8b 
 ND 
 2930 
 .M67 
 1914 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/studiesineastchrOOmore 
 
'^HE volumes of the University of Michigan 
 Studies are published by authority of the 
 Executive Board of the Graduate Depart- 
 ment of the University of Michigan. A list 
 of the volumes thus far published or ar- 
 ranged for is given at the end of this volume. 
 
HUMANISTIC SERIES 
 VOLUME XII 
 
 STUDIES IN EAST CHRISTIAN AND 
 ROMAN ART 
 
 PART I. EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 IN THE FREER COLLECTION 
 
•Tl 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 TORONTO 
 
Plate I. 
 
 Sr. John Climacls 
 
EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FREER COLLECTION 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES R. MOREY 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
 
 Nei33 fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 
 I914 
 
 All rights reser-ved 
 
Copyright, 1914, 
 By FRANCIS W. KELSEY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 191 4. 
 
 Nortnooli PrtsB 
 J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 THE GETTY C^i^T^K 
 IIBRAW 
 
MY MOTHER 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In the preparation of the Studies presented in the following 
 pages I have been indebted to many for kind assistance. First of 
 all, I am under deep obligation to Mr. Charles L. Freer for afford- 
 ing every facility in the use of the material in his collection and for 
 his generous support of the publication. M. Charles Diehl, of the 
 Sorbonne, read the Studies in proof and made valuable sugges- 
 tions. Dr. E. C. Richardson of Princeton University, and Professor 
 H. A. Sanders of the University of Michigan, assisted in the solving 
 of palaeographical difificulties. The extent of my obligation to 
 Strzygowski, Brockhaus, Dalton, and other masters in the field of 
 East Christian art may be inferred from the number of citations of 
 their contributions in the notes and in the list of illustrations. 
 
 The colored plates and heliotype plates in this volume were 
 made by The Heliotype Company, of Boston ; the negatives for 
 plates XI-XIII were prepared by Mr. George R. Swain. 
 
 CHARLES R. MOREY. 
 
 Princeton, New Jersey, 
 July, 1914. 
 
 vii 
 
I 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Two Miniatures from a Manuscript of St. John Climacus, and their 
 Relation to Klimax Iconography : 
 
 The illustrated manuscripts of the Klimax i 
 
 Portrait of St. John Climacus ^4 
 
 Miniature of the Heavenly Ladder ^7 
 
 Eight Miniatures from a Manuscript of the Gospels : 
 
 The manuscript containing the Miniatures 3^ 
 
 Portraits of Mark and John 34 
 
 The Descent from the Cross 4i 
 
 The Descent into Hell 45 
 
 The Doubting of Thomas 54 
 
 Christ and the Holy Women 56 
 
 Madonna and Saints . . . . ■ 58 
 
 John the Baptist and the Virgin (?) 59 
 
 Date and Value of the Miniatures 59 
 
 The Painted Covers of the Washington Manuscript of the Gospels : 
 
 Covers and Painting ..... 63 
 
 Portraits of the Evangelists 66 
 
 Date and Style 67 
 
 Appendix : Libraries containing the Facsimile of the Washington Man- 
 uscript of the Four Gospels 83 
 
 ix 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATES 
 
 Plates I-X are colored. 
 
 I. 
 
 Portrait of St. John Climacus ...... 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING I'AGE 
 
 II. 
 
 Miniature of the Heavenly Ladder ..... 
 
 i6 
 
 III. 
 
 Portrait of St. Mark 
 
 . 34 
 
 IV. 
 
 Index of Selections from the Gospel of Mark . 
 
 . 35 
 
 V. 
 
 Portrait of St. John ........ 
 
 . . 38 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Descent from the Cross ...... 
 
 . 39 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Descent into Hell ....... 
 
 . 48 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Doubting of Thomas ...... 
 
 . 49 
 
 IX. 
 
 Christ and the Holy Women ...... 
 
 . . 56 
 
 X. 
 
 Madonna and Saints ....... 
 
 . 57 
 
 XI. 
 
 Covers of the Washington manuscript of the Gospels with the 
 
 Chain 62 
 
 XII. 
 
 First Cover, with portraits of Matthew and John 
 
 . 66 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Second Cover, with portraits of Luke and Mark 
 
 . . 76 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 
 
 FIGURE PAGE 
 
 1. Miniatures of a Klimax manuscript in the Vatican Library: Vat. 394 
 
 (from D'Agincourt, Histoire de P Art) ...... 4 
 
 2. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the Vatican Library: Vat. 394 
 
 (from Beissel, Vatikanische Miniatitren) ..... 5 
 
 3. St. John Climacus. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the Bibli- 
 
 otheque Nationale : Paris, Coisl. 88 (from a photograph) . . 7 
 
 4. Humility and Indifference. Miniatures of a Klimax manuscript in 
 
 the Vatican Library: Vat. 1754 (from Tikkanen, Fine illustrierte 
 Klimax-Handschrift) ......... 8 
 
 5. Penitent Monks. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the Vatican 
 
 Library: Vat. 1754 (from Tikkanen, Fine illustrierte Klimax- 
 Handschrift) . . . . . . . . . . .10 
 
 xi 
 
xii 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FIGURE PAGE 
 
 6. Penitent Monks. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the Vatican 
 
 Library: Vat. 1754 (from Tikkanen, Eine illtistrierte KUmax- 
 Hamhchrift) . . . . . . ■ . . . .11 
 
 7. Gluttony. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the Bibliotheque 
 
 Nationale : Paris, Coisl. 263 (from a photograph). . . .12 
 
 8. The Soul at the top of the Heavenly Ladder. Miniature of a Klimax 
 
 manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale: Paris 1069 (from a 
 photograph) . . . . . . . . . . -13 
 
 9. The Heavenly Ladder. Miniature of a Klimax manuscript in the 
 
 Imperial Library at Vienna: Vienna 207 (from a photograph) . 15 
 
 10. Jacob's Vision. Licised design on the bronze doors of the cathedral 
 
 of Monte Santangelo (from Schulz, Deiikm'dler dcr Kunst in Unter- 
 italieii) ... ......... 19 
 
 11. Iconography of the Ladder Miniature . . . . . . .21 
 
 12. The Heavenly Ladder. Ikon in the Likhatcheff collection at St. Peters- 
 
 burg (from Likhatcheff, Matcriaiix pour riiistoire tic i'icoiiographie 
 russe) ............ 23 
 
 13. Triptych in the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican (from D'Agincourt, 
 
 Histoire de I'' Art) . . . . . . . . . .24 
 
 14. Specimen Text from a Menaeum in the Bibliotheque Nationale, dated 
 
 112"] (Ixom OmoTit, Fac-si)niies des matti/scrits grecs) ... 29 
 
 15. St. Mark writing his Gospel. Miniature of the Codex Kossanensis 
 
 (from Gebhardt and Harnack, Codex purpureus Rossanensis) . 35 
 
 16. Christ, St. John, and St. Matthew. Reliefs of St. Mark's at Venice 
 
 (from a photograph) ......... 36 
 
 17. St. Matthew writing his Gospel. Miniature of the Durham Book (from 
 
 Westwood, Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish 
 manuscripts") . . . . . . . . . . -37 
 
 18. The Crucifixion and the Four Evangelists. Relief of a sarcophagus in 
 
 S. Zeno, Verona (from a photograph) ...... 38 
 
 19. Examples of the Descent from the Cross, showing the evolution of its 
 
 iconography from the ninth to the twelfth century (from Rohault 
 
 de Fleury, V Evangile) ......... 42 
 
 20. The Descent from the Cross. Miniature of the Melissenda Psalter in 
 
 the British Museum (from Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology) 43 
 
 21. The Descent from the Cross, from Duccio's Altar-piece (from a photo- 
 
 graph) 44 
 
 22. The Iconography of the Descent into Hell ..... 46-47 
 
 23. The Descent into Hell. Fresco in S. Maria Antiqua, Rome (from 
 
 Rushforth, Santa Maria Antiqua) ....... 50 
 
 24. The Descent into Hell. Mosaic in the Monastery of Daphni, near 
 
 Athens (from a photograph) . . . . . . . -Si 
 
 25. Mosaic in St. Mark's, Venice. Above, the Descent into Hell ; below, 
 
 Christ and the Holy Women and the Doubting of Thomas (from 
 
 a photograph) . . . . . . . . . -52 
 
 26. The Descent into Hell. Fresco in the Peribleptos church at Mistra 
 
 (from Millet, Monuments byzantins de Mistra) • • • • 53 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 xiii 
 
 FIGURE 
 
 27. The Descent into Hell. Miniature of the Melissenda Psalter in the 
 
 British Museum (from Herbert, Illutninated Manuscripts) 
 
 28. Christ and the Holy Women. Miniature of a Gospel in the Iviron 
 
 monastery on Mt. Athos : Iviron 5 (from Brockhaus, Die Kmist in 
 den Athos-k/'dstcrn) ......... 
 
 29. The Ascension. Painting in Chapel XVH at Bawit (from Comptes 
 
 rendiis de 1' Academic des Inscriptions ct Bc/ics-Lettres) 
 
 30. Three Saints. Wall-painting in Cell F at Saqqara (from Quibell. 
 
 H.xcavations at Sai/ijara) ........ 
 
 31. The Ascension. Miniature of the Gospel of Rabulas (from Cabrol, 
 
 Dictionnaire d'Arclicologic cJirctiennc ct de Lititrgie) 
 
 32. The Ascension. Relief on an Early Christian oil-flask at Monza (from 
 
 Cabrol, Dictionuaire d'Arc/ico logic ciirctienne et de Liturgie) 
 
 33. Miniatures of a History of the World in the Golenisheff collection at 
 
 St. Petersburg (from Strzygowski, Eine alcxandnnische Weltchronik) 
 
 34. The Nativity and the Baptism. Painted wooden panel in the Golen- 
 
 isheff collection at St. Petersburg (from Strzygowski, Eine ale.x- 
 andrinischc Wcltchronil<:) ......... 
 
I. TWO MINIATURES FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF 
 ST. JOHN CLIMACUS, AND THEIR RELA- 
 TION TO KLIMAX ICONOGRAPHY 
 
 i. The Illustrated Manuscripts of the Klimax 
 
 The author of the work of which Mr. Freer's miniatures are 
 illustrations was a personage of great distinction in the history of 
 the Eastern church. Born about the year 525, he entered the 
 cloister on Mt. Sinai at the age of sixteen, but the desire of the 
 hermit's life was strong within him, and he soon left the monastery 
 for a cave at the foot of the mountain, where he lived in solitude 
 for forty years. At the end of this period he was persuaded by 
 the monks of his old monastery to return to them as their abbot, 
 and in this office he continued, acquiring great reputation for his 
 piety and learning, until shortly before his death, when he again 
 retired to a hermit's cell. He died about 600. 
 
 To his name Johannes the Greeks added several epithets, 
 calling him Sinaita from his monastery on Mt. Sinai, and Scholas- 
 ticus in allusion to his learning. But their favorite name for him 
 was 6 Trj<; /cXt/iiaK'o?, ' he of the Ladder,' alluding to the Klimax, or 
 ' Heavenly Ladder,' which St. John wrote for the guidance of his 
 monks, and to which he owes his fame. The Greek genitive was 
 Latinized into Climacus, and Johannes Climacus is his traditional 
 appellation in the West. 
 
 The Klimax was written at the request of a friend and admirer, 
 also called Johannes, who was abbot of the neighboring monastery 
 of Raithu, about fifty kilometres south of Sinai. It is a treatise 
 on the evolution of the consecrated monastic life, intended as 
 a guide to the earnest monk in the attainment of ascetic and 
 spiritual perfection. The work is divided into thirty chapters 
 or " rungs," corresponding with the thirty years of the secret life 
 of Christ; it commences with a homily on " Withdrawal from the 
 World," and ends with one on " Charity." A characteristic list of 
 
2 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 titles to the thirty £-rac/?(s or " rungs" is that given in Cod. Theol. 
 Gr. 207 in the Imperial Library of Vienna, as follows: 
 
 J 
 
 
 16. 
 
 Ji ^pt \fJL/\u,pyV^tU.S • V— UlU.Ci lllll^ 1-«U\C Ul 
 
 
 Ui£l.tVci,l ilL.'Ill 111^ VV WllV^i 
 
 
 TVI 0 n p \' 
 
 
 TrtfJI, U.7ryjUU TTCil/ttClS ■ V_.wlll_Cl 111 ll^ 1 do 
 
 1 7 
 
 TTCpl oLKT7jp.oo"W7j^ '• Conccming Poverty. 
 
 
 
 18. 
 
 Tlx.pL (XviJiLUl/TlULU.'s • V~-L>1H_CI lllUi; lUSCllol" 
 
 1 
 
 J- 
 
 
 
 bility. 
 
 
 1 PCI If 1 n (T 
 
 led V ill^ • 
 
 19. 
 
 Trept i^ctAp.oj8t<xs I Concerning Psalm- 
 
 A 
 
 4- 
 
 Trfni 1 iirri w 1 c • \ c\ rir*PT"nir>cr II MPri 1 p n r**^ 
 TT^fJl. VTTU.I^Uf^S • V—Ulll-Cl 111 11^ \_/ UCU IC liL.C • 
 
 
 singing. 
 
 r 
 
 3- 
 
 TTCi^i II fTtti/nific ■ tonpprnino' l^piipnt- 
 
 
 TTtpi IXypUTrVUXS • v-'U IICCI 11 Jllg VVtllVClUl" 
 
 
 
 
 
 6. 
 
 TTCjot jjLvyjiXTj'i Oolvoltov '. CTonccrnin^ tlic 
 
 2 I . 
 
 Trem neiXiitc ' r^nripprni n tr T'liniHifv 
 
 
 Remembrance of Death. 
 
 22. 
 
 Trept /cevoSo^t'us : Concerning Vainglory. 
 
 7- 
 
 Trept TrivOov^ : Concerning Sorrow. 
 
 23- 
 
 Trepi otjJtrecDS : Concerning Self-conceit. 
 
 8. 
 
 TTCpl aopyrj(TLa<; : Concerning Meekness. 
 
 24. 
 
 Trept aKaKia; : Concerning Guileless- 
 
 9- 
 
 Trepl afxvrjo-tKaKtaf; : Concerning Forgiv- 
 
 
 ness. 
 
 
 ingness. 
 
 25. 
 
 Trept TaTr€ivocf)pocrvvq<; : Concerning Hu- 
 
 lO. 
 
 Trepl Tov p.r] Kpivetv : Concerning Judg- 
 
 
 mility. 
 
 
 ing Not. 
 
 26. 
 
 Trept ^laKpiaew'i : Concerning Discre- 
 
 1 1. 
 
 Trept o-tcoTT^? : Concerning Silence. 
 
 
 tion. 
 
 12. 
 
 TTCpl i//€vSov? : Concerning Falsehood. 
 
 27- 
 
 Trepi Trpoatv^<; : Concerning Prayer. 1 
 
 '3- 
 
 Trept d/cr/Stus : Concerning Indifference. 
 
 28. 
 
 Trept ri<jv)(La<; : Concerning Quiet. 
 
 14. 
 
 Trept v7j<TTeta<; : Concerning Fasting. 
 
 29. 
 
 Trept oTra^etas: Concerning Tranquillity. 
 
 15- 
 
 Trept dyvetas : Concerning Chastity. 
 
 30. 
 
 Trept dyaTTT^s : Concerning Charity. 
 
 The Klimax enjoyed a remarkable popularity during the Middle 
 Ages, and its fame was by no means confined to the East. We 
 find ti-anslations into Syriac, Modern Greek, Latin, Italian, Span- 
 ish, French and Slavonic, and a belated English version is to be 
 found in the library of Cambrai, entitled "A Spiritual Lader, or 
 Stepes to Ascend up to Heaven," and dating in the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 While manuscripts of the text of the " Ladder" are abundant, 
 those adorned with miniatures are comparatively rare ; illustra- 
 tion, moreover, is generally confined to a simple drawing of 
 the " Ladder," usually at the end of the manuscript, in which 
 sometimes the rungs are labelled with the titles of the chapters, 
 thus constituting a picturesque table of contents (Fig. 9, p. 15). 
 The following table gives a list of the illustrated Greek Klimax 
 codices, eliminating those whose illustration is limited to the 
 "ladder" drawing mentioned above, or to illuminated initials and 
 borders : 
 
 ^ Gradus 27 and 28 appear in inverse order in most manuscripts, 27 being on "Quiet" 
 and 28 on Prayer." 
 
