Guest post by Karen Gross who is Associate Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches courses on the Middle Ages. Her current research explores illuminated English Apocalypses; in particular, she is curious about their afterlives, the different ways that later medieval and Reformed readers interacted with and re-purposed these books. Aside from studying manuscripts, her favorite way to encounter the past is through long-distance walking.

 

Demons fleeing statues, corpses reanimating, stones transformed into gold: who knew that seeing a seven-headed beast would not be the most freakish thing to happen to someone? Yet these incidents and more are present in the several illuminated Apocalypses held in the NYPL’s Manuscripts and Rare Books collections—including in a book that was previously thought to be incomplete. (Further below on this happy correction!)

The Book of Revelation recounts a series of frightening and mysterious events unleashed upon earth as part of a cosmic battle between heavenly and demonic forces. Traditionally, Revelation has been attributed to the Apostle John, believed also to be the author of a Gospel as well as three epistles. Objections to his authorship were raised as early as the second century C.E., and there was debate through the fourth century over whether even to include this alarming book of prophecy into the canon of biblical scripture.[1] 

A millennium later, however, Revelation’s association with John was not an embarrassment to be overlooked but a feature to be celebrated. John was identified as the disciple whom Jesus loved, who reclined on Him at the Last Supper (John 13:23-25); it was later thought that John received the gift of prophecy when he lay his head over Jesus’s heart.[2] Hence why, when each Evangelist is symbolized by one of the Four Living Creatures from Ezekiel’s chariot (Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4:6-8), John is the eagle, for that is the creature that can stare directly into the sun and see clearly.[3]

No surprise, then, that the beloved Apostle gifted with heavenly vision would leave a book revealing the future.

Revelation was copied often in the Middle Ages. It was included, of course, in the many manuscripts of the complete Christian Bible (known as pandects), as well as copies of the New Testament. The NYPL has examples of several different kinds of manuscript Bibles, including large lectern Bibles intended for public reading (MA 4) or for liturgical use (MA 134); compact Paris Bibles, made for university students (MA 7, 11, and 130); and several copies of the Middle English (or Wycliffite) Old and New Testaments (MA 64, 65, 66 and 67). But it was also common in the Middle Ages for scriptural books to circulate separately from the Bible in independent volumes, like the Revelation text in MS Spencer 57. Revelation was one of the most popular stand-alone biblical books, second only to the psalms. And, like the psalms, Revelation was often illustrated.[4]

In one branch of Apocalypse manuscripts, the images dominate the page to the point that the text is reduced to simply captions and inscriptions on banners within the illuminations, resembling modern comic books. These Apocalypse picture-books first appear in England in the thirteenth century—one of the earliest and most stunning examples now lives down the street from the NYPL at the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum (MS M.524)—but they surge in popularity in the fifteenth century in Germany and the Low Countries. This renewed interest in the picture-book Apocalypses corresponded with a new technology: the block book. Unlike illustrated books printed with moveable type and engraved or woodblock images, block books were complete xylographs, that is, words and images were carved together on wooden blocks, which then printed on paper (or occasionally parchment). These prints could be left as separate sheets or gathered together into a codex. Given the laborious nature of this reproductive process, most block books are rather short; at 48 blocks, the Apocalypse is among the largest block books known.[5] But despite its complexity, the block-book Apocalypse was a bestseller. Almost 90 copies survive today, demonstrating that it went through six different editions. Think of that: all 48 blocks were completely re-carved five times! The NYPL boasts three block-book Apocalypses, one each from the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, and all made in Germany. But block books did not replace hand-written and -drawn books, and another late manuscript witness to this picture-book Apocalypse tradition is NYPL MA 15, made in Thuringia ca. 1470.

Which brings me back to the talking corpses and magical rocks. Modern readers of Revelation might not give St. John much thought, reading the mystical vision without consideration of its human author. But in the manuscript picture-books and block books, St. John is repeatedly foregrounded. Nearly every image includes him as a witness to the events. More than that, Revelation appears as simply one long episode in the midst of his life, sandwiched between scenes from his ministry in Ephesus before and after his exile on Patmos, as described in the omnibus of saints’ lives, the Golden Legend. In the beginning, John’s life seems industrious but not miraculous: he preaches in Ephesus and baptizes Drusiana, an early convert; he’s hauled in front of the proconsul for disturbing the peace and he boards a boat for Rome, whence he is exiled to the isle of Patmos, where we see him at the start of the Revelation sequence. But after his visionary adventure, John does some spooky things himself.

Upon his return to Ephesus, one of his first acts is to raise Drusiana, his faithful disciple, who had died while he was away. Her weeping friends brought her bier to John, lamenting that she passed before she got a chance to see her beloved teacher again. Deeply moved, either by grief or hunger, John commanded, “Drusiana, my Lord God Jesu Christ ariseth thee; Drusiana arise, and go into thy house, and make ready for me some refection.”

