an impact during four centuries?

If the share of Beatus is very reduced, the work on the other hand gives an integral translation Latin of the Apocalypse of Jean , which can partly explain its notoriety.

The apocalyptic kind and its history

The Apocalypse of Jean is the last book of the biblical corpus Christian. The apocalyptic literary kind (of the Greek apocalupteïn , to reveal) flowers in the period intertestamentaire (between and it) It finds its roots, not in the New Testament, but in the last books of the Ancien, in particular certain passages of the Livre of Daniel (written towards 167 before J.C.): the Apocalypses thus have much more conceptual and contextual relationships to the Semitic culture of the Old Testament that with the world of the Évangiles.

The Apocalypse of Jean was written in the last third of, during persecutions of Néron then of Domitien against the Chrétiens which refused to sacrifice to the worship of the emperor.

An apocalypse is a “revealing” of the future, revealed with a heart and transcribed in a more or less encrypted poetic form. It is a speech eschatologic. One qualified the apocalypses of “Evangiles of the Hope”, because they announce with martyrized populations that the historical evil leads to an eternal happiness. Exceeding the observable events, the Apocalypse reveals the direction and shows of them how their sequence necessary is prolonged, beyond death and the end of the world, in the establishment of the reign of God.

The text seems generally obscure with those which are not penetrated by the biblical culture: intended to the believers and for them only, it refers to the holy Histoire and prophetic Livres of the Old Testament. Also its “political” range escapes it the persecutors.

It is thus a design of the History (a “Théologie of the History”, wrote Henri-Irenee Marrou) intended to show with those which suffer how the supreme Good will be at the end of a advance historically necessary through the Evil.

Beatus and birth of Spain

The message

The Christians are after 711 vis-a-vis the Islam as they had been vis-a-vis the Roman Empire. They cannot practice their worship at the great day any more; bells and processions are prohibited; the destroyed churches and monasteries cannot be rebuilt; persecutions often take a bloody turning.

The Apocalypse is presented then as the book of Christian resistance. The great symbols take a new direction. The Animal, which indicated the Empire, becomes the name of the emirate (become then Califat), - Babylon is not any more Rome but Cordoue, etc

The Apocalypse , which had been interpreted like a Prophétie of the end of Roman persecutions, becomes the advertisement of the Reconquête. It is a promise of delivery and punishment. Decoding in is simple for the believing masses, and this book ends up taking, in occupied Spain, more importance than the Évangiles.

Beatus de Liébana

Beatus is a man of Christian field crop. Undoubtedly it is not originating in the Cantabrian Mountains. Certain historians think that it comes rather from Tolède, or even of Andalusia. Perhaps it chose this monastery of Liébana because of the proximity of Covadonga and Cosgaya, places which the Christians of the time regarded as miraculous.

Beatus quickly acquires a reputation of high scholarship. It becomes even during some time tutor and confessor of the girl of Alphonse Ier, the future queen Adosinda.

Its notoriety had many other causes that its Commentaire of the Apocalypse . Thinker militant and energetic, it attacks those which are compromised with the occupant, while starting with the archbishop of Tolède, that it shows of heresy.

This business had a great repercussion in the Chrétienté, until near Alcuin and of Charlemagne (742 - 814) to Aachen and of the Pape which lines up at the sides of Beatus. It is the famous quarrel of the Adoptianisme, heresy whose theorist was Felix, the bishop of Urgell. This last proclaimed that the Christ was not the son of God, but had been only adopted by him, thesis in complete dissension with that of the Concile of Nicée on the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son.

Elipand, archbishop of Tolède, named with this pulpit by the Arabs, joins with these doctrines and goes even until making read a letter the day when the Adosinda queen takes the veil and pronounces her wishes in the presence of all the court of Asturie: Elipand declares there in all simplicity that it is advisable to exterminate all those which would not see in Christ the adoptive son of God!

