Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch , and: Jewish Book Art between Islam and Christianity: The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain (review)

Abstract

Dorothy Verkerk. Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. ? + 262.Katrin Kogman- Appel. Jewish Book Art between Islam and Christianity: Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain. Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 19. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Pp. xxiii + 245.The Ashburnham Pentateuch (BN Nouv. acq. lat 2234) with which Dorothy Verkerk 's book is concerned is one of the incunabula of ancient manuscript illumination. Preserved at Tours during the Middle Ages and now much mutilated, disappeared from the municipal library of that town in the aftermath of the French Revolution and was sold by the unscrupulous Guglielmo Libri in 1887 to the Earl of Ashburnham. grave misdeed was exposed by Leopold Delisle following an exhaustive and devastating investigation published in 1883. In the same year, Otto von Gebhardt published a facsimile edition of the nineteen remaining miniatures in the manuscript, thus bringing the work, acquired in 1888 by the Bibliotheque Nationale, to scholarly attention.1 It has since then been in the eye of specialists, though remains one of the most puzzling of the small number of surviving illustrated biblical manuscripts of Late Antiquity. There is general agreement, with which Verkerk concurs, that should be dated in the late sixth or early seventh century. But where was made and for what purpose are still unresolved questions. These are addressed in her fairly short, but incisive study, which draws on a doctoral dissertation completed at Rutgers University in 1992.The manuscript with its Vulgate text, interspersed with some phrases of the Old Latin version, was clearly intended for a Christian audience, and readers might well wonder what motivated the editors of this journal to commission this review. answer lies in the fact that, as Verkerk notes with some apparent impatience, two questions have dominated the Ashburnham scholarly dialogue: the place of origin and the influence of Jewish literature and art in the manuscript's iconography (p. 4). Indeed, the Jewish Quarterly Review has not been an altogether innocent bystander regarding the second of these issues, since published in 1934 an essay by Joseph C. Sloane Jr. titled The Torah Shrine in the Ashburnham Pentateuch, in which, stimulated by the discoveries of the DuraEuropos synagogue and the mosaic pavement of Beth Alpha, the author declares that the illustrations of the manuscript reveal by their arrangement, style, and complexity that they must be the result of practices of Judaism.2 Twenty years later, the journal featured a very judicious assessment of the question by Joseph Gutmann, who found in the miniatures numerous echoes of midrashic literature, leading him to conclude that it seems undeniable that the conception underlying the Ashburnham miniatures is Jewish, as evidenced by the many homiletical interpretations of which those previously discussed are but symptomatic.3Although Verkerk makes passing reference to this midrashic lore, as in the case of the monstrous race of Giants (Nephilim), who provoked God's anger (Gn 6. 1-2) and were destroyed in the Deluge, she finds the evidence put forward in support of Jewish sources of the illumination to be either faulty or overdrawn. Her interest is rather focused on the Christian content of the miniatures, and instead of putatively Jewish elements, she is on the lookout for aspects of the illustration in which Patristic exegesis, catechetical tracts, and liturgical practices, among other writings, are reflected. Thus, she attaches great importance to the depiction of Moses revealing the Covenant at Sinai and the Tabernacle below (fol. 76), since the assembly of the Israelites around an altar is interpreted as a moment in the celebration of the Mass, while the seven men dressed in white who bring sacrificial hosts are understood to be deacons. This is evidence, along with a number of other iconographie observations, that the manuscript was made in Rome or was Rome-inspired, since seven is the number of men who were appointed to the diaconate in the Roman church. …