John continues to work wonders. A pair of backsliding converts regret giving all of their riches to the poor. Disgusted, John transforms some sticks and stones into gold and jewels, which he hands to the youths while rebuking them for the heavenly wealth they have now forfeited. This miracle makes sense, since John is considered an expert on gems, given his appraisal of the bejeweled New Jerusalem (Revelation 17). Hence why many lapidaries often mention him as an authority.[6]

 But John’s powers don’t stop there. Later, the idolaters of Asia are riled by his preaching and drag him to the Temple of Diana, demanding that he offer sacrifice to her cult statue. Instead, John’s prayers bring the entire building to rubble. The MA 15 artist expands on the text to show crafty demons fleeing from their hiding place in the idol. 

Wonderful to relate! And further wonders: these two illuminations are indeed in NYPL MS MA 15, filling the top and bottom registers of fol. 17v. This corrects the description printed in The Splendor of the Word catalogue of the NYPL’s illuminated manuscripts, which erroneously reports that MA 15 is here incomplete compared to its sibling manuscript (London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Ms. 49) and the Block-Book IV. In fact, the Life of John in MA 15 corresponds with both, and the final two scenes of John’s life—“John drinks from poisoned goblet and is unharmed” and “John celebrates his last Mass and is raised from the tomb full of manna”—are on fol. 18r, not fol. 17v as printed (Splendor 96).

I was fortunate enough to view MA 15 this past February, generously supported by one of the library’s Short-Term Research Fellowships. While in previous visits to the library I had admired the third-floor reading room and taken pictures of Patience and Fortitude, those weeks in early 2020 were the first time I had ever worked at the NYPL. Any opportunity to be present with a medieval manuscript is a gift, but I am particularly thankful for the kindness and attentiveness in welcoming me to the NYPL, especially by the staff in the Manuscripts and Rare Books Reading Room and the Prints and Photographs Study Room. My nostalgia for my brief NYPL stint has grown enormously given the events of 2020: it was while in New York that I read about a novel virus first identified in the United States in Kirkland, Washington, not that far from my home in Portland, Oregon. My last memories of Before Times—the freedom of easy visiting with friends, dining in restaurants, walking through a gallery, going to the cinema, attending a church service, smiling at strangers (even if not everyone responded!)—are of New York, and especially its glorious public monument, the Library. This has heightened my sorrow at watching COVID-19 as it first ravaged New York before reaching my own family.

It had already become cliché to call our current era “apocalyptic,” but the recent pandemic has redoubled efforts on the part of some scriptural sleuths to match events with John’s prophecy. In fact, Revelation does not explicitly describe a disease scourging humanity. In Chapter 16, seven angels are given bowls with which to pour libations onto earth, each releasing a plague.

Yet these abominations resemble more the modern experiences of global warming than human illness: poisoned seas, scorching heat, dried rivers, earthquakes. The first vial does assault human health—it delivers boils upon the Beast’s followers—but it is not a pandemic. Modern interpreters sometimes identify the White Horse released by the First Seal (6:1-2) as pestilence, but this by no means was the accepted interpretation in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. On the contrary, most exegetes glossed the First Horseman positively, as Christ or the Holy Spirit.

And this has been perhaps the greatest surprise for me while examining illuminated Apocalypses over these last five years: that a book so often contorted into a story of terror and punishment could also be read as a book of promise and comfort. Sufferings are the birth pangs to a new beginning, and the supernatural workings of Revelation imbue even the everyday with wonder. Perhaps in the end we must be like the St. John in MA 15 and the block-books: another day, another disaster, ho hum. Now, what’s for lunch?

 

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[1] Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (New York: Penguin, 2013), 107-14, 160-62.

[2] Jeffrey F. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 71-72.

[3] Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 12.7.10-11.

[4] Richard K. Emmerson, Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2018).

[5] For a list of surviving copies, consult the census in the Guttenberg exhibition catalogue Blockbücher des Mittelalters: Bilderfolgen als Lektüre (Mainz, 1991), 396-99. The six block-book editions were first determined by Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur metal au XVe siècle. Tome quatrième contenantun catalogue des livres xylographiques et xylochirographiques, indiquant les differences de toutes les éditions existantes (Leipzig, 1902), reprinted as Handbuch der Holzund Metallschnitte des XV. Jarhunderts, 3rd ed., vol. 9 (Stuttgart-Nendeln, 1969); reconsidered by Elke Purpus, “Die Blockbücher der Apokalypse,” in Blockbücher des Mittelalters, 81-97. See also the descriptions by Nigel Palmer, “BB1-Apocalypse” (I/II), “BB-2 Apocalypse” (IV), and “BB-3 Apocalypse” (V) in A Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century now in the Bodleian Library, eds. Alan Coates, et al. (Oxford, 2005), 1.A.7-14.

[6] The Middle English “Boke of Stones”: The Southern Version, ed. George R. Keiser, SCRIPTA 13 (Brussels: Omirel, 1984), 4; also edited in English Mediaeval Lapidaries, eds. Joan Evans, and Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS os 190 (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 18. One English-made, French-language guide to stones is known as the “Apocalyptic Lapidary,” because it is based upon John’s description of the New Jerusalem: Anglo-Norman Lapidaries, eds. Paul Studer and Joan Evans (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Édouard Champion, 1924), 260-76.