\ 
 
 KLIMAX MINIATURES 3 
 
 Datb 
 
 Described bv 
 
 Abbreviation 
 
 XI Century 
 
 
 
 Vaticanus gr. 394. 
 
 Beissel, / 'atikanische Mniiaturcn. pp. 
 
 24-25 (Taf. XIV b). 
 D Agmcourt, Hutoire ac I Art. v . pi. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Labarte, Hist, aes .-Irts /iiattstruis, 
 
 T T T AO 
 111, p. 00. 
 
 Vat. 394. 
 
 Pans, Bibliotneque Nationale. 
 
 Bordier, Desa-iptton des petntures, etc. 
 
 "Wt * ~- • 1 net 
 
 Pans Coisl. 88. 
 
 Coislin 88. 
 
 dans les inss. grecs de la Bibliotlitqne 
 Nationale, Index, pp. 318 and 320. 
 
 
 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana 
 
 Martmi & Bassi, Cat. cod. grace, hibl. 
 
 Ambr. 107. 
 
 gr. 107. 
 
 Ainorosianae, 1. p. 120. 
 
 
 XI OR XII Century 
 
 
 
 Vaticanus gr. 1754. 
 
 Tikkanen, Acta Soc. iicient. hennicae, 
 XIX, 1893. 
 
 Vat. 1754. 
 
 XII Century 
 
 
 
 Freer miniatures. 
 
 
 
 Sinai Library, no. 418. 
 
 Kondakori, Travels on Sinai (Russian). 
 
 Sinai 418. 
 
 rans, rSiDJ. iNat. 1150. 
 
 Bordier, op. cit., p. 203. 
 
 Paris 1 1 58. 
 
 Pans, Bibl. Nat. Coislin 263. 
 
 Bordier, op. cit.. Index, p. 318. 
 
 Paris Coisl. 263. 
 
 Paris, Bibl. Nat. 1069. 
 
 Bordier. op. cit.. Inventaire, p. 39. 
 
 Paris 1069. 
 
 XIV Century 
 
 
 
 Mt. Athos, Stavroniketa mon- 
 
 Lambros, KardAoyos tujv Iv ruts lit-li- 
 
 Stavroniketa 50. 
 
 astery, no. 50. 
 
 \io6i]KaL<; TOV dyiov 6pov<; 'EAAr^viKcov 
 KwSiKdJv, I. p. 78, no. 915. 50. 
 
 
 XV Century 
 
 
 
 Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana gr. 
 
 Martini & Bassi, op. cit.. I. p. 460. 
 
 Ambr. 387. i. 
 
 387. I. 
 
 
 
 Vienna, Imperial Library, 
 
 De Nessel, Cat. cod. grace, bibl. Cacs. 
 
 Vienna 207. 
 
 Codex gr. 207. 
 
 Vind., I. p. 306. 
 
 
 The first manuscript in the list, Vat. 394, is also the best 
 known. A number of the miniatures are reproduced in Fig. i, 
 and one of them on a larger scale in Fig. 2. The latter is a fair 
 sample of the scenes, showing considerable originality of concep- 
 tion, and extraordinary fineness of modelling in the faces in spite 
 of the diminutive scale, the manuscript measuring only 24 x 17 cm. 
 Altogether the work is worthy of its period, although the eleventh 
 century witnessed the production of some of the best of Byzantine 
 painting. 
 
 The miniature reproduced in Fig. 2 adorns the beginning of 
 the nineteenth " rung " (Trept i//aX|Ltaj8ia?), and the text below is 
 arranged in two columns. The title of the first column reads, 
 " Concerning Sleep and Prayer during the Chanting of Psalms," 
 
4 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 and the beginning of the second column speaks of "fasting, from 
 which the wearied body (seeks to recuperate) by sleep." This 
 gives us the clew to the meaning of the little scene at the extreme 
 right where Prayer (17 irpocrevxv) chastises prostrate Sleep (6 vvfoq). 
 Sleep is black, as are all the " Vices " of this graphic allegory. In 
 the central scene the author of the Klimax — duly labelled 'the 
 
 FIG. 1. Miniatures of a Klimax Manuscript in the Vatican Library: Vat. 394. 
 
 Upper Row : to left, St. John preaching to his flock, and pointing to a bust of Christ in the heavens 
 above; middle, above, a monk renouncing " Life " (represented as a nude male figure with wheels on his 
 feet) and his family; middle, below, scenes representing "ploughing" and an allegory; to right, a monk 
 starting on his wanderings, under the guidance of " Home-leaving," and a sleeping monk tempted by 
 demons (in the form of angels) with dreams of his abandoned family. 
 
 Middle Row : to left, monks praying in a cave ; to right, the burial of a holy anchorite. 
 
 Lower Row : to left, " Humility " encouraging a monk to climb the Ladder, while a Vice holds him 
 by the foot; in middle to left, an angel encouraging a monk who is climbing the Ladder, below which 
 stands St. John, pointing to the bound and prostrate figure of a Vice ; in middle to right, St. John teaching 
 two monks, and a Virtue expelling two Vices ; to right, a monk in prayer upon the Ladder, standing on 
 the prostrate form of " Evil Speech." 
 
 holy John ' 6 a(yio9) ^l(t){(ivvr)<;) — sits upon a throne in front of an 
 architectural background in inverse perspective, and instructs four 
 monks. To the left an elaborate allegory unfolds itself. We see a 
 luckless monk pulled headlong from the Ladder by the Vices which 
 he has allowed to get the upper hand. Arrogance (17 virepiqcfiavLa) 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 5 
 
 grasps his left foot, Sleep (6 vtti^o?) clasps him about the middle, 
 Vainglory {KevoSo^ia) runs up from the right to bear a hand in his 
 downfall. Gluttony (17 yaa-TpLixapyia) pulls at his left arm, and 
 False Reverence {xpevBevXa^Lo) at his right, while Desire (6 dvyioq) 
 has fastened himself to his hair. A black and naked imp labelled 
 ' Satiety ' (6 Kopoi) sits on the ground below, lifting a cup in his 
 
 A : 
 
 i Jt • Try o C f^l-ly - • ■ ■ <. 'I! ' 
 
 FIG. 
 
 Miniature of a Klimax Manuscript in the Vatican Lii;kakv : Vat. 394. 
 
 To Left: Vices pulling a monk from the ladder; below, "Orthodoxy," the " Pit of Ignorance," 
 " Satiety," and the " Rout of Goodly Virtues." To Right : St. John teaching his flock, and " Prayer " 
 chastising " Sleep." 
 
 right hand. Another naked figure lies in a cavern to the left, 
 which bears the inscription Xolkko^ dyi/wcrta?, ' the Pit of Ignorance,' 
 and by way of contrast to his pitiable condition, the stately figure 
 of an ecclesiastic rises above the cave, labelled 17 opdoSo^ia, ' Ortho- 
 do.xy.' In the lower right-hand corner, a Vice pushes away three 
 Virtues. Above his head we read crwijOeLa 17 irov-qpa 'bad com- 
 pany,' and above the group of virtues is the inscription Siw^is tcjv 
 KaXwv dpeTwv, 'the rout of goodly virtues.' This by-play therefore 
 
6 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 affords a fitting title to the whole allegory: " Evil communications 
 corrupt good manners." 
 
 The other miniatures of the manuscript are largely allegories 
 of the same sort, varied with occasional scenes from the life and 
 teaching of St. John. A noteworthy survival from the antique is 
 seen in one of them (Fig. i), wherein Life (6 ^lo<;) is figured as a 
 nude man striding along on wheels, a type which is clearly derived 
 from the Greek conception of Katpo? 'Opportunity,' and is paral- 
 leled by a similar figure on a stone parapet in the cathedral at 
 Torcello, dated by Cattaneo in 1008.^ 
 
 Paris Coisl. 88 is dated by Bordier in the eleventh century. It 
 contains a miniature (Fig. 3) representing St. John seated before 
 his monastery, and writing. The Heavenly Ladder rises from 
 the top of the monastery. A portrait of the author is the sole 
 illustration of Ambr. 107. 
 
 The most interesting of Klimax manuscripts is easily Vat. 1754, 
 which was published for the first time by Tikkanen in the Ac/a 
 Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae of 1893.'- The manuscript con- 
 sists of 195 leaves, and measures 21 x 16 cm. The first miniature 
 (fol. i) corresponds with the ladder drawing which often accom- 
 panies manuscripts of the Klimax and serves as a table of contents, 
 each rung of the ladder being inscribed with the title of its partic- 
 ular homily. In Vat. 1754, however, this table of contents takes 
 a unique form. Each rung is here illustrated by a microscopic 
 picture (the figures are but 12 mm. in height) alluding to the title, 
 and to provide room for this original treatment the ladder bends 
 round the page in the form of a horseshoe. Tikkanen finds that 
 these little scenes show the " uniformity of invention common to 
 Klimax-illustrations," but that they are done so carefully as to 
 rival larger miniatures in sureness of detail, particularly in the 
 drawing of the face. His description of the most interesting of 
 the pictures is here summarized, with the few additional comments 
 that seemed necessary. 
 
 ^ Cattaneo, H Archilecture en Italie die Vie ait Xle Steele. Trans, by Le Monnier. 
 1890, p. 310, fig. 166. Cattaneo's date is that of the restoration of Torcello cathedral 
 by Pietro Orseolo II, Doge of Venice. This is the same relief that figures in Baumeister, 
 Denkinalcr, II, fig. 824. and was mistaken for a late Roman work by Curtius, Arch. Zeii., 
 1875, p. 6. Such revivals of Hellenic motifs are very common in the middle period of 
 Byzantine art. For other representations of Life in Byzantine art, see Ualton, Byzantine 
 Art and Archaeology, p. 158, and A. Muiioz, VArte, IX, p. 212 ff. 
 
 ^ This publication is somewhat inaccessible, and I have therefore given Tikkanen's 
 description and critique of the manuscript in detail. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 7 
 
 First Rung (Concerning Retirement and the Renunciation of 
 the World) : An angel pointing out Christ to a boy. 
 
 Third Rung (Concerning the Leaving of Home, and Concern- 
 ing Dreams) : A sleeping monk and another monk leaving him and 
 starting on his pilgrimage. In Vat. 394 this scene is treated in 
 
 FIG. 3. St. John Climacus. Miniature ov a Ki.imax Maxuscrii'T 
 
 I.\ THE BiBLIOTHEQUK NaTIONALE: PaRIS CoISL. 88. 
 
 St. John w riting the Khmax; in the background, his monastery of Mt. Sinai, from which the 
 
 Ladder rises to Heaven. 
 
 more allegorical fashion (Fig. i), in that the attention of the wan- 
 dering monk is directed by a personification of Home-leaving 
 (17 ^evLTeia) toward his sleeping brother. The elderly man and 
 woman to the right of the sleeper and the two youthful forms to 
 the left doubtless represent the family of the monk, while the 
 
8 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 winged figure bending above him, and the other pulling at his 
 garments, are not angels, but devils. This is clear from the con- 
 text of the second part of the third homily, in which we read that 
 the monk must beware of the dreams which come to him after 
 leaving home and friends, for ' the demons will see fit to disturb us 
 in dreams by showing us our loved ones in lamentation, or dying 
 or grieving for us, and in trouble. . . . They often transform 
 themselves into an angel of light and the shape of the martyrs, etc' ^ 
 The same tempting of a sleeping monk appears in Sinai 418. 
 
 Sixth Rung (Concerning the Remembrance of Death) : A 
 monk standing in melancholy meditation by a grave. The cor- 
 responding miniature in Vat. 394 is 
 not finished (fol. 51). In the Sinai 
 Klimax, the grave is replaced by a 
 sarcophagus containing the bodies of 
 four dead youths, a motif which re- 
 minds one of the French " Dit des 
 trois morts et des trois vifs " of the 
 thirteenth century, which reappears in 
 the well-known Triumph of Death in 
 the Campo Santo at Pisa. 
 
 Seventh Rung (Sorrow) : A monk 
 seated in an attitude of melancholy. 
 
 Eleventh Rung (Silence) : A 
 seated monk. In Vat. 394 the con- 
 cept is expressed in characteristic fash- 
 ion by a personification, a maiden in 
 classic costume pointing to her mouth. 
 Thirteenth Rung (Indifference): A small demon aims an arrow 
 at a seated monk (Fig. 4). In Vat. 394 (fol. 71 verso) Indifference 
 has seized the foot of a monk who stands on the Ladder, but in 
 the next scene lies bound at the feet of St. John. 
 
 Fourteenth Rung (Gluttony) : A monk sitting at a table and 
 drinking from a goblet (compare the miniature in Paris Coisl. 
 263, Fig. 7). Beside him stands a cooking apparatus on a hearth 
 of masonry. 
 
 FIG. 4. Humility and Indiffer- 
 ence. Miniatures of a Klimax 
 Manuscript in the Vatican 
 Library : Vat. 1754. 
 
 1 Scala Paradisi, Migne, Patr. Graec. 88, col. 670 & 672 : . . . Tore Xonrov ol SaLfji.ove<; 
 8t ivvTTVLoiv Oopvjitiv SoKifxaaovrnv rifJia.^, tovs otxetovs eavTwv rjfjilv VTrohuKvvvr(.<; ' 7/ kott- 
 rofjiivov; rj Oin'jaKOVTw;, rj VTrkp rj/xwv KaTe^ofxevovi;, koI crLVOfxevovi . . . Eis dyycXov 
 <^a)Tos Koi (uipTvpwv eiSos TroAAuKt? ixeTaa^rjfxaTL^ovTai, k.t.X. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 9 
 
 Fifteenth Rung (Fornication) : A demon shooting at a woman 
 who kneels before a standing monk ; the latter takes her by the 
 hand. 
 
 Sixteenth Rung (Avarice) : A monk sitting before a fire 
 kindled from heaven, in which a body seems to burn. The con- 
 cept is quite differently rendered in Sinai 418, as we shall see 
 later. 
 
 The rest of the scenes in this series are insignificant and show 
 a poverty of invention unusual even in Byzantine art. Repent- 
 ance is rendered by a monk sitting in meditation in his cell, the 
 Chanting of Psalms by monks who extend their hands toward 
 Christ. For both Humility and Passionlessness the artist shows 
 us an angel giving a labaruin to a monk (Fig. 4), and Obedience 
 and Charity are likewise represented by identical groups consisting 
 of an angel giving a monk a wreath. Falsehood is portrayed by 
 a seated monk. Meekness by one standing; Vainglory is rendered 
 by an old monk teaching a younger one, Poverty by an aged 
 monk in an attitude of prayer. 
 
 On fol. 2 a full-page miniature represents the Ladder reaching 
 up to heaven. Several monks are climbing up, and above in the 
 heavens appears an angel who extends a wreath to the first arrival. 
 A swarm of winged devils attempts to delay the progress of the 
 aspirants, or to thrust them from the Ladder with their fiery 
 forks, and in the case of three they have succeeded. One of these 
 unfortunates falls into the jaws of a dragon emerging from a cave, 
 a familiar type of Hell. Below stands St. John Climacus, exhort- 
 ing the climbers, and at the foot of the Ladder a lad, finger on brow, 
 thoughtfully surveys the scene, a devil meanwhile plucking at his 
 mantle. 
 
 Fol. 2 verso shows us St. John seated at his writing-desk, com- 
 posing his book. A portrait of the same character is to be found 
 in Vat. 394 (fol. 6 recto), in the Sinai Klimax, in Paris Coisl. 88, 
 in Stavroniketa 50 and in one of the Freer miniatures. 
 
