Abstract
Manuscripts of the complete Bible illuminated with a unified and comprehensive set of illustrations are unknown before the ninth century. Only single books and small compendia such as the Pentateuch and Gospels, illustrated with pictures interspersed within the columns of text, gathered together at the tops or bottoms of text pages, or, occasionally, arranged on separate folios, survive from the Early Christian period; and surely no full Bible ever was illustrated with the density typical of these early volumes.1 To provide the complete biblical text with a consistent set of illustrations, artists eventually developed a system of full-page miniatures placed within or at the front of the various books, thereby establishing a clear over-all structure while severely reducing the total number of pictures. In constructing these miniatures, illuminators did not reject the earlier tradition – quite the contrary. As Kohler has argued for the Bibles from Tours,2 as Gaehde has shown for the San Paolo Bible,3 and as...
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