Under the pressures of Alcuin, of Charlemagne and the pope, Felix abjures on several occasions, after being returned with the heresy each time. Synod S and Concile S will not come to end from the convictions from the Relaps:

Synod of 792, convened with Ratisbon by Charlemagne; Synod of Easter 794 chaired by Charlemagne Frankfurt; Council of 795, governed Rome by saint Leon III (pope of 795 with 816); Council of 796 with the Friuli, chaired by Paulin d' Apulée; Council of 799, joined together by saint Leon III.

Beatus is caught some especially in Elipand without retaining its words. Elipand which called it “False prophet” and speaks about his “writings puants”, Beatus answers by treating it of “Testicle of the Antichrist”! The polemic continues thus in a higher bid of verbal violences and will be completed only by the death of Felix and Elipand.

This heresy allured, of course, a nostalgic Visigoth of the Arianisme like Elipand, the adoptianism being, in the content, only one late misadventure of the subordinationnism.

But these events would be only anecdotic if the heresy felician (of the name of Felix) had not also allured the Moslem occupants. There was in these theses a handing-over in question of divine nature of Jesus which led to a devaluation of the Christianisme. Certain historians even think that Elipand would have been made the Apôtre adoptianism to like the Arab authorities.

Consequently, one includes/understands best the importance of the Apocalypse at the Christians of the North-West of Spain, and the impact of the Commentaire that in fact a monk strongly implied in the fight against the heresies, the government of occupation and the monks collaborator.

The Apocalypse, that Ariens refused to hold for a revealed book, and who is centered on the divinity of Christ, becomes, as from the 8th century, the text headlight of the resistant Christians. The Apocalypse is thus a work of combat, genuine theological weapon, against all those which would not see in Christ a divine person as well as God the Father. The clergy of Asturies takes again the injunction of IVe council of Tolède (633): under penalty of excommunication, “the Apocalypse must be held for a canonical book; it will be read with the Office between the Passover and the Pentecost”. Let us note that such an obligation did not concern, of the whole Bible, that this only text.

Santiago

The Commentaire of the Apocalypse mentions that Saint Jacques is the evangelist of Spain. Certain historians even think that Beatus is the author of the Hymne O dei verbum , in which holy Jacques is described as patron saint of Spain.

At the beginning of the 9th century the tomb of Jacques saint “is discovered” in the “Campo of Estrella” (i.e. Compostelle, which will become Saint-Jacob de Compostelle. They is there that would have been transported the relics of the brother of saint Jean the Evangelist one century earlier, since Merida, to withdraw them to the Moslem profaners. The Apocalypse at the time being allotted to saint Jean, Beatus perhaps wanted to also honor his/her brother Jacques the Major one, and to make of two wire of Zébédée the vectors of the values of martyrized, resistant and glorious Spain.

Beatus dies in 798, before the invention of the tomb of the “Matamoros”. It, in its writings and its combat, had posed the cultural bases of what was going to become the Spanish nation.

Illumination Mozarab

General information

In 1924 takes place with Madrid an exposure of Spanish manuscripts to miniatures ( Exposicion of codices miniados españoles ). And if the Beatus are particularly noticed there, it is because new forms were essential in the artistic field.

“Already these painters of the 10th century had practiced a technique of the Glacis quite front Gauguin, preceded Matisse in the fluid counter-curves their contours, invented the realistic expressivity of the Picasso of the Demoiselles of Avignon . And in fact, it is not (…) until the art of the portraits cubists where the face is at the same time seen of face and profile, until the animalist disproportion of the Master of Guernica , which do not find brilliances preceding in these miniaturists in advance over their millenium. ” (Jacques Fountain, Hispanic Art préroman II, Art Mozarab , coll Zodiac, ED. Pierre-Which-Transfers, 1977, p.305).

Fascination for these books thus holds with their dimension doubly visionary, as if the forms had, they also, prophesied… with this close which it seemed with much that the Beatus contained on the plan of the style the achievement even of what they announced, offering of indépassables answers to questions still stammering at the time of their redécouverte.

Of course, art Mozarab was born from nothing: one finds of them the roots in the currents wisigothic, Carolingian, Arab, and until in the Art copte whose particular stylizations are quite identifiable.