 Fol. 3 recto contains a miniature entitled by Tikkanen " The 
 Triumph of Johannes Climacus " in view of the composition, 
 which is the one usual for such apotheoses. In the midst of a 
 throng of worshipping monks the saint stands upright on a foot- 
 stool and holds out his right hand in benediction, with the gesture 
 of a Roman emperor. 
 
 It will have been noticed in the comparisons of Vat. 1754 with 
 
10 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 Vat. 394 that the female personifications of the earher manuscript 
 are absent in the scenes of the later, and that the Vices are 
 replaced by conventional demons. The allegory in the earlier 
 Klimax is much more sustained than in the later; here in render- 
 ing the virtues and vices the artist occasionally, as in "Remem- 
 brance of Death," depicts the monk in an act suggested by the 
 title. This tendency to depart from the earlier Hellenizing alle- 
 gory in the direction of more material treatment is a mark of the 
 Byzantine decadence that has often been noted ; but nowhere can 
 so striking an example be found as in the thirty large miniatures 
 which in Vat. 1754 follow the scenes above described. 
 
 "These miniatures," says 
 Tikkanen, "... represent the 
 glorification of the pitiful in the 
 ascetic existence. Wretched- 
 ness and misery are elevated to 
 an ideal. Never in fact have I 
 seen such ostentation in the 
 setting forth of this negative 
 morale of monasticism, which 
 teaches the conquest of sin by 
 fleeing from temptation, which 
 substitutes penance and self- 
 tormenting, stupid brooding, 
 for work and healthy activity, and to gain heaven, makes earth 
 a hell ! " 
 
 Some of the miniatures of this series have versified inscriptions 
 and explanatory titles in addition. The scenes are much alike, 
 representing groups of monks admonished by the abbot (fol. 3 
 verso) standing in deep dejection (fol. 4 recto) ; brooding over 
 their unworthy state; stretching their hands to heaven (fol. 4 
 verso), from which issues the Dcxtera Domini; ^ praying, with 
 hands bound behind their backs, the Virgin interceding for them 
 (fol. 5 recto); sitting in misery upon the ground (fol. 5 verso); 
 hiding their faces and tearing their hair in penitence (fol. 6 recto), 
 while the Mother of God extends from heaven a pitying hand 
 (Fig. 5). The artist seems to have racked his brain for new 
 
 ' Dextera Domini, the ''Hand of God." This was the customary, and well-nigh ex- 
 clusive method of rendering the Divine Presence in Early Christian Art, and continued in 
 favor throughout the Middle Ages in both East and West. 
 
 FIG. 5. Penitent Monks. Miniature of 
 A Klimax Manuscript in the Vatican 
 Library : Vat. 1754. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 II 
 
 gestures and attitudes that could lend variety to his unending 
 theme of self-torment. One of the monks in the miniature on fol. 
 9 verso leans on a staff in the manner of the magistrates on the 
 east frieze of the Parthenon, or the Demos on Attic decrees. 
 Elsewhere the monks appear half-naked. On fol. lo recto, the title 
 tells us that " they eat ashes instead of bread and mix the water 
 that they drink with tears ; " three of the five monks represented in 
 the accompanying miniature seem to be drinking out of cups. A 
 somewhat similar scene appears in Vat. 394, which also has a fair 
 parallel to the scenes depicting the death of a monk in Vat. 1 754 (fol. 
 16 recto and verso). Fol. 11 recto displays the effect of the ascetic 
 existence in a group of skeleton- 
 like half-clad monks. The limit 
 of the painter's meagre powers 
 of facial expression is reached 
 in fol. II verso (Fig. 6). The 
 goal and reward is reached at 
 last in fol. 1 7 verso, where Christ 
 appears to a throng of monks. 
 In the next miniature (fol. 18 
 recto) Christ invites them to en- 
 ter the gates of Paradise, and on 
 the opposite page we find them 
 safely inside, lifting up their 
 hands in ecstatic adoration of 
 the Lord. In the last miniature (fol. 19 recto) they stand, once 
 more fully clad, hands crossed upon their breasts, in peace. At 
 the head of the throng is the Virgin, adoring the Hand of God 
 which appears in the heavens above, "thanking the Son," the title 
 tells us, "for the saving of these." 
 
 Vigor and skill are not lacking in these miniatures, but in 
 general they are inferior in elegance and careful execution to those 
 of Vat. 394. There are bad violations of proportion, and the 
 hands and feet are often barbarous. Tikkanen finds the style as a 
 whole to be that of the eleventh century, but dates the manuscript 
 indefinitely in the eleventh or twelfth, one reason being apparently 
 the absence of gold backgrounds, an omission rare in the best 
 period. The materialistic tendency noted above would point to 
 the later date. The unfinished condition of many of the minia- 
 tures reveals the process of painting — first a sketchy drawing, 
 
 FIG. 6. Penitent Monks. Miniature of 
 A Klimax Manuscript in the Vatican 
 Library: Vat. 1754. 
 
12 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 within which the principal Hghts and shadows 
 are laid on in an under-coloring of equally in- 
 definite character, and afterwards the final col- 
 oring, put on in thick tones, with details and 
 final outlines drawn in firm unerring strokes. 
 Nude parts are left in the tone of the under- 
 painting, on which the features and lights and 
 shadows are delicately indicated with brown 
 and white. Gray hair is under-painted with 
 blue, which is often retained as the final color. 
 
 Of the twelfth-century manuscripts of the 
 Klimax, to which period the Freer miniatures 
 are to be assigned, the most interesting is Sinai 
 418. Kondakoff's description ("Travels on 
 Sinai," in Russian) is partially translated in 
 Tikkanen's article and two pages of the codex 
 are reproduced in the album accompanying 
 Kondakoff's work (pis. 77, 78). The first two 
 miniatures represent the Cross, surrounded by 
 the Evangelical beasts, and Christ receiving the 
 book of the " Heavenly Ladder " from St. John 
 Climacus. Besides the usual scenes relating to 
 the composition of the work, the codex is illus- 
 trated by a number of miniatures which depict 
 in realistic fashion the titles of the " rungs." 
 " Withdrawal from the World " is rendered by 
 an old man, beginning a journey and giving his 
 garments to the poor. The homily on Dreams 
 is illustrated by a sleeping monk tempted by 
 two demons, after the manner of Vat. 394. 
 " Remembrance of Death " is typified, as noted 
 above (p. 8), by an old man standing before 
 a sarcophagus containing four dead youths. 
 The scenes show much realism, and apparently 
 often without direct reference to the monastic 
 life, as in " Bearing Malice," where we see ser- 
 vants assailing their masters before a personage 
 
 Miniature of a Klimax Manuscript in the Bibliotheque 
 Nationai.e: Paris Coisl. 263. 
 
 A monk seated on a stool, holding a cup in his left hand. This being the headpiece to the fourteenth 
 homily, the preceding ones are symbolized by the ladder of thirteen rungs above. 
 
 FIG. 7. Gluttony. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 13 
 
 of authority, and "Avarice," which is rendered by a magnate in a 
 blue robe seated in front of a chest, while his servants drive away 
 beggars and receive grain from peasants. Another miniature rep- 
 resents an unregenerate in the midst of a revel, while the plague 
 rages around him and the earth is already strewn with the dead. 
 There is in this manuscript, therefore, a further development of 
 the materializing tendency which we saw in Vat. 1754. The 
 Hellenistic allegories of Vat. 394, already 
 materialized in Vat. 1754, are almost com- 
 pletely gone in Sinai 418, where the Virtues 
 and Vices are indicated in scenes of real life. 
 
 Paris 1 1 58 is remarkable for its original 
 initials and borders, but contains only one 
 miniature, and of that but little is left except 
 the gold ground (fol. 256 verso). The orig- 
 inal composition represented the Ladder, 
 with the figure of St. John to the left. Below 
 him at the foot of the ladder was a crowd 
 of monks. One can still reconstruct three 
 figures of monks climbing the Ladder and 
 another falling, pulled down by winged de- 
 mons into the Pit of Hell below. In the arc 
 of Heaven at the top of the Ladder appears a 
 half-figure of Christ, who wears a cruciform 
 nimbus. Paris Coisl. 263 contains the figure 
 of a monk holding a goblet and seated below 
 a ladder of thirteen rungs (Fig. 7). This 
 motif resembles the illustrations of " Glut- 
 tony" in Vat. 1754, and " Satiety" in Vat. 394, 
 and serves as headpiece to the title of the 
 fourteenth homily on " Fasting." Paris 1069 
 contains the peculiar miniature reproduced in 
 Fig. 8, which depicts the Ladder with its top- 
 most rung occupied by a little figure wrapped 
 in a shroud ; Christ leans forward from the 
 
 heavens to receive it. This figure Bordier calls " the human soul," 
 — an interpretation which I see no reason to criticize. 
 
 The thirteenth century is proverbially poor in monuments of 
 Byzantine art, and I know of no illustrated Klimax codex belong- 
 ing to that period. The fourteenth century, however, is well rep- 
 
 FIG. 8. The Soul at 
 THE Top of the Heav- 
 enly Ladder. Mini- 
 ature of a Klimax 
 Manuscript in the 
 
 BiBLIOTHEQUE NATIO- 
 
 nale : Paris 1069. 
 
EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 resented by Stavroniketa 50, which is briefly described by Lambros 
 in his catalogue of the manuscripts of Mt. Athos. The codex is 
 of quarto size and contains 288 leaves. At the beginning of each 
 " rung" appears a small picture representing monks, usually on 
 the Ladder, praying and gazing up to heaven, and thus conceived 
 in the manner of the majority of those of Vat. 394. F"ol. i /3 con- 
 tains a miniature representing the Ladder with Christ at the summit 
 leaning forth from heaven to receive the ascending monks. Below 
 the Ladder, among other figures, is that of St. John. On fol. 3 /3 
 is another miniature in all probability representing the same per- 
 son, and we find him again in a full-page miniature on fol. 1 1 ^, 
 where he is seated, as in the Freer miniature, before a table on 
 which materials for writing are placed. 
 
 Ambr. 387. i is a paper codex of the fifteenth century, contain- 
 ing among other writings a manuscript of the Ladder, in which is 
 a ruined portrait of the author. The same date is to be assigned 
 to the paper codex in the Imperial Library at Vienna, with its sol- 
 itary miniature representing the Ladder, with monks climbing up 
 to Christ in heaven, or falling into the jaws of Hell (Fig. 9). 
 
 From the descriptions which have preceded we see that the 
 Freer miniatures represent the only two miniatures which are typical 
 of Klimax manuscripts, the author portrait, and the " Ladder." 
 In Byzantine art it is seldom we find an iconographical cycle of 
 such variety as that of the Klimax. In the profusely illustrated 
 manuscripts. Vat. 394 and 1754, Sinai 418 and Stavroniketa 50, 
 the types used in all, or even more than one of the manuscripts, 
 are rare. The miniatures representing " Home-leaving " in the 
 first three manuscripts bear a general resemblance to one another. 
 Sinai 418 and Vat. 1754 are somewhat similar in their rendering 
 of " Remembrance of Death." The death of a monk in Vat. 394 
 is paralleled by miniatures in Vat. 1754. But these resemblances 
 do not amount to an iconographical tradition, being due, in great 
 part, to the uninventiveness of the artist as well as the community 
 of content. On the other hand, the author portrait and the heaven- 
 ascending Ladder are found in nearly all of our examples. 
 
 ii. Portrait of St. John Climacus — - Plate I (Frontispiece) 
 
 The reproduction of Mr. Freer's miniatures in colored plates 
 makes it unnecessary to describe them in detail. The initial minia- 
 ture (Plate I) is on parchment, and measures 17.2 x 10.5 cm. It 
 
FK;. 9. Thk IIk.wem.v I.addkk. Mimaitrk, Klimax MANrscRipr: Vienna 207. 
 
 Christ in Heaven receiving four monks ulio clinil) tlie Ladder. To the right, tliree monks falling into 
 the mouth of a dragon representmg Hell. In the centre, the Ladder, with inscribed " rungs." 
 
i6 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 has been cut out of its original page along the red border, and 
 pasted on a paper backing. The author is clad in a tunic and the 
 Eastern monastic cope, and sits on a cushioned bench. On his 
 lap he holds a portable desk on which he writes, and before him 
 stands his writing-table, with supports terminating in little knobs. 
 On the table we see his ink-well and the phial of minium, the 
 indispensable red ink used in titles and initials. In the back- 
 ground is his monastery of Mt. Sinai, represented by a rectangular 
 enclosure, whose entrance is marked by a gate-tower of enormous 
 height, crowned with a windowed drum and dome. The balcony 
 surrounding the tower above the gateway is here turned by a 
 false perspective into the segment of a circle. The artist had 
 better success with the balcony on the tower which appears be- 
 hind St. John in the Ladder-miniature. 
 
 The inscriptions to right and left of the figure of St. John 
 read: •'• 6 ayio<i\liii{6.vvi]<i)\b T{rj)<; /cXt/xaK:o(?) 'St. John of the 
 Ladder,' This seated and writing figure is the traditional author 
 portrait in Byzantine art, and its derivation from Hellenic sources 
 has often been noted. ^ Beginning with a variety of the seated 
 figures on Attic grave-reliefs, the motif develops in the late 
 classic into a seated "philosopher" holding or reading a scroll, 
 such as we find on sarcophagi of the " Sidamara " type, and the 
 sarcophagus of S. Maria Antiqua.^ Virgil is thus depicted hold- 
 ing a volumcn in his hands in one of the Vatican Virgils. In the 
 famous Vienna Dioscurides of the sixth century the author is 
 represented in a manner more like the Byzantine type, with his 
 figure in profile. He does not write, however, but points to a 
 root of the mandragora which Eu/)ecrt9 ' Discovery ' holds before 
 him. This is transformed into the Christian author type in the 
 Codex Rossanensis of the same period (Fig. 15) where we see 
 Mark seated in an armchair and writing on a scroll, while before 
 him stands, in attitude of dictation, a female nimbed figure 
 whose significance is discussed elsewhere (p. 35). This type, 
 omitting the personification, became the customary form in which 
 the portraits of the Evangelists were cast in both Byzantine and 
 western painting, and of course is the ultimate inspiration for our 
 
 ^ Cf. Diez, Die Miniaturcn des Wiener Dioskurides, Byzantinische Denkmiiler, III, 
 p. 38 ff. 
 
 Byz. Denkmdler, III, p. xiii, fig. 2. For the sarcophagus of S. Maria Antiqua, see 
 Suppi. Papers of the American School in Rome, I, p. 148 ff., fig. i. 
 
 I 
 
Plate II. 
 
 The Heavenly Lauder 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 17 
 
 miniature. The Dextera Domini which appears in the upper 
 right-hand corner to symboHze the divine inspiration of the 
 writer, is also found in late portraits of the Evangelists.' 
 
 iii. Miniature of the Heavenly Ladder — Plate II 
 
 The second of the Freer miniatures, likewise on parchment, 
 must have been the final one of the manuscript, for the page con- 
 tains a colophon and the signature of the scribe. The ground 
 of the miniature to the left of the ladder was originally covered 
 with a light blue wash, shading into green at the top. To the 
 right of the ladder the ground color was originally dark blue. The 
 green spots along the border to the right are later splotches of 
 color which have accidentally stuck to the leaf. Again we see the 
 saint, this time standing before his monastery, holding a book in 
 his left hand, and pointing with his right, the fingers of which are 
 arranged in the form of the " Greek " benediction, to the edifying 
 spectacle of the Ladder, on which two monks are making their 
 way to Heaven. To the right of the monasteiy is the inscription : 
 6 TT79 1 k\l\ fiaK{o<;). The miniature, like its fellow, was cut out of 
 its manuscript, and in the process the lower edge of the leaf was 
 lost. It now measures 15.6 x 13.2 cm., but the figure of St. 
 John, which must have been originally complete, demands about 
 2.5 cm. of additional space, so that we may assume that so much of 
 the lower part of the miniature has been removed. The upper 
 right-hand corner of the miniature has also been lost, but the upper 
 end of the Ladder was completed by the familiar motif of the Dex- 
 tera Domini, of which the rays and one finger of the Hand survive. 
 
