Legacy of the Big Book
"The dedication page of the Codex Amiatinus, written in Northumberland c.700-16, offers the huge book as a gift from the ends of the earth [extremis de finibus]. In the fifth line the name of the donor 'Petrus Langobardorum' has been falsely inserted over an erasure: the original and rightful name, just decipherable underneath, is 'Ceolfridus Anglorum', for the book was intended as a gift to the pope from Ceolfrith, abbot of Wearmonth and Jarrow (690-716 AD), who died on the journey to Rome, before the volume could be presented."
"The Codex Amiatinus is illustrated with this vast frontispiece ... Its caption declares that it shows the Old Testament prophet Ezra ['When the sacred books had been consumed in the fires of war, Ezra repaired the damage'] ... The picture shows an author writing out a manuscript on his lap in front of a classical book cupboard with nine books laid out on the shelves."
'Portrait of Ezra from Codex Amiatinus'
Folio 5r from the Codex Amiatinus
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1
(Christopher de Hamel, 2006, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Phaidon Press, London, Pls 9, 10)
A Very Big Book
"The Codex Amiatinus, also known as the Jarrow Codex ... [is] one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive ...
Dimensions: 19¼ inches high (49 cm)
13⅜ inches wide (34 cm)
7 inches deep (18 cm)
Volume: > 75 pounds weight (34 kgs)
Elements: 'It contains 1,040 leaves of strong, smooth vellum ... arranged in quires of four sheets or quaternions ... "The 1030 leaves of the Codex Amiatinus would have utilised the skins of 515 cattle" ... The script is written in uncial characters, large, clear and regular, two columns to a page, and 43 or 44 lives to a column ...
Three copies of the Bible were originally commissioned by Abbot Ceolfrith in 692. This date has been established as [when] the double monastery of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow secured a grant of additional land to raise the 2,000 head of cattle needed to produce the vellum.'
In 716, Ceolfrith accompanied one copy, the Codex Amiatinus, intended as a gift to Pope Gregory II, but he died en-route to Rome on 29 September 716 at Langres, Burgundy. The book later appears in the ninth century in Abbazia di San Salvatore, Monte Amiata in the March of Tuscany, where it is recorded in a list of the Abbey's relics dated 1036."
(Wikipedia - Codex Amiatinus)
Arrival of the Book-Men
St Augustine and his fellow missionaries landed in south east England in 570 AD. The Venerable Bede (d. 735 AD) reports the arrival of an additional group of missionaries sent from the pope in Rome in 601. This group brought with them "all such things as were generally necessary for the worship and ministry of the Church, such as sacred vessels, altar cloths and church ornaments, vestments for priests and clerks, relics of the holy apostles and martyrs, and very many books".
Bede relates that when those first missionaries came to Canterbury (the land granted to them by King Ethelberht of Kent), they walked toward the place 'bearing aloft the cross and the image of Christ. It was evidently very important that right from the outset the monks should exhibit a visual image of the new religion which could be seen and wondered over even before they began explaining the message of Scripture.'
GOSPELS of St AUGUSTINE, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
'Two full page miniatures remain in a sixth-century Italian Gospel Book which may very well have been brought to England with St Augustine's mission. The book survives among an important group of manuscripts from St Augustine's Abbey which are now in Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. The twelve little scenes here illustrate the Passion of Christ from the Entry into Jerusalem until the Carrying of the Cross. and are the kind of picture which the first missionaries would have used to explain the Gospel story to pagan and illiterate audiences.'
'The manuscript preserves two full-page miniatures of at least six which it must once have contained (there are faint offsets from at least four others). The first shows twelve scenes from the life of Christ and the second depicts St Luke holding an open book and is surrounded by six further scenes from Christ's life. If all the miniatures had survived there would have been a very extensive cycle of pictures from the story of Christ. Those that remain are simple and dramatically explicit in their message. It was the custom of St Augustine's missionaries ... to exhibit the painted image of Christ as a prelude to preaching and no doubt the technique was very effective. They could well have held up this book too. The illustrations had a very simple and very practical function.'
(Christopher de Hamel 2006, as above, pp 14, 17 & pl 6)
The Northumbrian Book-Men
'The "very many books" which arrived with St Augustine's mission were certainly not the only Italian manuscripts brought to Britain in the early generations of Christianity ... An "innumerable quantity of all kinds", according to Bede ... came to Wearmouth and Hexham in Northumbria ... Benedict [Biscop, founding abbot] travelled to Rome five times. On his third visit, Bede says, he acquired "no inconsiderable number of books ... [and these he had either bought at a price, or received as presents from his friends]".'
'Once again Benedict set off for Rome in the company of Ceolfrith [his successor] in 678 ... above all they seemed to have brought back manuscripts ... Bede recounts that many books were acquired ... However it was achieved, Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith may actually have brought off one of the greatest book-collecting coups of all time. It seems very possible that they purchased second-hand the library of Cassiodorus (c.485 - c.580), the great Roman patristic author and scholar.
When he retired from public life, Cassiodorus had set up two monastic communities at Vivarium in the far south of Italy, and he had formed there a kind of academy for the promotion of both religious and secular learning. Cassiodorus mentions in his Institutes that he furnished the foundation with different kinds of scriptural manuscripts, which he describes in some detail. These included what was known as the Codex Grandior, a huge one-volume 'pandect' (that is, a Bible in a single volume) in the old Latin version from before the time of St Jerome. This actual book, Cassiodorus's actual copy, was certainly in Northumbria in the time of Bede. Probably Ceolfrith acquired all or some of Cassiodorus's Bible in nine volumes, the Novum Codices [likely in St Jerome's new or revised Latin version, the Vulgate], which was known to have been at Vivarium too.'
'We know that, one way or another, the resources of Wearmouth and Jarrow became exceptionally rich. Bede himself, working in Jarrow (c.690 - c.735) and never travelling out of the north of England, cites some eighty different authors whose works he must have seen.'
'Once furnished with exemplars to copy, monks began making their own books ... The biography of Coelfrith (642-716) ends with an account of his works and says that he commissioned three huge Bible manuscripts (tres pandectes novae translationis), one each for use in the churches at Wearmouth and Jarrow, and one which Ceolfrith eventually announced was to be offered as a present to the pope ... Ceolfrith wished to demonstrate to the Roman See ... that even remote England was now able to reproduce great books and was worthy of housing the exemplars ...'
'The Codex Amiatinus is ... the actual volume written at Wearmouth or Jarrow by English scribes in imitation of the ['pandect' style] of the Codex Grandior [pre-Jerome]... The diagrammatic illustrations reproduce precisely those described by Cassiodorus ... [BUT] ... The strange frontispiece shows the aged prophet Ezra ... seated before an open cupboard containing the carefully labelled nine volumes of the Novum Codices [post-Jerome] which Cassiodorus gave to the Vivarium community', and which, presumably, also travelled back with Ceolfrith to the Northumbrian monasteries.
In other words, the English monks intended to show they were not only capable of reproducing the monumental Bibles used in monastic or church settings, but that their updated works incorporated the latest in text and translation.
(Christopher de Hamel 2006, as above, pp 17, 18, 19, 21)
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