And if the specialists detect even more remote contributions, Mésopotamie NS, Sassanides, that does not mean that art Mozarab is only the production of artists of second order, without much personality, diluting their lack of imagination in eclecticism: all agree, well rather, to speak about a powerful and original synthesis.

Far from being a simple illustration which would not add anything to the text, or even which would divert of it the reader, illumination Mozarab, often on full page and even in full double page, as Jacques Fontaine, leads the heart recognizes it since the reading of the text until the deepening of its direction in a vision.

Among the most remarkable works (if one excludes the Beatus in question further), he is necessary to quote the Bible enluminée in 920 by the Diacre Juan with the Monastère of Holy-Marie-and-Saint-Martin d' Albares (known as Bible of Juan de Albares , preserved at the files of the cathedral of León).

“What a modern audacity in all the layouts! Figurale abstraction, graphics released, decoration meaning, concerting discordance of the pallet: Jean d' Albares is most surprisingly modern, most inordinately bold of the illuminators Mozarabs. ” (Jacques Fountain, work quoted , p. 350).

By looking at these images, we do not have the feeling that more than ten centuries separate us.

The Beatus

Reflections of a liturgy

There remains about thirty enluminés manuscripts of the Commentaire of the Apocalypse written by Beatus in the abbey of Santo Torribio de Liébana in 776, 784 and 786. Twenty-five are complete. Twenty-two comprise illuminations. But ten only can be regarded as major. According to certain assumptions, the manuscript was decorated right from the start, as let it think of the parts inserted in the text, which refer to an image. But none of these proto-Beatus was preserved.

The images strike even those which know the Apocalypse well. But is not to underestimate the genius of the miniaturists only to recognize the anchoring of many elements in the reality which surrounded them. If the decorations, furniture, the attitudes seem to us to be pure products of imagination, it is that the liturgy which caused them us is not familiar; also we allot to the invention what concerned the observation. Once more it is advisable to be erased in front of the literary talent and the precision of Jacques Fontaine:

“There is perhaps more to await these kinds of instantaneous visionaries of the liturgies Mozarabs which preserved us the miniatures, in particular those of the Beatus . Because things seen and visions here are mutually nourished. If the records of the human liturgy mean already the imperfect and figurative achievement of the great celestial liturgy of the Apocalypse , it is obvious , with the cleanest direction - that of an immediate vision -, that the “archipeintre” Magius, its pupils and its imitateurs could not imagine what they did not see only from what they saw. From where so much of architectures, of furnace bridge S bearing chalices, of votive crowns suspended above these furnace bridges, which are as the oneiric projection of what the monks Mozarabs saw in their churches and lived each day, but especially with the great festivals. ” ( Work quoted , pp.47-48).

This liturgy, these objects, these lights dazzled the Arabs themselves, as this Moslem Chancelier which had witnessed a night ceremony in a church of Cordoue, as brings back it its chronicler, itself Moslem:

“It saw it strewn with branches of myrtle and sumptuously decorated, while the ringing of the bells charmed its ear, and that the glare of the candles dazzled its eyes. He stopped fascinated in spite of him, with the sight of the majesty and the crowned joy which radiated this enclosure; he then remembered with admiration the entry of the priest and other admirers of Jesus-Christ, all covered with admirable ornaments; the flavor of the old wine that the ministers poured in his chalice and where the priest soaked his pure lips; modest behavior and the beauty of the children and the teenagers who were useful close to the furnace bridge; the solemn recitation of the psalms and the crowned prayers; finally all other rites of this ceremony; solemn devotion and joy all at the same time, with which it was held, and the enthusiasm of the Christian people…” ( in Jacques Fontaine, Ouvrage quoted , p.49).

Personalized manuscripts

If one excludes some tragic visions of damnation, some postures of despair, as notices it Jacques Fontaine, “the dominant one of these works is well that of a serene contemplation” ( Ouvrage quoted , p. 361).