 We have already noticed that the only two miniatures which 
 can be called typical of the Klimax cycle are the author portrait 
 and the Ladder picture. The rest of the illustration seems to 
 have been largely a matter of individual fancy on the part of the 
 artist, and even the Ladder picture shows much variety. An 
 elaborate composition is seen in Vat. 1754, where the monks who 
 climb the ladder are welcomed at the top by an angel extend- 
 ing a wreath. Their progress is impeded by winged devils who 
 try to pull them down, and three of them fall from the ladder into 
 the jaws of the dragon below. Paris 1158 also has the devils, but 
 
 1 Cf, e._g: the examples given on p. 36, note 2, and the twelfth-century manuscript 
 described in the catalogue of the Claudin Sale (1877), where the motif appears in the 
 portrait of Luke (Bordier, op. at., p. 306. fig. 192). 
 
i8 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 replaces the angel with the figure of Christ. In this it resembles 
 the Vienna codex and Stavroniketa 50, both of which, however, 
 omit the devils. In Vat. 394, on the other hand, we find the 
 demons again, and Christ is accompanied by the Virgin. Paris 
 1069 displays yet another variation in the human soul at the 
 top of the Ladder. In Vat. 1754, again, St. John stands at the 
 foot of the Ladder, encouraging the monks to ascend. This 
 motif is found in the Freer miniature, in Stavroniketa 50 (where 
 the saint is accompanied by other figures) and in Vat. 394, but 
 is lacking in the Vienna codex. In Paris 11 58 a group of monks 
 stands at the foot of the Ladder, and St. John is depicted above 
 them. Another feature of Vat. 1754 is the dragon, which appears 
 in the Vienna codex, but is omitted in Vat. 394. The unique 
 detail of 1754 is the boy at the foot of the Ladder with the devil 
 plucking at his robe. To complete our list of variants, we must 
 note that the Vienna manuscript combines with the scene above 
 described the simple drawing of the Ladder which occurs occa- 
 sionally in codices devoid of other illustration, and that in Paris 
 Coisl. 88, the Ladder rises from the top of St. John's monastery. 
 
 As will be shown later, the Freer miniatures belong to the 
 early half of the twelfth century. The Ladder miniature, more- 
 over, represents the scene reduced to its lowest terms, and 
 reflects a tendency manifested in Byzantine art during the twelfth 
 century toward simplicity of composition. Paris 11 58 on the 
 other hand already shows the realistic expansion of Byzantine icon- 
 ography which is found in the fourteenth century Vienna minia- 
 ture. But in general the most detailed treatments of the Ladder 
 picture are found in the earliest and latest examples, and the 
 simplest in the middle period. 
 
 The model from which the miniaturists drew the general out- 
 lines of the Ladder composition is not far to seek ; indeed, it is 
 indicated in the letter written to St. John by the abbot of Raithu, 
 urging him to undertake the composition of the Klimax. " For 
 if Jacob," says the worthy abbot, "while watching his flocks, saw 
 so wonderful a sight upon the ladder, how much more should the 
 shepherd of reasoning creatures unfold to all, not a mere dream, 
 but a real, true, and undeviating ascent to God!" And Jacob's 
 ladder, with its ascending and descending angels, and the sleep- 
 ing patriarch below, became, in fact, the model for the Ladder pic- 
 tures of the Klimax. One of the earliest Jacob's Ladders in 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 19 
 
 Byzantine art is a miniature in the well-known Ms. gr. 510 in the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale, containing the Homilies of Gregory of 
 Nazianzus, and dating in the ninth century.^ Here we find the 
 episode divided, Jacob sleeping on his rocky pillow at the left and 
 further on at the right the angels mounting and descending the 
 ladder. By the eleventh century the type which formed the im- 
 mediate model of the Klimax ladder had been evolved, in the form 
 in which we see it on the bronze 
 doors of the cathedral of Monte 
 Santangelo in South Italy (Fig. 
 10). In this incised design we 
 have only to substitute monks 
 for the angels, and the standing 
 figure of St. John for the sleep- 
 ing Jacob, to produce the com- 
 position of the Freer miniature. 
 Another version of the Dream 
 appearing in the Homilies of the 
 Monk Jacobus, of the eleventh 
 century (Vat. gr. 1162 and Bibl. 
 Nat.gr. 1208), miakes the angels 
 four in number, and adds the 
 figure of God or Christ at the 
 top of the ladder. The arche- 
 type of such compositions doubt- 
 less formed the model for the 
 compositions of the Klimax Lad- 
 der found in Vat. 394 and 1754, 
 Stavroniketa 50 and the Vienna 
 codex. 
 
 The Ladder of Jacob in- 
 spired many another composition in mediaeval illumination,'^ but 
 the Ladder scene of the Klimax manuscripts itself produced an 
 interesting and numerous progeny, not only in Byzantine, but also 
 in Western art. It could hardly be otherwise in view of the 
 popularity of the work, but an additional factor of importance 
 was the inclusion of extracts from the Klimax in the readings for 
 the beginning of Lent in the Eastern Church.'^ 
 
 ^ Omont, Facsimiles des miniatures des Mss. grecs de la Bibl. Nat., pi. XXXVII. 
 ^ See Tikkanen, Die Genesismosaiken in Venedig, Helsingfors, 1889, p. 122, note 3. 
 ^ Brockhaus, Die Kiinst in den Atlios-kldstern. p. 82. 
 
 FIG. 10. Jacob's Vision. Incised Design 
 ON THE Bronze Doors of the Cathe- 
 dral OF Monte Santangelo. 
 
 The inscription reads : Scalam quam Jacob vidit in 
 somnis, ' the Ladder which Jacob saw in his dream." 
 
20 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 The later Byzantine painting followed closely the liturgy in its 
 choice of subjects, and we therefore find the Heavenly Ladder not 
 infrequently represented in church frescoes.' It won a place also 
 in the Painter's Manual of Mt. Athos, that curious compendium 
 of rules for the painting of sacred subjects compiled by a certain 
 Dionysius of Fourna and deriving from late Byzantine sources, 
 though its date can hardly be earlier than the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. Dionysius tells us how to paint "the Lad- 
 der which saves the soul and leads to Heaven" as follows:^ "A 
 monastery, and outside its gates a throng of monks, young and 
 old, with a large, high ladder in front of them reaching up to 
 heaven. Upon it monks, some climbing, others beginning to as- 
 cend. Above, winged angels aiding them. In the heavens is 
 Christ, and before Him on the topmost rung of the Ladder is a 
 single aged monk of priestly dignity, extending his hands and 
 gazing at Him. The Lord with joy receives him with one hand, 
 and with the other places a wreath of many-hued flowers upon his 
 head, saying to him : ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy-laden, and I will give you rest ' (Matt. xi. 28). And under- 
 neath the Ladder are a number of winged demons, seizing the 
 monks by their robes: they pull at some, but cannot make them 
 fall ; others they have succeeded in separating a little from the 
 Ladder. Still others they have pulled considerably away (except 
 that they still keep hold of the Ladder, some with one hand, 
 others with two). Others they have pulled away entirely, carry- 
 ing them off prone, and clasped about the waist. Beneath them 
 is omnivorous Hades, like a great and terrible dragon, holding in 
 his mouth a monk, who has fallen in head foremost, with only his 
 feet appearing to view. The inscription (should read) : 
 
 'Gazing at the Ladder which extends to Heaven 
 Ponder well the steps of Virtue. 
 
 Fleeing then with utmost quickness this precarious life 
 
 Come to it and mount it with toil. 
 
 With the choirs of angels as thy protection 
 
 1 Mt. Athos, Narthex of church of Dochiariu monastery (Brockhaus. op. cit., p. 296) ; 
 Trapeza church at Lavra (Brockhaus, p. 279). Millet gives no examples of it at Mistra 
 (^Monuments byzaiituis de Mistra, Paris, 191 o). 
 
 2 Diclil. Manuel iVart byzaiitin, p. 774. 
 
 3 Denys de Fourna, Manuel irico7iographie chrHieiine, ed. A. Papadopoulo-Kerameus 
 (St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 211. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 21 
 
 Mayst thread the snares of wicked demons, 
 
 So that, arriving at the gates of Heaven, 
 
 Thou shalt have a crown at the hands of the Lord.'" 
 
 From this we see that Dionysius' notion of the picture was 
 very much like that of the artist who illustrated Vat. 1754, save 
 that the latter substitutes an angel for Christ, and puts in the fig- 
 ures of St. John and the boy at the foot of the Ladder. The 
 description given in the Manual thus represents the realistic de- 
 velopment of late Byzantine iconography, and yet in its wealth of 
 detail corresponds with the earliest forms of the Ladder picture. 
 The Freer miniature and Paris 1069 show how far the type was sim- 
 plified in the twelfth century, and a glance at the accompanying 
 table will reveal the general features of its evolution (Fig. 1 1). The 
 
 Motif 
 
 XI Cent. 
 
 XII Cent. 
 
 XIV Cent. 
 
 XV Cent. 
 
 XVI & Later. 
 
 Dragon 
 
 Vat. 1754 
 
 
 
 Vienna 
 207 
 
 Triptych 
 Manual 
 
 Boy and Devil 
 
 Vat. 1754 
 
 
 
 
 
 Angel at Top of Lad- 
 der 
 
 Vat. 1754 
 
 
 
 
 
 Christ at Top of Lad- 
 der 
 
 
 Paris 1 1 58 
 
 Stavroniketa 
 5° 
 
 Vienna 
 207 
 
 Triptych 
 Manual 
 
 Christ and Virgin at 
 Top of Ladder 
 
 Vat. 394 
 
 
 
 
 
 St. John beside the 
 Ladder 
 
 Vat. 1754 
 Vat. 394 
 
 Freer Min. 
 Paris 1 1 58 
 
 
 
 
 St. John and Monks 
 AT Foot of Ladder 
 
 
 
 Stavroniketa 
 5° 
 
 
 Triptych 
 
 Monks at Foot of 
 Ladder 
 
 
 Paris 1158 
 
 
 
 Manual 
 
 Monastery 
 
 
 Freer Min. 
 
 
 
 Triptych 
 Manual 
 
 " Human Soul " at Top 
 of Ladder 
 
 
 Paris 1069 
 
 
 
 
 Ladder Rising from 
 Top of Monastery 
 
 Pari.s 
 Coisl. 88 
 
 
 
 
 
 Devils impeding 
 Monks 
 
 Vat. 1754 
 Vat. 394 
 
 Paris II 58 
 
 
 
 Triptych 
 Manual 
 
 Contents Table com- 
 bined WITH Ladder 
 
 
 
 
 Vienna 
 207 
 
 
 FIG. 11. Iconography of the Miniature of the Heavenly Ladder. 
 
22 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 final form in which the subject was cast can be seen in Russian 
 art, the ultimate phase of Byzantine, and is illustrated by two Rus- 
 sian ikons in the Likhatcheff collection in St. Petersburg. One is 
 here reproduced (Fig. 12). The other, dated about 1800, has a 
 simpler composition. A male and female saint are mounting the 
 Ladder, and the latter is received by the enthroned Christ and the 
 archangels, but the throng of the elect that appears in the other 
 ikon is absent in this. Two monks fall into the pit of Hell, which 
 is represented in the usual form as the jaws of an immense monster. 
 
 St. John's Heavenly Ladder was thus a popular type in Byzan- 
 tine art and was used for other purposes than as an illustration of 
 the Klimax. It appears in a Greek Psalter of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury in the Vatican Library,* and in a very interesting tempera 
 triptych in the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican (Fig. 13) which is 
 here reproduced from D'Agincourt's drawing.' D'Agincourt 
 dated the triptych in the thirteenth century, but Muiioz, the latest 
 authority to comment on the monument, does not consider it 
 earlier than the sixteenth.^ The figure shows only the paintings 
 of the back. The provenience of the piece is indicated by the in- 
 scription which surmounts the curious landscape of the left wing : 
 TO ayiov ixovaaTrjpiov TO %ivaLov; "the holy monastery of Sinai." 
 The monastery is depicted in the midst of its mountainous sur- 
 roundings, a caravan approaches in the foreground, and in the dis- 
 tance are scenes representing the life and burial of a saintly an- 
 chorite. The touch of local pride evinced by the inscription 
 seems unmistakable, and it is altogether probable that the trip- 
 tych was painted at Sinai itself. It is quite in order therefore 
 that the Heavenly Ladder of St. John Scholasticus, himself a 
 Sinaite, should be painted on the opposite wing, and there in fact 
 we find it, in a form remarkably like that described by Dionysius 
 in the Painter's Manual, and resembling to a lesser extent the 
 representation of Vat. 1754. Four monks ascend the Ladder, of 
 whom the topmost one is attired in vestments, reminding one of 
 the "priestly dignity" recommended for this figure by the Man- 
 ual. Christ, in half-figure, bends forward from the arc of heaven 
 to receive him. Two monks have fallen, and are dragged down 
 by naked winged demons, while a third is plunging headlong into 
 
 1 Vat. gr. 1927, fol. 218 recto. Cf. Tikkanen, Acta Soc. Scient. Fenn. XIX, 1893, p. 8. 
 
 ^ Hist, de PArt, V, pi. xci, and II. pp. 91-92. 
 
 * Vart by sunt in a V Exposition de Grottaferrata, p. 43. 
 
FIG. 12. The Heavenly Ladder. Ikon in the Likhatcheff Collection in 
 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
 • 
 
 Above, the Elect in Heaven, and Christ at the Heavenly Gates, accompanied by the Virgin, John 
 the Baptist, and two angels. The Saviour receives a monk who has climbed the Ladder of thirty rungs. 
 An angel offers crowns to the monk below him, and another angel brings a crown to a third monk. The 
 latter is apparently exhausted by his conflict with the demon who flies away in disappointment to the right 
 of the Ladder. Two monks are falling from the Ladder into the Pit of Hell. A demon stretches out his 
 arms to receive them, and another chastises the Damned in the Pit. To the left, the monastery of Mt. 
 Sinai, in front of which St. John stands on a pulpit and preaches to his monks. 
 
24 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 the jaws of the infernal dragon. Below at the right, beside a 
 church, we see a group of three saints, of whom the foremost, 
 doubtless our own St. John, points upward to the scene upon the 
 Ladder. A monastery perches upon a rocky eminence in the 
 middle distance, and on the horizon an angel admonishes Pacho- 
 mius (the famous ascetic of Egypt): a> Ila^Gj/Ate eV toutoj tw o-^r^'/xan 
 TTttcra (xdp^ aayOija-eTaL; ' Pachomius, in this (monk's) garb will all 
 
 FIG. 13. Triptych in the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican. 
 
 I, 2, 3, 4. Figures showing the arrangement of the scenes on the triptych. 
 
 5. Panorama of Mt. Sinai, painting on the baclt of the right wing. 
 
 6. Detail of the same. 
 
 7. The Council of Nicaea, painting on the back of the left wing. 
 
 8. The Heavenly Ladder, painting on the back of the central panel. 
 
 9. Detail of the same. 
 
 flesh be saved ! ' The scene is obviously inspired by the Klimax, 
 and affords corroborative proof for that reason of the Sinaitic ori- 
 gin of the triptych, since the subject cannot have been suggested 
 by the other paintings. The central panel of the side of the trip- 
 tych represented in our figure has for its subject the condemna- 
 tion of Arius at the Council of Nicaea. The three panels of the 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 25 
 
 Other side have the following scenes : in the central panel, Christ 
 enthroned amid the heavenly choirs ; on the wings, the Tree of 
 Jesse, and a similar composition representing Christ as the Vine 
 and the twelve apostles as the Branches. It is difificult to see 
 why the artist should have introduced into such a series the ir- 
 relevant subjects of the panorama of Sinai and the Heavenly Lad- 
 der of the Sinaite St. John, unless he were himself a resident of 
 the mountain. 
 
