“the Maciejowski Bible is a wonderful treasure, not only as a source of medieval iconography but also for its high level of artistic skill.”
The Maciejowski Bible, also know as the Crusader Bible or the Morgan Bible is a 13th century illuminated manuscript held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. It is a marvelous example of the Gothic art form as applied to liturgical art.
The entire bible is not illustrated but rather portions of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Samuel. It was perhaps intended to offer models of kingship either to be avoided or emulated.
Iconographic patterns of these books of the Bible are rare and so the Maciejowski Bible is a wonderful treasure, not only as a source of medieval iconography but also for its high level of artistic skill. In this series of posts I hope to take a closer look at the existing folio pages as a starting point to discuss the Gothic artform as an authentic liturgical style.
The first page (MS M.638, fol. 1r) illustrates Genesis 1:1-19, the first 4 days of creation.
The Gothic form develops from the earlier iconographic form, indeed it can often be thought of as a more “naturalistic” interpretation of the iconographic. As such it borrows much from the iconographic tradition. To begin with we notice the border. As in the iconographic form, a border represents a transition from one space to another. We leave behind the cares and concerns of our ordinary day to day lives and cross over into sacred time and space.
Gothic artists, particularly in illuminated manuscripts, used architectural elements to divide and compose their space. In the iconographic form we will often see many events taking place simultaneously in an undivided field, even if they happened at different times. In the Gothic form, taken as a whole, we still see an image composed of differing scenes happening simultaneously, but those scenes are often divided by walls and columns. The medieval artist composed his painting in terms of a building, it may have several stories or wings but the scenes depicted must fit within the building.
This folio, or page, give us the first four days of creation in four spaces or panels, held together by the architectural motifs spanning the top of the first and second, and then again the top of the third and fourth panels, as an indication that all of creation is connected and sacred time, Kairos, stands apart from our linear perspective of the passage of time, or Chronos.
God the Creator is shown in each of the panels as Jesus Christ, identified by His cruciform halo. This recalls to us the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.” (John 1:1,3.) The angels are also shown in each of the panels, praising God and His creation.
The First Day
In the first panel, upper left, God creates the Heavens and the Earth. In His right hand God holds an amorphous shape representing Heaven. The darkness of the shape stands in contrast to the brightness of the orb in the left hand representing the earth, a reference to the separation of the light from the darkness. The orb of the earth is a representation of the tripartite or T-O maps of the ancient world. The known world is divided into three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Saint Augustine speculated that the angels were created on the first day. When God created “light” that included the creation of the angels. When God separated the light from the darkness, He also separated the faithful angels from the rebellious spirits. The fallen angels are shown here at the feet of Christ, transformed into demons as they fall.
The Second Day
The second panel (upper right) shows us the second day of creation. The Lord establishes a firmament, called Heaven, that separates the water above from the waters below. Church fathers saw this as a separation of the water that is upon the earth from the water that comes from Heaven through the clouds. After the first day the earth is depicted within a circle, encompassed by clouds. Angels look on, praising God’s work.
The Third Day
On the third day (lower left), The Lord makes dry land appear and every plant and seed and fruit bearing tree and vine is brought forth from the earth. The angels continually praise God and His creation. It is significant to note that we have day and night and growing plants but do not yet have the sun and the moon.
The Fourth Day
The fourth panel depicts the fourth day of creation (lower right.) God creates the sun and the moon and the stars to govern the day the seasons and the years. The fourth day of creation is related to the first. On the first day, God creates the day and the night and on the fourth day He sets the great lights to govern the passage of time.
Throughout the Old Testament we see the tension between monotheism and polytheism. God calls upon us to reject every other pagan God and recognize the Lord our God as One. The Book of Genesis does not name the sun and the moon as the these names were the names of pagan deities. Instead it merely refers to them as great lights. Their creation on the fourth day shows us that it is not the sun or the moon that is responsible for the day and night or the growth of the plants. God alone is the source of all things, light, darkness, and fruitfulness. The sun and the moon and the stars are not gods, they are creations of the Creator.
The gestures shown within this depiction of creation can be interpreted as God creating with one hand and blessing with the other. At each stage of creation we are told that God saw that it was “good.” The word “good” in Hebrew is (transliterated) ṭôḇ, in Greek it is “kalon,” and can carry a number of meanings including a reference to beauty. The work of creation according to God’s plan, was a work of beauty, marred by the eventual fall of man.
For more information on the Maciejowski Bible visit the Morgan Museum website at https://www.themorgan.org/collection/Crusader-Bible