Humanity and even humor are present in the Colophon S. Ainsi, in the Beatus of Távara, the Emétérius painter, in a drawing, represents the tower of the library and the contiguous Scriptorium, represents itself and adds these words there: “O turn of Távara, high stone tower, it is up there that, in the first part of the library, Emeterius remained sat, very curved on its task, three months during, and that it had all its members anchylosed by the work of the Calame… This book was finished the 6 of the calends of August the year 1008 of the era per eighth hour. ” ( in Jacques Fountain, Work quoted , p. 361).

These let us colophons are not nowhere as abundant as in the works Mozarabs. The Beatus can thus be allotted and dated with a high degree of accuracy, which allows a serious study of the questions of filiations stylistics. We know thus that Magius carried out paintings of the Beatus of Pierpont Morgan Library, than its Emétérius pupil itself was helped by a nun painter, Ende for the realization of the Beatus of Gérone.

Techniques and colors

The support is generally the parchment, but also paper (present in the peninsula as of the 11th century).

The text was written with brown ink (or become brown). The titles are often in red. This color was also used to draw the contour of the elements of the page. The painters followed in that the recommendations of Isidore of Seville drawn from the Étymologies : one traces initially contours, then one carries out the filling of the figures using the color.

The colors of paintings are the red (more or less dark), ocher, the dark green, the pink-mauve, the dark blue, the purple one, the orange one, and especially the very luminous yellow, very intense, suitable for painting Mozarab. The black is also employed. The light blue and the gray are rare.

The “hot” colors are prevalent: red, orange, yellow. Here still, the painters follow the lesson of Isidore of Seville which makes an etymological bringing together (thus, for him, founded on the gasoline even of the things) between the words color (Latin color ) and heat (Latin calor ): “The colors are named thus because they are carried to their completion (perfection) by the heat of fire or the sun” ( Étymologies , XIX, chapter XVI).

Gold (metal) is very rare. One does not find it present, or provided, that in the Beatus of Gérone and Urgell.

Certain manuscripts are unfinished, which, like everywhere, informs us on the stages of their development. In the Beatus of Urgell (ms 26, f°233) or in that of Real Academía of Historía of Madrid (ms 33, f°53), the drawing is only partially filled with colors.

The colors are pure, without half-tones, mixtures, transitions from the one to the other. It did not model there.

Whereas the first Beatus were rather dull, or, at least, discrete, the Beatus of second style (middle of the 10th century) strike by the glare of their colors which underlines the originality of their distribution in space. Undoubtedly this is due to the use, on a bottom varnished with wax, new binders, like egg or the honey which allow obtaining glacis and of let us tons sharp, luminous.

If one excludes refinements of tons Beatus of Pierpont Library (and, of course the single exoticism of the Beatus of Saint-Sever), the colors are rather distributed in intense oppositions, and are largely used to contribute to the derealisation of the scenes.

“Let us say here that tons them used by the painters Mozarabs are rather not very imitative, and, on the contrary, generally employed for their own impact. This aspect of the color, in figurative painting, is that even which was regarded as normal, and even like fundamental, by Isidore of Seville: “Besides, one says thing painted like pretended thing; because any painting is pretended image, and not reality; also it is said also dyed, i.e. due to a factitious coloring, to some extent. In it, nothing authentic, nothing truth”” (Mireille Mentré, Work quoted , p. 162).

Of course, when Isidore of Seville speaks about truth, he hears conformity with significant reality. But as we saw with the problem of space, the painters of the Beatus do not seek an adequacy with the world of perception. Reality that they give to know is of a spiritual nature.

The colors neither are mixed, neither folded back, nor broken. Modelled, the shade, the folding back, appear only in the Beatus of Saint-Sever.

In the Spanish Beatus , the promptness of the colors, their contrasts, the violence even of certain juxtapositions, lead the glance curiously never to stop with an overall perception, but bring back it to the components of the page.

Here also, as with the treatment of space, the goal of the painter seems to be to distract the spirit from temptations of shipwreck in the accidental one to bring back it to the gasoline of the account offered in esthetic contemplation.