 The influence of the Ladder was not confined to Sinai, nor to 
 Byzantine art. It evidently inspired at least one western work, a 
 miniature in the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad von Landsperg. 
 This work was composed in the latter half of the twelfth century 
 by Herrad, abbess of the convent of Hohenburg in Alsace, as a 
 kind of handbook for the education of the young girls committed 
 to her care. The book was unfortunately destroyed by fire with 
 the rest of Strassburg Library during the siege of 1870, and the 
 illustrations now exist only in part and in copy.^ The minia- 
 tures were ultra-allegorical, and this character is shared by the 
 one which interests us, a Moral Ladder plainly inspired by the 
 Ladder miniature of a Klimax manuscript. 
 
 This illustration represents a Ladder reaching from earth to 
 sky, whence the Dextera Domini issues and extends the crown of 
 life to those who succeed in mounting to the top. At the bottom 
 the yawning jaws of a dragon threaten those who would ascend. 
 Two demons shoot arrows at the climbers (cf. Vat. 1754, p. 9), but 
 their shafts are parried by two angels (cf. the angels of the Manual, 
 p. 20) armed with buckler and sword. At the second rung a soldier 
 falls, tumbling upon the horses and armor that delighted him in 
 life, while his companion, a woman of the world, likewise falls 
 upon the cities and luxuries that she desired. At the fourth 
 rung, a nun takes money from a priest and is dragged off to a 
 sinful life. So the allegory proceeds, showing the damnation 
 of various classes of society by the pleasures that bind them to 
 life, until we reach the thirteenth and last rung, where we see a 
 young woman advancing with bared head to receive the crown 
 extended by the Hand of God. She is labelled " The Virtue of 
 Charity" ( Virtus, id est Charitas), in which the artist again shows 
 dependence on the Byzantine model, for it will be remembered that 
 
 1 Herrade de Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum. public aux frais de la Soc. pour la con- 
 servation des tnon. hist, d^ Alsace, Strassburg, 1879-1899. pi. LVI. 
 
26 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 the topmost rung in St. John's Ladder was also the " Virtue of 
 Charity" {dydirr)). The influence of the type may still be seen in 
 Vecchietta's " Scala dei Bambini " in the Pellegrinaggio of Sta. 
 Maria della Scala, Siena.^ 
 
 The text on the page of the Freer miniature of the Heavenly 
 Ladder is not a part of the Klimax but a colophon of six iambic 
 trimeters reading: 
 
 Tp{La) KOVTapidfio'; '- ov{pa) yoSpo/Jio? KXi/xa^ : 
 iir' ov{pa)vov^ <f)epovaa rou? fipoTov; /3dcn^ : 
 e'l\rj<^e Ttpjxa TpiaKovTOTTov; KXi/xaf : 
 7) 8e rpia? crw^ot jxe top KeKTiqixevov 
 
 d) yXcJcrcra Kal Oavovaa ' iracri SeiKuveis 
 X6y{a)p) dpicTTOiv T-qv ScSdcrKaXo (j)pd(rLV 
 
 The verses compose a poem of rather uneven inspiration, which 
 may be translated as follows : 
 
 ' Thirty is the number of the Ladder leading to Heaven, 
 A Stairway bearing mortals to the sky. 
 The Ladder of thirty rungs has had its ending. 
 May the Trinity preserve me, the owner (of the book).' 
 
 Here the poem is judiciously interrupted in order to leave a 
 space where the possessor of the volume might inscribe his name. 
 A name was in fact once written here, but afterwards erased, no 
 doubt by a later owner. A similar case may be seen in a Klimax 
 codex of the tenth century in the Laurentiana at Florence.^ The 
 poem then concludes with the following verses : 
 
 ' O tongue, though dead, thou still to all displayest 
 The edifying speech of virtuous words.' 
 
 Such versified colophons are by no means rare in Byzantine 
 manuscripts. They usually take the form of eulogies of the 
 book which the scribe has copied, or elaborate apologies to the 
 reader for the blunders that he may have made. A number of them 
 are collected in Omont's Facsimiles des inaiiuscrits grccs dates de 
 la Bibliotheque Nationale du IX' au XIV' siecle. The Klimax 
 
 ^ Schubring, Die Plastik Sienas, p. 79. 
 
 2 The N in TpvaKovTapidixos has been re-traced. 
 
 * Bandini, Cat. cod. graec. Bibl. Laur. Ill, p. 411. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 27 
 
 frequently inspired its copyists to such laudatory verses ^ and our 
 scribe himself cannot be credited with the whole of his poem, for 
 the first two verses are found in the colophon of a Klimax codex 
 of the eleventh century in the Ambrosiana at Milan. - 
 
 Below the trimeters, in the left-hand lower corner of the page, 
 is written the signature of the scribe : 7r6vr]fji(a) deoKTLcrT{ov) lepo- 
 fjL{ovd^ov ; ' the work of Theoctistus, the monk.' Further letters 
 are vaguely visible to the right of the ladder near the figure of St. 
 John and close to the lower edge of the leaf. 
 
 Theoctistus is not an uncommon name, and it appears else- 
 where in the signatures of the scribes of Greek manuscripts. It 
 occurs for instance in a Menaeum, or monthly missal, for April, 
 in the Imperial Library at Vienna,^ accompanied by an invocation 
 
 ' The following are fair examples of such colophons in Klimax manuscripts : Lauren- 
 tiana (Bandini. o/i. cit. I. p. 266). XII century: 
 
 KAi'yua^ avoj ^ipovtra tovs ivapirov; 
 'E^ Tj^ KaTO) TTLTTTOvcnv a(f>pove<; p.6voi. 
 
 Laurentiana (Bandini, op. cit. I. p. 481), XIV century: 
 
 Kkipa^ Trec^uxa tj}? avoiTaTr]'; Trv\rj<;. 
 TavTrjv /8uSt^o)v tov Oeov croc^ius eX°^ 
 OTTOJS ava)(Oi)<; eis tov tvKXea Sopov ' 
 
 Jerusalem, Patriarchal Library (Papadopoulos, 'lepocroXvpLTiKr) Ri/iXLoOriKr], III, no. 93, 
 p. 1 54), XIII century : 
 
 AvTT) KXipa$ vecjivKev ovpavo8p6pos 
 KXipa^ i<l> ijv )(o)povaiv ol Oeloi voe?, 
 77V is XiOoL y]yupav fv <TTe.ppol<; Adyots. 
 
 Jerusalem, Patriarchal Library (Papadopoulos, op. cit. II, no. 363, p. 479), early XI 
 century : 
 
 TTtCTTtS TO, )(pr]<TTa. TOiV KuAcoV TTaVT(»V <j}€peL 
 eATTtS Be TTOUL KapTtptlv €V TOIS TTOVOIS 
 
 rj 8' uv TeXeiot ■wpotr^vo)'; r] ayaTrrj. 
 
 ^ Martini and Bassi, op. cit., II, p. 616, no. 511. The editors have evidently misread 
 the colophon, transcribing it thus : 
 
 TpULVTa.pi0po<; ovv o Bpopos KXlpa^ ' cts ovv 
 ov (pepovaa roiis /SpoTovs /Sdcris '. — 
 
 ^ De Nessel, op. cit. Ill, p. 130, cod. 66: 
 
 Qdtov TO BCjpov, Kal OeoKTLCTTOV ■;rdv(os) 
 KavTavOa So^a Ttj uefiaaTr) TpidBt. 
 
 De Nessel offers the ingenious but hardly plausible suggestion that Theoctistus is the 
 author of the book, and is to be identified with the companion of the celebrated abbot 
 Euthymius of Palestine, who died in 472. He gives no date for the codex, but calls it 
 " pervetustus." 
 
28 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 of the Trinity like that of our trimeters. It is of course impos- 
 sible to tell whether the Theoctistus of the Vienna manuscript is 
 identical with the signer of the Freer colophon, but the identifica- 
 tion is somewhat more likely in the case of a manuscript of the 
 Dionysiu monastery on Mt Athos, which is signed by " Theoc- 
 tistus the sinner." ^ For this manuscript is dated in the year 
 1 1 33, and the early part of the twelfth century is a period consist- 
 ent with the hand of the Freer colophon, as evidenced by the 
 square breathings and the character of the script. 
 
 The same name appears in the signature of a Menaeum, dated 
 1 127, in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris,- and here the 
 copyist tells us that his book belonged to the library of the 
 monastery of St. John the Baptist in Constantinople. This 
 manuscript enables us to identify the writer of the Freer colophon, 
 for when one compares the hands used in this with that of the 
 titles of the Paris Menaeum, the resemblance is striking (Fig. 14).^ 
 The same thickening of the cross-strokes of t, 8, and tt is notice- 
 able in both cases, and the only real difference is found in the 
 form of C- The moreover, of the Paris Menaeum is simply the 
 cursive form, instead of which in the Freer colophon the scribe 
 has preferred the more formal shape. The decisive coincidence, 
 however, is the e, which in both manuscripts sometimes takes the 
 form & The characteristic feature of the letter is the dot on the 
 cross-stroke, which gives it a form that is fairly rare. Gardt- 
 hausen's tables show the form six times, citing it from manuscripts 
 of the tenth, twelfth, and fourteenth centuries. Three of his 
 examples are obtained from two manuscripts of the early twelfth 
 century, Paris 11 16 (a. 11 24), and Paris 891, which dates in 
 the year 1 1 36.'* A colophon in the latter shows that it, like 
 the Menaeum of 1 127, was written in the monastery of St. John the 
 
 1 8ia x«'po5 ToC aixapraXov ®€okti(ttov. Lambros, Ca/. I. p. 319, no. 3542.8. The 
 manuscript is a Gospel lectionary. 
 
 Ms. gr. 1570 (Regius 2498). Omont, o/>. cit.^ p. 9, pi. xlv. The signature is found 
 on fol. 214, verso: 
 
 t 'H /Si/SXo'; avTtj T^s ft-ovrj^ tov TlpoBpoixov : Trj<; KUp,ivr]<; tyyicTTa T^s Aeriov : 
 ap)(aLKr] Se rrj fi-ovy k\^(tk Utrpa.'f 
 
 ©eU) TO SwpOV, Koi TTOl/OS ®COKTL<TTOV. 
 
 The colophon is given in full by Omont, consisting of the date, eleven trimeters depre- 
 cating the copyist's blunders, and the signature given above. The Menaeum is for November. 
 3 The script to be compared is that of the title in the upper half of the text reproduced. 
 * Gardthausen, Griechischc Palaeograp/iie, pi. 8. 
 
KLIMAX MINIATURES 
 
 29 
 
 Baptist at Constantinople.' The existence of the peculiar form 
 in two manuscripts from the same monastery shows that it was 
 characteristic of the scriptorium of that cloister; its appearance 
 again in the Freer colophon justifies us in concluding that the 
 Theoctistus of the latter is the Theoctistus of the same monastery 
 of St. John the Baptist at Constantinople who signed the Paris 
 
 FIG. 14. Specimen Te.kt from a Mexaeum in the BiBLiOTHfeQUE Nationale, 
 
 DATED 1127. 
 
 Menaeum of 11 27, and was probably also the scribe of the Mt. 
 Athos manuscript of 11 33. 
 
 The Freer miniatures can accordingly be dated about 11 30, 
 and their place of origin identified as the monastery of St. John 
 the Baptist in Constantinople. The style is quite consistent with 
 such a date. It has little of the awkwardness of movement, the 
 bold modelling, the sharp contrast of light and shade, and the 
 conventional realism that characterize the later Byzantine painting. 
 Neither has it quite the Hellenic dignity and freshness of the 
 great works of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The sharp in- 
 ward curve of the beard of St. John, the conventionality of the 
 
 ' Omont. op. cit., p. lo. The manuscript contains the Catechetical Sermons of Theo- 
 dorus Studita. The scribe signs himself Arsenius. 
 
30 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 beetle-like figures on the ladder, are evidence of decadence. But 
 the relative fineness of execution, the beauty and taste of the 
 color schemes, the dignity of conception, connect the miniatures 
 on the other hand with the finer period of Byzantine illumination. 
 There is also a distinctiveness of style about them which is rather 
 hard to parallel, and may be the mark of a school. If the time 
 ever comes when the students of Byzantine art shall feel enough 
 assured of the outline of its general development to interest 
 themselves in its provincial branches and monastic schools, these 
 two miniatures of Mr. Freer's collection, as products of a definitely 
 identified monastery in Constantinople, will afford a point of de- 
 parture of first-rate importance. 
 
 1 
 
II. 
 
 EIGHT 
 
 MINIATURES FROM A 
 OF THE GOSPELS 
 
 MANUSCRIPT 
 
 i. The Manuscript containing the Miniatures 
 
 Byzantine manuscripts of the Gospels may be divided into two 
 classes. A codex of the first class bore the name EvayyeKuov, 
 ' Evangelion,' and took the form of a missal, containing lections 
 in the form and order in which they were read in the service. 
 The second is the commoner type ; it contained the complete text 
 of the four Gospels without the rearrangement necessitated in the 
 case of the Evangelion. Such books were called TeTpaevdyyeXa, 
 ' Tetraevangela.' ^ The manuscript from which the F"reer minia- 
 tures come belonged to the second class, as may be seen from the 
 normal order and unliturgical character of the chapters named in 
 the topical indices (/cec^aXeta) on the two initial pages that have 
 been preserved (Plates IV and V), and also from the indication 
 of the character of the text contained in the titles of these indices, 
 as " The Holy Gospel According to St. John," which is the 
 caption of the index to that gospel. Such indices were frequent 
 in Tetraevangela. The tables of contents are here transcribed, 
 accented as in the original, with the chapter numbers of the Gospel 
 in parentheses. The headings of the index for Mark are arranged 
 in columns like those of John for convenience of reference. 
 
 At the Beginning of John (Plate V) : 
 
 ■ . ■ TOV KUTo. 'Iw^dvvrji') dyiov evayyeXiov to. /ce^aA(eta). 
 
 a' 7r£(pt) TOV iv Kavd ydfxov (ll) i' ■!re{pl) tov ex yevCTiJs TV(j>Xov (ix) 
 
 )8' Te(pt) Tuyv fKfiXrjOevT^uiv) €K tov iepov ux neipV) tov ka^dpov (xi) 
 
 (ll) t|8' 7re(pi) T^s dXenj/do-rji tov K(vpio)v pvpwi 
 y -TTcipl) viKoSr'jpov (ill) (xil) 
 
 S' ^rjTTjai^ irepl Kadaptapov (ill) ty' 7re(pt) tl)v ehrcv tov'Sas (xil) 
 
 c' Trepi T'^s cra/tapetTt8os (iv) i8' Trepi tov ovov (xil) 
 
 s' Trept tov (SacnXiKov (IV) it' TreQn) Toii/ TrpoaeXOovT^wv) fXXr}vo)v 
 t,' Trept TOV Xrj tTr) £;^ovto(s) iv T{rj) dcrdc- (XIl) 
 
 veto, (v) ts' Trept tov virrTrjpo'; (xill) 
 
 7]' 7r£(pt) ra)v e dpTwv Koi tCjv /8' i)(6i>wv t^' Trepi. tov irapaKX-qTOv (XIV) 
 
 (vi) trj' ireipX) t(^)s atVj/o-eojs tov KvpiaKov cru)- 
 0' 7re(pt) TOV iv OaXda-cnj TreptTraroi) (vi) /x(a)To(s) (xix) 
 
 ' Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 184. 
 3« 
 
32 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 At the Beginning of Mark (Plate IV) : 
 Tov Kara fxdpKOV dy(iov) €vayyeX{LOv) to, /<£<^a(A£ia). 
 
