Review by Choice Review
Williams's Illustrated Beatus, when complete, will constitute a major work in art history, with important ramifications for historians, art historians, and students of medieval culture. Williams has long held a central position in Medieval Hispanic studies, including among his publications a number of seminal articles as well as his Early Spanish Manuscript Illustration (CH, Feb'78) and A Spanish Apocalypse: The Morgan Beatus Manuscript, ed. by Williams and Barbara Shailor (CH, Mar'92). He was also coauthor of the fine Metropolitan Museum catalog The Art of Medieval Spain (CH, Jun'94). Here now are the first two volumes of a five-volume set that examines one of the larger manuscript families produced in the medieval period, both in time spanned and in number of surviving copies, Beatus of Li'ebana's Commentary on the Apocalypse. That the manuscript of an eighth-century monk in northern Spain should occasion an extensive five-volume study in the late 20th century appears surprising at first consideration. However, Beatus of Li'ebana was no ordinary monk, nor did his Commentary on the last book of the New Testament receive a commonplace niche in the scriptoria of an obscure monastery, to be forgotten by all save antiquarians. Beatus's ability to compose such a learned commentary based on the resources of a besieged Asturian state, a shattered remnant of the Visigothic kingdom overrun by Islamic Arabs and Berbers, in itself offers a remarkable insight into the eighth century. The library and manuscripts Beatus employed have long since disappeared, leaving no indication of his access to the resources that fueled the desire to create his synthesis. We assume he drew his model from a similar commentary by Tyconius, a fifth-century North African, and borrowed additional commentary, especially from Isidore's Etymologies. All that remains of Beatus's world is the rebuilt Monastery of Santo Toribio where he wrote, perched in the Cantabrian Mountains of Asturias. It is the many copies of Beatus's treatise that hold our interest today, and most especially their accompanying, vivid illustrations of this influential early Christian encounter with eschatology. The earliest illustration survives from a later ninth-century fragment from Silos. However, several new families of manuscripts emerged in the tenth century, containing 108 images in the Beatus commentary. Many of the copies also add to the commentary by Beatus an additional work, the commentary of Saint Jerome on the Book of Daniel, the most eschatological of the books of the Old Testament. This addition to the Beatus commentary contained 11 new illustrations. The oldest surviving specimen of these combined Beatus-Jerome manuscripts probably originated at the T'abara monastery, intended for the monastery at San Miguel de Escalera. The Morgan Library owns this important survivor (Morgan 644), one of several groups from an earlier model no longer extant. The work of Williams's five volumes consists in identifying and categorizing the 25 members of these surviving Beatus commentaries, along with the earlier ninth-century illustrated Silos Fragment. All but two of these originated in Iberia. More important, the series intends to publish photographs of all of the illustrations from the 26 surviving manuscripts. Volume 1 provides the introduction to the group of manuscript families and their illuminations. Williams reviews the work of past scholars on the construction and interrelationship of the various Beatus manuscripts. He provides a useful historical background and explains the relationship of the manuscripts to that history, from the origins of the Asturian state to the tenth-century expansion onto the central Iberian Meseta and the occupation of Le'on. This last event provided the backdrop to the new Beatus-Jerome versions of the commentaries. Williams considers the role of the Reconquest and the considerable influence of Islamic art translated through the work of the Mozarabi
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