Forms, fittings and significance

One of the originalities of many pages of the Beatus , is the presentation of the scenes on a bottom of broad band painted, horizontal, which does not correspond to any external reality. It is not a question of the sky, water, horizon or of effects of bringing together or distance. One spoke rightly about a “derealisation” of space by the color.

“Like later at Greco, painting proves spiritual method here”, written Jacques Fontaine ( Ouvrage quoted , p. 363). The sensitive world is purified of its anecdotic elements to leave room only to essence. It is a question of showing that it occurs something without us to distract by describing us the place where that occurs. The actors of the apocalyptic drama scan more what occurs in their heart (or ours), with “this fixity hagarde, going sometimes until the extatique one, with disproportionate, with tetanized”, to take again the formula of Mireille Mentré ( painting Mozarab , 1984, PUPS, Paris, p. 155).

The forms are very géométrisées, and schematization joined sometimes almost the abstraction. Thus the representation of the mountains by circles superimposed. These conventions are common to several manuscripts.

However the decorative one never carries it on the symbolic system: in spite of the déconstruction of the forms, the multiplicity of the visual angles in the same scene, the images remain eminently and clearly referential. Schematism and the ornamentation never take the step on legibility.

Certain manuscripts comprise “page-carpets”, full pages generally located at the beginning of the book, where one finds, taken in geometrical reasons and labyrinths, information on the scribe, the painter or the recipient of the manuscript. These pages imitate the bindings (contemporary book, but also coptes, seems it), and resemble sometimes Persian carpets, Turkish

In the Beatus of Saint-Sever, for which a special part will be reserved, one finds page-carpets where the interlacings seem of Irish inspiration.

Visual angles and conceptual reality

It is necessary to reconsider the important question of the visual angles. There is no prospect in painting Mozarab, and in particular in the Beatus . Moreover, the bidimensionality of the figures results in simultaneously representing them under several faces, - what, note, is to it also a characteristic of art copte. But, whereas the short cut and the three-quarter are present in the representations coptes, the manuscripts Mozarabs refuse all that could outline a three-dimensionality. Not only one figure can be made up of a face and a profile, but the details of each one of these two aspects of an element can be set up in an apparently incoherent way of face or profile.

“the most typical example is that of the representation of the hearts of the martyrs under the furnace bridge in the fragment of Beatus preserved at Silos. The furnace bridge, in the high part of the image, is seen of face; this same furnace bridge, in the low part, is seen of in top; the decapitated bodies of the martyrs, in the upper part of the illustration, are seen of in top; the heads of the martyrs are posed flat, on side, parallel to the page; the birds symbolizing the hearts are seen of profile; votive crowns are placed, in the higher zone, beside the furnace bridge and front views, and, in the lower zone below the furnace bridge, sights of in bottom; the head of Christ is given in frontality and perspective dignity. ” (Mireille Mentré, Work quoted , pp. 156-157). The Beatus of Urgell presents a similar image.

Sometimes a page shows a city whose walls face us, and, above, which is inside the enclosure. What imports with the painter, it is to represent all the essential components of a vision, as if the spectator were on one level with each one of them.

“Let us look at for example the plague of the Apocalypse where the fourth sounding angel darkens the moon, the sun, the stars, such as it appears in the Beatus of Pierpont Morgan Library (ms 644, f° 138v): it is necessary, theoretically, to be placed opposite, precisely, of the stars, then very exactly opposite, then, of the angel, and finally opposite the ground, because each one of these figurations is to be apprehended directly and independently, and all are equal compared to the eye of the spectator. There is thus a vision parcellized at the optical level, scheduled on the level of the concept. ” (Mireille Mentré, Work quoted , p. 158).

The author of this thesis on painting Mozarab underlines well that what really imports for the artist, it is conceptual cohesion and not perceptive cohesion. Each element is in direct relationship with the spectator, but does not maintain structural relation with the other elements. The image is not the place where whole of objects is organized to offer the representation of a real scene; it is the provision of the elements of the account, taken one by one, which must strike us by their dimension symbolic system that a verism, even blurred, would make us forget.