 1 
 
 a 
 
 7re(pt) TOV SaifJiovL^o/xevov (l) 
 
 
 Tre[pl) TOV aeXrjVia^Ofievov (ix) 
 
 
 7re(pi) T^s TTCV^epas ToO irtrpov (l) 
 
 
 Trtpl TU)v StaAoyi^o/xfVojv Tt's /xei^wv (ix) 
 
 y' 
 
 7r£(/3i) Toiv la^evTO)!' diTro ttoikiAwv vo- 
 
 Krj' 
 
 Tre{pl) TWV eTrepojTrjcrdvTwv <j>apLaai(^(ov) 
 
 
 crojv (l) 
 
 
 (X) ^ ^ ^ 
 
 8' 
 
 7r£(pt) TOV A£7r/30U (l) 
 
 kO' 
 
 Tre(pl) TOV iTrep<i}TrjaavTo(^i) TrXovcriov 
 
 
 7r£/3t ToS Tra/jaAvTiKov (ll) 
 
 
 TOV l{r](Tov)v (x) 
 
 s' 
 
 ■n-epi XevX tov TeXuJvov (ll) 
 
 X' 
 
 7r£(pi) Tcuv vlwv ^e^eBaiov (x) 
 
 r 
 
 TTiipV) TOV ^rjpav e)(0VT0<; X^^P^ 
 
 Xa' 
 
 Trepl TOV fiapTipMiov (x). 
 
 f 
 
 V 
 
 Trepl T^s Tuii' d7ro(7ToA(a)v) £KAoy^s (ill) 
 
 X/3' 
 
 7r£pt Tov TrmXov (xi) 
 
 6' 
 
 7r£pi ToC (TTTOpov Trapa^oXi] (iv) 
 
 Ay' 
 
 7r£(pi) T^s ^r}pav6eL<Tr]<: (rvKrj^ (xi) 
 
 I 
 
 TTfpi T^s tTnTip,rjcre.(i)<; tSiv vStxToiv (iv) 
 
 AS' 
 
 7r£/3t afivr)(TLKaKLU^ (xi) 
 
 La' 
 
 TTE/ai TOV AfyEajj/os (v) 
 
 A£' 
 
 •7r£(pt) Ttui/ iTrepioTrjadvTwv tov K(v/3to)v 
 
 1(3' 
 
 7r£(|ot) T^s 6vyaTp6{<;) tov ap)(i(Tvvay<ji- 
 
 
 dpxtepewv km. Trpea^vTepmv (xi) 
 
 
 yov (v) 
 
 As' 
 
 Tre^pl) TOV dp.TreX!i)vo<; (xil) 
 
 'y' 
 
 Trepl T^s aifioppoovar]<; (v) 
 
 XV 
 
 ■7r£|0t T^S £7r£p(DT7;(T£a)S TOV K7^VO"OV (XIl) 
 
 tB' 
 
 ■7r£pt T^s Toiv aTrocTToAojv Staray^s (vi) 
 
 Xr,' 
 
 7r£pt TOJV o"a8SovKttt'ajv (xil) 
 
 It 
 
 Trepl loidwov koL -^ptxiBov (vi) 
 
 X6' 
 
 Trepi TOV ypap.fji.aTew% (xil) 
 
 t 
 
 IS 
 
 Trepl T(i)v e' dpTu)v kuI toiv i^^tjojv (vi) 
 
 
 7r£pi T^s TOV K(vpLo)v e7r£p(0T);a'£a>s 
 
 
 7r€/3t TOV iv OaXdaar} TrepiTraTov (vi) 
 
 
 (XII) 
 
 17]' 
 
 Trepi Ttjs Trapa/Sdaew; r^s fvToA^s tov 
 
 fxa' 
 
 TTfpt T^s Ttt Svo A£7rTa XVP"-'^ (x'O 
 
 
 6{eo)v (vil) 
 
 Pif3' 
 
 TTEpt T^s crwTeA£tas (xil) 
 
 lO' 
 
 7r£jOi T^s <f)oivLKLaarj<; (vil) 
 
 m\ 
 
 TTEpi T^s rj/xepa^ Kal (upas (xill) 
 
 1 
 
 K 
 
 7r£(/3t) TO? /u,oyyiAdAov (vil) 
 
 fxB 
 
 Tr£pt T^s dXeupdo'T)'; tov K(^vpLo)v /u.vpaj 
 
 Ka' 
 
 Trepl Twv t,' dpTwv (vill) 
 
 
 (xiv) 
 
 
 Trepl T^s l,vp.ri% twv <f>upi<Taiwv (viIl) 
 
 fie 
 
 TTEpt TOV Trdaxa (xiv) 
 
 Ky 
 
 Trepl TOV Tvc^Aov (vill) 
 
 /AS 
 
 7r£pt T^s TrapaSocrews irpo<l)r]TeLa (xiv) 
 
 k8' 
 
 Trepl T^s iv KaicrapeLa iTrepwT-qcrt^m'i) 
 
 
 apwrjais TrtTpov (xiv) 
 
 
 (VIII) 
 
 
 7r£pi T^s aiTrjcrews tov KvpiaKOv awfia- 
 
 Ke' 
 
 Trepl T^s fi€Tap.op(f>o)(Tt(ii<i tov i{T]ao)v 
 
 
 Tos tov Kiypio^v (xv) 
 
 
 (IX) 
 
 
 
 The portion of the manuscript in Mr. Freer's possession con- 
 sists of five parchment leaves which show much hard usage, 
 particularly at the upper outer corner, where the missing parch- 
 ment has been replaced with paper, while the inner edge shows in 
 the case of nearly all the leaves that they were torn and not cut 
 from the original binding. The following list shows the dimen- 
 sions of the leaves, and the distribution of the miniatures : 
 
 Fol. I. 26.9 X 19. 1 cm. 
 
 Recto, Portrait of St. Mark, 18.4 x 14.3 cm. (Plate III). 
 Verso, Index of selections from the Gospel of Mark (Plate IV). 
 
 Fol. II. 27 X 19.4 cm. 
 
 Recto, Descent from the Cross. 14.3 x 21.1 cm. (Plate VI). 
 Verso, Portrait of St. John. 13 x 11.7 cm. (Plate V). 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 33 
 
 Fol. III. 26.1 X 17. 1 cm. 
 
 Recto, Descent into Hell, 20.4 x 14.3 cm. (Plate VII). 
 Verso, Doubting of Thomas, 20.4 x 14 cm. (Plate VIII). 
 
 Fol. IV. 26.1 X 17.5 cm. 
 
 Recto, Christ and the Holy Women, 20.1 x 14.3 cm. (Plate IX). 
 Verso, Madonna and Saints, 17. i x 15.6 cm. (Plate X). 
 
 Fol. V. 26.1 x 16.5 cm. 
 
 Recto, Two Saints, 15.6 x 13.5 cm. 
 Verso, no miniature. 
 
 Folio I has a row of holes in its outer edge, which indicates a 
 rebinding. It is the best preserved of the leaves and gives an 
 idea of the original dimensions of the codex, which must have 
 measured about 27 x 19 cm. A red border surrounds the minia- 
 tures in every case, and all but one, the portrait of St. John, fill 
 the page. The large size of the miniatures, and the fact that 
 the infrequent scenes of Christ and the Holy Women and the 
 Doubting of Thomas are included in the surviving group, betoken 
 a manuscript of unusual richness of illustration ; it is probably 
 safe to conjecture that the original codex contained from twenty to 
 forty miniatures. 
 
 The position of the eight remaining miniatures in the original 
 manuscript may be determined with reasonable certainty. Fol. I 
 recto is clearly the initial miniature of Mark; it bears on its verso 
 the list of chapters of his Gospel. Fol. II recto, the Descent from 
 the Cross, is the last miniature in Luke, since the verso contains 
 the portrait of St. John with the index to his Gospel and thus 
 constituted an initial page. The next miniature after this was 
 certainly the Descent into Hell, fol. Ill recto, that being, as we 
 shall see later, the distinctive illustration of the fourth Gospel and 
 regularly leading its group of miniatures. The verso of this leaf 
 contains the Doubting of Thomas, a characteristically Johannine 
 incident and indeed recorded only by the fourth Gospel. But it 
 will also be noted that the damage to the upper outer corner of 
 the leaves is progressively greater as we proceed toward the end 
 of the book. Thus the leaf containing the initial miniature of 
 Mark, fol. I, which was situated well toward the front of the codex, 
 has suffered comparatively little. The initial miniature of John, 
 on the other hand, has lost considerably more of the corner. 
 Fol. Ill has lost a great deal more, which indicates that a con- 
 siderable number of leaves intervened between it and fol. II. A 
 
34 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 proportionate increase in the damage done to the corner is seen in 
 fol. IV, and the half-demoHshed state of fol. V suggests a position 
 near the end of the book. 
 
 ii. Portraits of Mark and John 
 
 The initial miniature of Mark (foh I recto ; Plate III) depicts 
 the Evangelist, clad in blue tunic and violet pallium, seated on a 
 chair set before a rectangular house with gilded roof and gray-blue 
 fa9ade. Traces of color remaining on his beard show that his 
 hair was dark. His feet rest on a golden footstool. Before him 
 stands his writing table, on which is set a lectern, and the Evange- 
 list, with an indeterminate gesture of his right hand, places a 
 written page upon, or withdraws it from, the lectern. On his 
 knees rests the open book of his Gospel, inscribed with the 
 partially obliterated text of the initial phrase : (apx^r) tov) evayye- 
 \i(ov Irjaov ^ptcrTov) vtoC tov 0eov. Remnants of letters are also to 
 be seen on the leaf which Mark holds in his riorht hand. In the 
 field of the upper part of the page we can make out portions of an 
 inscription which contained the name MAPKOC- The facsimile 
 reproduction (Plate III) obviates the necessity of a detailed descrip- 
 tion of the colors employed. The background, which is almost 
 gone, was originally in gold, save for the green strip representing 
 the ground which fills the bottom of the picture. The type is 
 simply a variation of the Byzantine author type whose origin was 
 discussed above (p. i6), the chief difference being the unusual 
 gesture of the Evangelist's right arm and hand. There remains 
 but one detail of the iconography to be considered, and this 
 is of first-rate importance. 
 
 I refer to the bird which perches on one leg on the upper 
 right-hand corner of the lectern and with the other leg supports an 
 open book. Two possible interpretations present themselves to a 
 preliminary view. The bird may be a dove representing the Holy 
 Spirit, the divine inspiration of the writer, or may be the indi- 
 vidual symbol of the Evangelist himself. One or the other of 
 these explanations is applicable in like fashion to the similar motif 
 in the miniature representing St. John (Plate V). Here we see 
 the Evangelist seated in much the same surroundings as Mark. 
 The background, originally gold, contains a fragmentary inscrip- 
 tion in red. The writing desk, lectern and footstool are in gold 
 with black lines. The ground-strip is gray-blue, which seems 
 
Plate III 
 
 St. Mark 
 
ri.ATi: I\' 
 
 r 
 
 6fC>>->^<r- f e -irf^«'-r.p«rt.''^ooir«^e«*»*«^-^ T-w-tt'^T^'c <^T♦iMJ'^«=0<^ 
 ^^V^*""^''' ''f- /6%^c»'-n»cCj^o,^.,Lciw-<r» Cr K "7^»'''**-^•^^7V*'A•*'f• 
 
 India oi Si;i.i;( iions i uom iin; (iosi'r.i, oi- M akk 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 35 
 
 to have been also the color of the Evangelist's pallium. The 
 figure of John, however, has lost practically all of its color. Be- 
 hind him is a rectangular building in violet, and to the right of 
 the picture a square tower in violet, gray-blue and green. The 
 Evangelist is depicted in the act of writing his gospel, and the 
 book in which he writes retains traces of letters in red. An open 
 book lies upon the lectern, inscribed with letters in red, portions 
 of which still survive. Lastly, the bird on Mark's lectern is here 
 replaced by a human half-figure, holding again a half-opened book. 
 Bird in one case and man in 
 the other must be subject to 
 the same relative explanation. 
 
 The inspiration motif is not 
 uncommon in portraits of the 
 Evangelists. It occurs as early 
 as the sixth century, to which 
 period belongs the miniature 
 from the Rossano Gospel, here 
 reproduced (Fig. 15). The fe- 
 male figure with the nimbus, 
 dictating to Mark, has been 
 variously interpreted as Mary, 
 or Divine Wisdom, or the 
 Church.' In any case, it is the 
 Christian translation of a motif 
 like the Spirit of Discovery 
 (evpecTL^) which stands in front 
 of Dioscurides in the Vienna 
 manu.script of that author (see 
 p. 16) and may be taken as a type of divine inspiration. A 
 female personification of this sort reappears as the inspiration of 
 Matthew in a Serb-slavonic psalter of the thirteenth century in 
 the Chilandari monastery on Mt. Athos.''' This figure is labelled 
 " Premoudrost," or " Wisdom," and a similar significance is to be 
 attached to the female half-figure which seems to dictate to John 
 in a thirteenth century relief on the basilica of St. Mark's at 
 Venice^ (Fig. 16). The South Italian manuscript from which 
 
 ' Gebhardt and Harnack. Codex Purpu> ens Rossanensis, Leipzig. 1880. p. XLVI. 
 
 Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 235. pi. 28. 
 3 H. von der Gabelentz, Mittelalterliche Flastik in Venedig, p. 141. 
 
 FIG. 15. St. Mark Writing his Gospel. 
 Miniature of the Codex Rossanensis. 
 
 A female personification (Divine Wisdom?) dic- 
 tates to the Evangelist. 
 
36 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 the famous Durham Book (circ. 700) was copied must have 
 further defined the motif by introducing the Logos as the inspir- 
 ing familiar of the Evangelist, for on the initial page of Matthew 
 in the Durham Book (Fig. 17) we see a nimbed and bearded head 
 peeping out from behind a curtain, which cannot be interpreted in 
 any other way. The winged angel which is the personal symbol 
 of the Evangelist himself appears above his head with the label : 
 Imago hoininis} 
 
 The post-iconoclastic period made little use of such elaborate 
 motifs in the portraits of evangelists, and the usual method of ren- 
 
 FIG. 16. CiiKisr, Sr. J(jhn, .\ni) St. M.\tthe\v. Rei.ieks on St. M.\rk's .\t Venice. 
 
 dering the notion of divine inspiration was the introduction of the 
 Dextera Domini issuing from the heavens above the writer's head, 
 as in the portrait of St. John Climacus (Plate I).''^ But other 
 devices are found, as for example the dove which whispers in the 
 ear of Mark in a Gospel of the twelfth century in the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale at Paris,'^ and the winged genii at the ears of Mark and 
 Luke in a Latin manuscript of the same library, with Byzantine 
 
 1 The motif is repeated in an Anglo-Saxon Gospel of the eleventh century at Copenhagen 
 (Westwood, The Miniatjires and Ornatnents of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Maniiscripis, pi. 41 ). 
 
 2 This motif is found in the following: Ms. in Claudin Sale 1877 (Bordier, op. cit. p. 
 306, XII cent.) ; Vat. Urb. gr. 2, an. 1143 (D'Agincourt, op. cit. V. pi. lix) ; Paris, Bibl. 
 Nat. gr. Suppl. 242, an. 1650 (Bordier, op. cit. p. 295). In Slavic manuscripts the Hand is 
 often replaced by rays, particularly in the case of John (Likhatcheflf, Materiaux pour Vhist. 
 de riconographie rnsse, pi. 375, Ms. of the year 1531). 
 