“the perceptive synthesis is not done on the level of the objects, nor either on the level of the units; and even probably does not have to be made whole, in images of this type. The prospects used and the relations founded between the reasons and figures concern criteria, in the final analysis, which can hardly be regarded as perceptive - if one understands by perception the synthesis that we make data offered to the sight. The classic arts offer a material making it possible to reconstitute this synthesis, or even doing it, more or less illusorily, for us. Painting Mozarab does not leave these not presupposed, or their made undergo a reversal.

the cohesion of the image takes place on the level, primarily, of the concepts, more than on the level of tangible realities; the figuration is a support, above all, with comprehension and the reflection, more than one probable place for a real scene. ” (Mireille Mentré, Work quoted , p. 159).

The Beatus thus offer a daring reduction of the scenes to us intended to support the spiritual reading of it. “The figures are with being read according to the order of the thought and not according to the order of a significant reality included in a place, a time, a space single and synthesized” (Mireille Mentré, Ouvrage quoted , p. 154).

Art, here, is made the auxiliary of the deep sense of a text. The apocalyptic vision is not the simple occasion of a work of art: it is the substance at the point even as it seems to be nourished they, and than one needs of them little which these images become also necessary only the words: it is trying to say that the mystical voyage in the Beatus is essential to supplement and purify our intellection of the johannic word.

Models with the exercises of school

All the artists of talent are not necessarily creative geniuses. The latter are those which produced original works, not with the vulgar direction of the term, but in what they were at the origin of other works and new manners of posing and to solve esthetic problems. Thus some Beatus proceed of a thought founder, whereas others, are only of sumptuous exercises of school.

It is the case of the Beatus paints by Facundus for Ferdinand Ier de Castille and León and the queen Sancha and completed in 1047. The miniatures are without originality in the composition. Work especially charms us by its bright colors due in a remarkable state of conservation, but also by the elegance of the forms. However, it is necessary to acknowledge that Facundus follows méticuleusement, in the field of the structure, the miniatures of the Beatus of Urgell realized to Rioja or León in 975.

It is enough to compare the f° 19 of Urgell ( the Christ carrying the Book of Life ) with the f° 43 of Facundus; the double page 140v 141 of Urgell ( the Woman and the dragon ) with the double page 186v 187 of Facundus; the double page 198v 199 of Urgell ( the new Jerusalem ) with the double page 253v 254 of Facundus. We could still enumerate much more pages, and this until the Beatus French of Saint-Sever which very often takes again the page layout of the manuscripts Mozarabs, and in question further.

The artists of 10th and 11th centuries, we saw it, solved the problem by déréalisant the scenes, while renonçant with any element of useless decoration in order not to submerge the glance of the reader by all that would draw aside the spirit of essence. The miniatures are then released, purified of all that can be regarded as anecdotic.

The artist can also associate with the figuration of a vision of the data resulting from the comment of Beatus. It is what one can see in the Beatus of Osma (f° 117v) and in the Beatus of Facundus (f° 187), where the Diable is presented connected in Enfer and where the Ange S send to join it those which the tail of the dragon swept. Here the miniature adapts the comment of Beatus which, at the time of book XII of the Apocalypse, pre-empts the book XX where it is mentioned well that Satan was connected.

The work of the painter can be more complex still when, in the same miniature, it carries out a daring synthesis of several passages. It is necessary for him then to give up the literal transcription. If the 24 Old men (or Wise, or Old) risk, in a reduced space, to cause a scuffle which would mask other essential data… one accounts for only 12 of them! It does not matter: we know well that there are 24 of them, since the texts say it and that other pages show them complete! One clears up a little the rows, one removes some wings elsewhere, and thus one in the sufficient place to offer a comprehensive view drawn from two chapters. It is what one can see in the admirable miniature of the f° 117v of the Beatus of Facundus.

“large the Théophanie continues with this miniature of Beatus de Facundus (folio 117 back, format 300 X 245 mm, diameter of the circle 215 mm) which links two passages of the text in only one image (Apoc. IV 2 and 6b-8a, like V 6a and 8) to constitute the vision of the mystical Lamb. But the illustrator takes freedoms with the text. Thus the four Beings of the tétramorphe, symbolizing the four Evangelists (they carry each one a book) are not provided each of six wings, but well with only one pair, covered with eyes; in addition, they overcome a kind of disc taking as a starting point the famous wheels by the tank by Yahvé, at Ezéchiel (I 15), according to a very old formula which is frequent in the Iconographie tétramorphe. As for the Twenty-four Wise ones, they are reduced to twelve only, which achieve the described actions (Apoc. V 8): four of them “are prosternent”, four others “always hold of the zithers” (of Arab type), and the last four have in hand of the “gold cuts full with perfumes”. In the center, finally the Lamb, carrying the cross asturienne is in possession of a reliquary symbolizing the Ark of the Covenant. Above the circle appearing the open door in the sky, a Moorish arch contains the divine throne (Apoc. IV 2) “with That which sits on this throne””.

The synthesis of passages IV-4 and V-2 of the Apocalypse is very frequent. One finds it even to the folios 121v and 122 of the Beatus of Saint-Sever.

Illumination and sculpture

The large historian of medieval art French Emile Mâle believed to find the influence of the Beatus on the capital X of the turn-porch of the Saint-Benoit-on-Loire (in the past Fleury-on-Loire), and Marie-madeleine Davy grants a certain credit to this thesis. But Eliane Vergnolle, in its major work on the Saint-Benoit-on-Loire shows in a completely convincing way that the historiés capitals of the tower of the Abbé Gauzlin fell under the Carolingian tradition, - some recalling even the shapes of the miniatures of the Apocalypse of Trier , or of the Commentaire on the Apocalypse of Aymon of Auxerre (this last manuscript preserved at the Bodleian Library with Oxford).

We also know that Gauzlin extended the radiation of the Abbaye of Fleury until in Italy, from where it made come a painter named Nivard to represent scenes of the Apocalypse on the walls of the church, - what confirms the Carolingian iconographic orientation rather than Mozarab of the decorations of the abbey one.

The question would be it more prone to controversy with regard to the second large building to which Emile Mâle refers: the tympanum of Saint-Pierre of Moissac? Like as well of others, Marguerite Vidal follows resolutely the lesson of Emile Mâle and thinks as this tympanum offers reliable indices of the presence of a manuscript enluminé of the Commentaire on the Apocalypse of Beatus of in the library of the abbey.

However, concerning the subject of this article, of the reserves impose themselves:

1° For the Male Emile, most beautiful of Beatus, and most likely to exert an influence, is that of Saint-Sever on Adour, and if the Master of the Tympanum of Moissac has a debt, it cannot be towards a painter Mozarab!

2° In any event the argumentation of Emile Mâle remains somewhat hazardous. Indeed, it supports that so details of the tympanum differ too much from the images of the Beatus of Saint-Sever, it is that the sculptor had under the eyes only one copy presenting of the alternatives, but which one did not keep trace! In short, he affirms, without nothing being able to support this thesis, that a sculptor deprived of inventive genius drew his inspiration in a manuscript about of which no one forever intended to speak!

3° It would be at the very least strange that a sculptor took model on a manuscript present in the library, and recognized like a major work, whereas no known book coming from scriptorium of Moissac betrays any relationship with the Beatus of Saint-Sever (not more than with the others Beatus ).

4° Finally why want to make of the sculptor a simple drudge just able to carry out an adaptation of a model on a different support? To take again the formula of Andre Malraux, the tympanum is not a carved illumination. On this subject, the photography misleads us, which enables us to place side by side a miniature and a sculpture. These two arts differ in many points… to the recipients who do not belong to the same world!

However, it is necessary well to recognize some analogies disconcerting stylistics between the 121v-122 double page of the Beatus of Saint-Sever and the tympanum of Moissac. There is, for example, in two works the daring reversal of the head of the bull in a tension adoratrice in direction of the Christ.

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