 8 Bibl. Nat. gr. 51 (Bordier, op. cit. ^. 181). Cf. the same motif in a manuscript in the 
 Ambrosian Library at Milan (D. 67, suppl. Reproduced in Mufioz, LArt byzantin aVEx- 
 position de Grottaf errata, fig. 63). 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 37 
 
 miniatures, also of the twelfth century.' In a late Byzantine man- 
 uscript (an. 1650) in the Bibliotheque Nationale,' the inspiration 
 type and the Evangelist's symbol seem to have become confused, 
 for there we find St. John dictating to Prochorus, but listening 
 at the same time, with hand to ear, to the eagle which soars 
 above him ; and the angel of St. Matthew appears behind the Evan- 
 gelist and seems to dictate to him in the same way. All these 
 devices are employed in Slavic manuscripts of the modern j^eriod.'* 
 
 It will have been observed, 
 however, that in all of these 
 " inspiration types," the relation 
 of the writer to the angel or dove 
 or personification is an intimate 
 one. This was expressed in the 
 later Byzantine painting, the 
 epoch in which our miniatures 
 belong, in the rather obvious 
 fashion of depicting the medium 
 of inspiration behind the evan- 
 gelist and whispering in his ear. 
 Our bird and "angel," on the 
 other hand, however much they 
 may give the impression of dic- 
 tation by the open book which 
 each is holding, are nevertheless 
 in no such close communication 
 with the holy scribes. Neither Evangelist looks as if he were listen- 
 ing to the Divine Voice. The relative position of the bird and 
 the human figure does not differ much in fact from that given to 
 the symbols of the Evangelists in a Lombard relief decorating a 
 sarcophagus in S. Zeno at Verona (XI-XII century; Fig. 18)/ 
 
 May not they, the bird and angel of our miniatures, be then 
 symbols of the two Evangelists.'* Two objections to this view im- 
 mediately arise : the familiar symbol of Mark is not the eagle 
 (supposing that our bird may so be interpreted), but the lion, while 
 
 ' Bibl. Nat. lat. 276 (Bordier. op. cit. p. 302). - Suppl. 242 (Bordier. op. cit. p. 294). 
 •'' Likhatcheff, op. cit. plates 144, 145. 245. 
 
 ■* A rendering of the symbols above the lecterns which is practically identical with that 
 of the Freer miniatures is found in the portraits of Matthew and Mark on some Rhenish- 
 Byzantine ivory plaques in the Louvre, assigned to the tenth or eleventh century. 
 
 FIG. 17. St. Matthew writing his Gos- 
 pel. Miniature of the Durham Book. 
 
38 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN 
 
 PAINTINGS 
 
 that of John is not the man, but the eagle ; and second, the sym- 
 bols of the EvangeHsts are rare in Byzantine manuscripts and are 
 commonly supposed to occur only at an epoch much later than 
 that to which our miniatures must be assigned. 
 
 The four beasts of Ezekiel and Revelation were given the 
 significance of the four Evangelists as early as the second cen- 
 tury,' and the identification of the types which ultimately became 
 current in the West was that laid down by Jerome, according to 
 which the beast " with a face as a man " was Matthew, the one 
 "like a lion " was Mark, the one "like a calf" was Luke, and the 
 fourth beast " like a flying eagle " was John. But the Fathers did 
 
 FICi. 18. The Cruciki.kion' and the Four Evangelists. Relief of a Sarcophagus 
 
 IN S. Zen(J, Verona. 
 
 Above the cross are half-figures of angels. The symbols of the Evangelists are depicted as if resting 
 on small ledges above the lecterns. 
 
 not all agree with Jerome. Irenaeus, for example, associates the 
 lion with John, the man with Matthew, the calf with Luke, and the 
 eagle with Mark ; Athanasius gives no symbol to Matthew, but 
 assigns the calf to Mark, the lion to Luke, and the eagle to John; 
 Augustine refers the lion to Matthew, the man to Mark, the calf 
 to Luke, and the eagle to John. 
 
 The earliest example of the use of the four beasts in art is 
 found in the apsidal mosaic of the church of S. Pudenziana at 
 Rome, which dates near the end of the fourth century ; from that 
 time on they are frequent enough. But their first appearance to- 
 gether with the Evangelists themselves, where each beast is de- 
 picted as the individual sign of each Evangelist, was in the mosaic 
 
 ' Ezekiel, i, 4 ff. Rev. iv. 6 ff. Cf. Kraus, Realcncyklopiidie der christl. Altertilmcr, 
 I. p. 4i;6. and Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 62, note 12. 
 
Plate \' 
 
 r - , 
 
 ,z ^ ' I ^ ^ ^' / 
 
 Trip, •7«i/«^ec/ ^ 
 
 .S r. John 
 
Plate \'I 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 39 
 
 ceiling of the chapel of St. John Baptist in the Lateran Bap- 
 tistery, an addition due to Pope Hilary (461-468). This mosaic 
 is now destroyed/ and the earliest existing example of the in- 
 dividual distribution of the symbols is furnished by the mosaics 
 of the choir of S. Vitale at Ravenna of the sixth century, where, 
 as in the lost mosaic, the beasts are assigned after the manner 
 of Jerome. This rule became the customary one for the Western 
 artists of the Middle Ages, chiefly through the influence of 
 Gregory the Great, who adopted Jerome's interpretation ; in the 
 East, however, the artists contented themselves with occasionally 
 depicting the four symbols, often combining them in a single 
 figure known as the Tetramorphon, but never, during the great 
 period, associating them severally with the Evangelists. 
 
 It came to be generally believed, therefore, that the symbols 
 are never associated with the Evangelists in Byzantine Art until 
 very late times ; and this view is reflected in the latest handbook 
 on illuminated manuscripts, by J. A. Herbert,- who says that the 
 symbols in this connection " are practically unknown " in Byzan- 
 tine manuscripts, pointing out that their first appearance in those 
 of the British Museum is in a manuscript of 1326, while the 
 Vatican manuscripts are said to contain no example at all of their 
 use. There are cases, however, of their occurrence earlier than 
 the fourteenth century, and two very interesting examples on Mt. 
 Athos are cited by Brockhaus.^ The first is a Tetraevangelon in 
 the Vatopedi monastery (no. 713), which, while it gives no symbol 
 to Matthew, assigns the eagle to Mark, the calf to Luke, and the 
 lion to John, thus following the interpretation of Irenaeus.* The 
 symbols are painted on separate pages, but with obvious relation 
 to the Evangelists, whose portraits appear on the following pages, 
 or, in the case of Mark, on the next page thereafter. Here the 
 eagle is given as the symbol of the Evangelist, and is further 
 certified as his type by the book which it carries, and by the 
 inscription : 6 a{yLoq) MdpKo<;. The other manuscript, in the 
 Dochiariu monastery (no. 52), has lost the portraits of two of 
 the Evangelists, but still retains the image of Matthew, with an 
 
 1 Ciampini's copy of the mosaic is reproduced in Garrucci, Storia deW Arte cristiana, 
 IV, pi. 239. 
 
 ^ J. A. Herbert, Illuviinated Manuscripts. 2d ed., London, 1912. p. 62. 
 ^ Op. cit. p. 224 ff. 
 
 ^ The same distribution is used on the Russian doors reproduced in Likhatcheff {op. cit. 
 pi. 145), and the man is added for Matthew. 
 
40 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 indeterminate bird ("probably an eagle," says Brockhaus) painted 
 on the opposite page, and of Luke, opposite whom appears the 
 calf. Both of the symbols are nimbed and carry golden books. 
 The bird is inscribed with the puzzling word 3 1 TO, while BOC 
 is written beside the figure of the calf. The first of these manu- 
 scripts is included among the undated manuscripts of the eleventh 
 and twelfth centuries by Brockhaus, and the second is dated 
 definitely in the twelfth century by Lambros.^ 
 
 From this it is apparent that in the twelfth century the Byzan- 
 tine miniaturists not only used the symbols on occasion but dis- 
 tributed them differently than in the West, and without a fixed 
 association of symbol with Evangelist, save perhaps in the case 
 of the calf and Luke. The eagle in the Vatopedi manuscript 
 stands for Mark, while in the gospels of Dochiariu it represents 
 Matthew. In the light of this evidence, and the fact that, ex- 
 plained as " inspiration types," our symbols would be inconsistent 
 with the usual treatment of such types in Byzantine art, I feel 
 assured that the artist intended his bird and man as symbols 
 of Mark and John. The bird is certainly not a successful attempt 
 at an eagle, but we cannot expect too much in Byzantine animal 
 painting at this period, and it is hardly more convincing as a 
 dove. It will be remembered moreover that the eagle of the 
 Dochiariu manuscript seems to have impressed Brockhaus as an 
 unconvincing bird, and we have the use of the eagle as Mark's 
 symbol in the gospels of Vatopedi as a parallel to the Freer 
 miniature. The latter and its fellow must therefore be accepted 
 as examples of a very rare motif in Byzantine art. 
 
 Are we to ascribe the late appearance of the Evangelist 
 symbols in Byzantine painting to Western influence ? The main 
 consideration to be urged for this would be the fact that they are 
 typical of Western art, while there is no tradition in Byzantine 
 to account for them. The Latin label BOC, dos, for the calf of 
 Luke in the gospel of Dochiariu points in the same direction. 
 But on the other hand, if we were dealing with a borrowed type, 
 we should expect the symbols to be distributed as they are in the 
 West, whereas they are used in a very unsettled manner, and not 
 as a rule with the Western distribution. It is hardly possible 
 therefore to cite the use of the symbols as evidence of the prob- 
 lematic Western strain in late Byzantine art, 
 
 ^ Ce7/. I, p. 238, no. 2726.52. 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 41 
 
 iii. The Descent from the Cross — Plate VI 
 
 The recto of the leaf which contains on its verso the portrait 
 of St. John is decorated with a miniature representing the De- 
 scent from the Cross, the final illustration of Luke. The colors are 
 indicated by the facsimile. The upper transverse piece of the 
 Cross represents the tihiliis which Pilate placed above the head 
 of the Crucified : lesus Nazarenus Rex hidaeoriim. Christ's feet 
 rest as usual upon the siippedaneum. Joseph of Arimathea, 
 standing on a stool, clasps the dead body of the Lord. To the 
 left we see Mary Magdalen and the Virgin, who stands like a 
 statue on a pedestal, and presses the hand of her dead Son to 
 her cheek. Nicodemus climbs a step-ladder and removes the 
 nail from Christ's left hand, while the Beloved Disciple below 
 bends above the siippedaneum to wipe the blood from the feet 
 of his Master.' 
 
 The scene is not an early one in Christian art, and first 
 appears, so far as I know, in the famous Homilies of Gregory 
 of Nazianzus of the ninth century, which is preserved in the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris (Fig. 19, i).'^ The compo- 
 sition is that of the Freer miniature in a primitive stage of its 
 evolution. Nicodemus'^ has no ladder, and is placed on the 
 left side of the cross, while John stands with the Virgin to the 
 right, in place of the Magdalen. Further on to the right appears 
 the following scene, Joseph and Nicodemus carrying off the body 
 for burial. The next stage of development is to be seen in a 
 Gospel of the same library,^ wherein Nicodemus stands on 
 a ladder, and Joseph of Arimathea on a stool ; St. John takes his 
 position to the right of the cross, while the Virgin to the left is 
 
 ^ The background and nimbus of the Christ were originally gold, with a green ground- 
 strip at the bottom of the picture. The Marys wore violet mantles over undergarments 
 which seem to have been blue. Joseph of Arimathea wears a brownish pink pallium, and 
 Nicodemus' tunic is violet. The cross is striped with brown and black. The colors of 
 John's garments and of the loin-cloth of Christ are indeterminate. 
 
 Ms. gr. 510, fol. 30, vcrso^ Omont, Fac-sitnilcs des Miniatures dcs Mss. grecs de la 
 Bibl. Nat., pi. XXI. 
 
 8 I have used the name Nicodemus for convenience. It is scarcely likely, however, 
 that the earlier artists who dressed the man removing the nails in a simple tunic meant to 
 represent the patrician Nicodemus, and probably we are to suppose him present only when 
 the pallium is added to his costume, as in the examples of the thirteenth century. 
 
 Ms. gr. 74. Omont, Evangile avec peititures byzantines du X/f siecle, pi. 52. This 
 manuscript contains also a second rendering of the scene which is a primitive form of the 
 later type described on p. 44. 
 
42 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 accompanied by the Magdalen and the other Mary (Fig. 19, 2). 
 The carrying of the body follows as before to the right. 
 
 In the incised design of one of the panels of the bronze doors 
 of St. Paul's at Rome (late eleventh century, Fig. 19, 3), the com- 
 position has finally arrived at a form closely resembling that of 
 the Freer miniature, though the sides are again reversed. Here 
 we have angels introduced above the cross, a motif derived from 
 the Crucifixion. Joseph of Arimathea appears behind the body 
 
 FIG. 19. Examples ok the Descent from the Cross, showing the Evo- 
 
 LUTKJN OF its ICONOGRAPHY FROM THE NiNTH TO THE TWELFTH CeNTURY. 
 
 of the Lord, but again stands upon a footstool or pedestal, and 
 two other motifs of the Freer Descent from the Cross are present, 
 the gesture of Mary as she presses the hand of her Son to her 
 cheek, and that of John who bends to wipe the blood from the 
 feet of Christ. In the early twelfth century we find the scene 
 represented in the Melissenda Psalter of the British Museum 
 (Fig. 20), where the composition is simplified, and John replaces 
 the Magdalen at the Virgin's side. Next after this must be 
 placed the Freer miniature, which combines the compositions of 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 43 
 
 the Psalter and the doors of St. Paul's, except that Nicodemus 
 wears a sleeved tunic instead of the exomis of the Psalter, while 
 Mary stands upon a pedestal, and is accompanied by the Magdalen. 
 
 The P'reer scene is typical of the Byzantine decadence in its 
 contradictions — the circumstantial details and the spirited move- 
 ment of Nicodemus contrasting with the mannered attitude of 
 
 FIG. 20. The Descent from the Cross. Miniature of 
 THE Melissend.\ Psalter in the British Museum. 
 
 Mary and the artificial effect of the pedestal on which she stands. 
 The feature which clearly puts the Freer miniature later than the 
 Psalter is the omission of the angels, which seldom appear in the 
 later versions; thus they are omitted in a gospel of the Iviron 
 monastery on Mt. Athos ^ which Brockhaus dates " ungefahr 
 
 1 Iviron 5 (Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 217 ff.). Cf. the similar composition on the doors of 
 the cathedrals of Trani and Ravello in South Italy (Schulz. Denkvuilcr dcr Kitnst in Untcr- 
 italien, pi. xxv). These doors date in the latter half of the twelfth century. The transi- 
 
44 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 aus dem 12. Jahrhundert." Here also two more distinctive 
 features of the later composition are met with — the arms of Christ 
 are both detached from the cross, and Nicodemus applies his 
 pincers to the nails in the feet. Joseph clasps the body of Christ 
 as before, but, with a curious effort at realism, his body is pro- 
 tected from the flowing blood by a towel worn over the shoulder. 
 
 FIG. 21. The Descent from the Cross, from Duccio's Altar-piece. 
 
 The Virgin is depicted as before, pressing Christ's hand to her 
 cheek, but is now accompanied not only by the Magdalen but 
 also by the other Mary. To the right stands St. John, who has 
 given up his former position to Nicodemus. Lastly, below the 
 cross, appears a white mass which is probably meant to represent 
 Adam's skull, with symbolic reference to the name of Golgotha. 
 
 tional nature of the theme as here treated is shown by the presence of the angels, though 
 the body of Christ is detached from the cross. On a steatite carving in the Museo Cris- 
 tiano of the Vatican (Munoz, op. cit. fig. 86) the body is detached, stars replace the angels, 
 Joseph of Arimathea, standing behind Christ, clasps His body, and Nicodemus removes 
 the nails from the feet. Such a rendering of the scene should serve to date the monument 
 circ. 1 200. 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 45 
 
 The whole composition is repeated in a Gospel in Paris of the 
 thirteenth century/ and is the source of later representations, 
 as may be seen from Duccio's rendering in his famous altar-piece 
 at Siena (Fig. 21).- The intermediate character of the Freer 
 miniature gives it unusual importance in the development of 
 Byzantine iconography, and, as will be apparent later on, is of 
 great value in determining the date of the manuscript from which 
 it was taken. 
 
 iv. The Descent into Hell — Plate VII 
 
 Folio III recto is the next page in order. While the increased 
 damage to the corner shows that the leaf was some distance 
 further on in the original codex, the miniature in question was 
 without much doubt the first after the initial page of John's 
 Gospel, for this is the position regularly occupied by the Descent 
 into Hell.'^ The curious connection with John was due to the 
 fact that the lection for Easter in the Greek church was taken 
 from the fourth Gospel, and the corresponding pictorial type was 
 not the Risen Christ, but the Descent into Hell. The Painter's 
 Manual (see p. 20) indeed gives circumstantial directions for 
 painting the Resurrection, but it is nevertheless a fact that the 
 subject is rare in Byzantine art of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth 
 centuries, and absent entirely in the mosaics and frescoes of 
 the churches of that period.^ The theological considerations 
 
 1 Bibl. Nat. Ms. gr. 54 fol. \oj recto (Bordier, op.cit. p. 230, fig. 121). A similar 
 treatment, omitting Mary's companions and the skull, is seen on an ivory of the Chalandon 
 collection in Paris, dating in the thirteenth century (E. Molinier, Man. et Mem. Fond. Fiot. 
 1896, p. 126, fig. i). 
 
 ^ A curious variant of the fourteenth century is found at Mistra in the Peribleptos (Millet, 
 Mon. byz. de Mistra, pi. 122, 3). In this fresco the Magdalen holds the hand of Christ, 
 and both the Virgin and Jose]3h clasp the body in their arms. Above the cross are weep- 
 ing angels. Here also the Virgin stands upon a stool. The fresco is much like the scene 
 described in the Painter's Manual. 
 
 * The color scheme is indicated by the facsimile. Christ wears a sleeved tunic of red- 
 dish color which is probably the priming for the same gilding that originally covered the 
 pallium. Eve has a blue under-garment and a mantle of red. Adam wears a violet pallium. 
 David's tunic was red, and his pallium blue, bordered with gold. The details of Solomon's 
 costume cannot be determined. The sarcophagus in which Adam kneels is colored brown- 
 ish pink, and streaked with purple, while that of the kings was originally blue. Below 
 the sarcophagi on either side is the usual green ground-strip. The Pit of Hell is black, 
 and the gates gold, which was of course the original color of the background. 
 
 ■* Cf Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 132. It occurs in a ninth century Psalter of the Pantocrator 
 monastery on Mt. Athos {ibid. p. 198). 
 
46 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 XIV Cent. 
 
 Peribl. 
 
 Peribl. 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 0 
 
 o 
 
 H H 
 
 OO 
 
 U-) lO M 
 
 t- 
 
 Trani 
 Freer Min. 
 
 i8io 
 
 
 
 i8io 
 541 
 
 Trani 
 Monreale 
 Freer Min. 
 
 
 Monreale 
 
 Trani 
 
 5 
 
 i8io 
 Freer Min. 
 
 
 Monreale 
 
 
 541 
 
 Monreale 
 Trani 
 
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 Motif 
 
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 holds roll 
 
 noias garment 
 
 holds cross 
 
 tramples Hades 
 
 tramples ^^atan and gates 
 
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GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
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48 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 which gave the Descent into Hell its place in the Creed also 
 made it the symbol of Christ's Resurrection in its fullest mean- 
 ing, as insuring the deliverance of the Just from spiritual death, 
 not only after, but before the Incarnation. Thus the conception 
 of Christ trampling the gates of Hell, and raising up the Just that 
 had gone before in the persons of Adam and Eve and the Kings 
 of Israel, became the customary typological rendering of the 
 Risen Lord, the pictorial embodiment of Easter. Hence the 
 label which the scene bears in Byzantine art, -f) dvd(TTacn<;, 
 'the Resurrection.' 
 
 The Descent into Hell is described in the apocryphal Gospel 
 of Nicodemus.^ According to this story, the Baptist went first 
 into Hell to announce the coming of Christ. Suddenly there 
 was a cry " Lift up your gates, ye princes ; and be ye lifted up, 
 ye everlasting gates ; and the King of Glory shall come in." - 
 Then Christ burst asunder the gates of Hell, bound Satan, and 
 trampled him under foot. " Father Adam," falling at the feet of 
 Christ, was raised erect, and Mother Eve in like manner, and 
 Christ set His Cross "as a sign of victory" in the midst of 
 Hades. 
 
 The motif of Christ's entry presented certain essential elements 
 for the pictorial representation — Christ trampling on Satan, the 
 broken gates of Hell, the raising of Adam and Eve, the Cross — 
 to which the artists gradually added elements drawn from other 
 parts of the story, like John the Baptist, David and Solomon, and 
 others of the Just, and the tombs from which the dead are resur- 
 rected. The genesis and evolution of the scene in Byzantine art 
 will be better understood with the help of the accompanying 
 iconographical table ^ (Fig- 22). 
 
 The monuments cited in the table by no means comprise all 
 those representing the theme, but are a typical list. There follow 
 the works in which the most important are described or repro- 
 duced, arranged in the order of the dates of the monuments. 
 
 ^ Tischendorf, E7'a?igelta Apocrypha, p. 389 fF. 
 
 ^ Ps. xxiv, 7. The phraseology of Psalms is apparent throughout the recital, which 
 doubtless accounts for the prominence of David in the artistic representations, in spite of 
 the minor role that he plays in the text ; this explains also the frequent use of the scene in 
 the illustrated Psalters (cf. Millet, Mon. et Mem. Fond. Piot. 1895, p. 209). 
 
 * For discussions of the iconography of the Descent into Hell, see Millet, Mon. et Mtm. 
 Fond. Piot., 1895, pp. 204-214; Diehl, Mosa'iques bysatitins de Saint-Luc, ibid. 1896, pp. 
 232-236 ; Rushforth, Papers of the British School at Rome, I, pp. 1 14-1 19. 
 
Plate VU 
 
 Tin; Descent into Heij. 
 
Tm; Doi BTiNci or Thomas 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 49 
 
 Century 
 
 Monument 
 
 Described or Reproduced by 
 
 Abbrev. 
 
 VI 
 
 Ciborium columns of St. 
 Mark's. Venice. 
 
 Venturi, Storia deWarte italiana, 
 I, fig. 266. 
 
 Cibor. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Mosaic of Chapel of John 
 VII. Old St. Peters. 
 
 Garrucci, Storia dcirarte crist. 
 IV. pi. 280. 8. 
 
 Chap. John 
 VII 
 
 IX 
 
 Fresco. S. Maria Antiqua. 
 Rome. 
 
 Mt. Atho.s. Ms. Pantokra- 
 
 tor. 6i. 
 Chludoff Psalter. 
 
 Rushforth. op. cit. p. 116, fig. 9. 
 
 Fig- 23- 
 Brockhaus. op. cit. p. 177. 
 
 Kondakoff, Miniatures of a Greek 
 Psalter in Chludoff Coll. (Rus- 
 sian), pi. X, 3. 
 
 S. Mar. Ant. 
 
 Pantukra- 
 
 tor, 61 
 Chlud. Ps. 
 
 X 
 
 Psalter, Paris, Bibl. Nat. 
 gr. 20. 
 
 Chekmukmedi enamel. 
 
 Bordier, op. cit. p. 98. 
 
 Kondakoff, Les emaiix byzaHtins, 
 fig- 43- 
 
 Par. Ps. 20 
 Chek. enam. 
 
 X or XI 
 
 Fresco, Soghanli. Asia 
 Minor. 
 
 Enamelled book cover, 
 Siena (Biblioteca). 
 
 Diehl, Manuel, p. 538. fig. 260. 
 
 Labarte, Hist, des Arts /ndustr. 
 Album. II, pi. CI. 
 
 Soghanli 
 Siena enam. 
 
 XI 
 
 Mosaic, St. Luke in Phocis. 
 
 Mt. Athos, Ms. Iviron i. 
 Mosaic, St. Mark's, Venice. 
 Brit. Mus. Ms. Add. 19352. 
 Gospel. Paris. Bibl. Nat. 
 gr- 75- 
 
 Mosaic. Monastery of 
 
 Daphni. 
 Mosaic, Cath. of Torcello. 
 
 Diehl, Mon. et Mem. Fond. Plot. 
 
 tXo^S nl WTV 
 Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 225. 
 Fig. 25. 
 
 Rushforth, op. cit. p. 117, fig. 10. 
 Bordier, op. cit. p. 137. 
 
 Millet, Le Monastere de Daphni, 
 
 pi. XXV. Fig. 24. 
 Dalton, Byz. Art. Archaeology. 
 
 fig. 427. 
 
 St. Luke 
 
 Ivir. I 
 St. Mark 
 Add. 19352 
 Par. 75 
 
 Daphni 
 
 Torcello 
 
 c. uoo 
 
 Pala d' Oro (High Altar 
 of St. Mark's. Venice), 
 enamel. 
 
 Boito, Tesoro di S. Marco, pi. xv. 
 
 Pala d' Oro 
 
 XII 
 
 Melissenda Psalter, Brit. 
 Mus. 
 
 Commentary on Gregory 
 Naz. Paris, Bibl. Nat. 
 
 A/ft: err c A 1 
 
 Gospel in Brit. Mus. Ms. 
 Harl. 1810. 
 
 Monreale Cathedral, Mo- 
 saic. 
 
 Mt. Athos, Tetraevangelon, 
 
 Iviron 5. 
 Bronze Doors of Trani 
 
 and Ravello Cathedrals, 
 
 South Italy. 
 
 Herbert, Illuminated Manu- 
 scripts, pi. VI. Fig. 27. 
 Bordier, op. cit. p. 185. 
 
 Dalton, op. cit. fig. 157. 
 
 Gravina. Duomo di Monreale, pi. 
 20 B. 
 
 Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 217. 
 
 Schulz, Denkmciler der Kunst in 
 Unteritalien, pi. xxiii. 
 
 Mel. Ps. 
 Par. 541 
 
 Harl. 181 
 Monreale 
 Ivir. 5 
 Trani 
 
 XIV 
 
 Fresco, Peribleptos 
 church, Mistra. 
 
 Millet, Mon. byz. de Mistra. pi. 
 116, 3. Fig. 26. 
 
 Peribl. 
 
5o 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 The most obvious aspect of the evolution of the type is the 
 change from the one-sided composition of S. Maria Antiqua 
 (Fig. 23), depicting the Raising of Adam and Eve, to the sym- 
 metrical one, wherein others partake of the Resurrection and the 
 figure of Christ is flanked on either side by groups of personages 
 representing the Just, revived and delivered from Hell by the 
 power of the Cross. The change presents itself timidly in the 
 Chekmukmedi enamel, where David and Solomon are represented 
 rising from a sarcophagus in the upper left-hand corner of the 
 
 scene, opposite the figures of 
 Adam and Eve. The compo- 
 sition becomes rigidly symmet- 
 rical in Iviron 5, where Christ 
 stands between two throngs of 
 the Just, headed respectively by 
 Adam and Eve, but the more 
 usual rendering, wherein Christ 
 raises Adam by the hand, but 
 moves in the opposite direction 
 to him, toward David and Solo- 
 mon, is already present in the 
 Siena enamel (loth-iith cen- 
 tury). Other figures are added 
 to the lateral groups in the 
 course of the eleventh century, 
 but this period is transitional 
 and formative in the history of 
 the composition, and includes 
 such divergent examples as the 
 extremely simple mosaic of St. Luke in Phocis, the elaborate scene 
 in Torcello cathedral, and the exceptional variant of Daphni (Fig. 
 24). The Hades of the early examples, trampled beneath the feet 
 of Christ, becomes Satan enchained, is transformed into the ortho- 
 dox black imp of Byzantine art, as at St. Mark's in Venice (Fig. 25), 
 and finally disappears in the twelfth century. The gates of Hell, 
 crossed in the Siena enamel, are not always so represented in the 
 eleventh century (St. Luke, Iviron i, Torcello), and only become 
 regularly crossed in the twelfth. The later development is seen in 
 the Peribleptos church at Mistra, where Christ is enveloped in an 
 elliptical glory, David and Solomon are accompanied by the Baptist 
 
 FIG. 23. The Descent into Hell. Fresco 
 IN S. Maria Antiqua, Rome. 
 
 Christ tramples a prostrate figure personifying 
 Hades, and raises Adam from the tomb. Behind 
 Adam stands Eve. 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 and a number of other figures, and Adam and Eve appear at the 
 head of a throng of patriarchs and prophets (Fig. 26). Still later the 
 church frescoes and the Painter's Manual add the fancy of angels en- 
 chaining devils, names for the minor dramatis personae, etc. The 
 treatment of the scene in Russia ranges from the simplicity of the 
 
 FIG. 24. The Descent into Hell. Mosaic in the Monastery ok 
 Daphni near Athens. 
 
 twelfth century scheme to an elaborate panorama of Hell of the kind 
 seen in an ikon in the Likhatcheff collection at St. Petersburg.' 
 
 Our miniature, by virtue of its symmetrical composition, the 
 omission of Satan, and the crossed gates, finds its closest parallels 
 in the twelfth century, and particularly in the Melissenda Psalter 
 (Fig. 27). Christ raises the kneeling Adam from his sarcophagus 
 
 1 Likhatcheff, op. cit. pi. 286. Cf. also pi. 265. 
 
52 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 FK;. 25. Mosaic ix Sr. M.\kk's. \ k. 
 Above, the Descent into Hell; below, Christ and the Holy Women and the Doubting of Thomas. 
 
 tomb, and strides across the gates of Hell. Eve stands beside 
 Adam, and to the right we can discern the figures of David and 
 Solomon. Behind them we may perhaps supply the figure of 
 John the Baptist, who is regularly present from the beginning of 
 the eleventh century. The iconography of the picture thus dates 
 it in the twelfth century, or later. 
 
FIG. 26. The Dksc kxt INTO Hell. Fresco 
 IN THE Peribleptos Church at Mistra. 
 
 FIG. 27. The Descent into Hell. Miniature ok the 
 Melissenda Psalter in the British Museum. 
 
54 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 V. The Doubting of Thomas — Plate VIII 
 
 The verso of Folio III is occupied by a miniature represent- 
 ing the Doubting of Thomas, the second illustration of the 
 Gospel of John. The ground strip is green, and the field of 
 the miniature, as well as the doors behind Christ, was originally 
 gold. Traces of the same color remain upon the reddish brown 
 priming of the tunic worn by Christ, over which is draped a blue 
 pallium. The disciples wear blue and violet tunics and pallia, 
 with an alternating distribution of the colors. Above the doors, 
 against which is outlined the figure of Christ, and the slanting roof 
 to the right, is the remnant of an inscription in red letters. One 
 would expect this to be the phrase which regularly labels the 
 scene in Byzantine art: TUJN 0YPUJN KeKAeiCMGNUUN, 'the doors 
 being shut,' with which words John (xx. 19) emphasizes the sud- 
 den and miraculous appearance of the resurrected Christ among 
 the disciples. The two letters which remain, however, seem to be 
 ON, thus forming no part of the phrase unless we suppose a blun- 
 der on the part of the artist. The disciples are grouped in the 
 spaces under the sloping roofs to right and left, Peter heading the 
 group to the right, while Thomas on the other side steps forward 
 and places his finger on the wound which the Saviour has uncov- 
 ered by raising His right arm. 
 
 The incident, recorded only by John, is not common in Byzan- 
 tine art, and is exceedingly rare in the illustration of the Gospels. 
 It occurs perhaps in a fifth century fragment of a sarcophagus in 
 the museum of Ravenna, on which we see a youthful unbearded 
 Christ, half turned to the left, raising His right arm, while the 
 disciple standing beside Him faces outward and extends his right 
 hand toward Christ's left side.^ A more positive rendering of the 
 incident occurs on a sarcophagus of S. Celso in Milan,'* dating 
 about 400, on which we see Christ baring His right side with up- 
 raised arm, and Thomas stepping forward from the left to touch 
 the wound. He is accompanied by only one of the other disci- 
 ples. The " Thomas scenes " which have been pointed out in a 
 mosaic of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna (sixth century), on an 
 ivory of the British Museum, and in a miniature of a Munich 
 
 ^ S. Muratori, N. Bull, Archeologia crist. 191 1, pp. 34-58. 
 - Garrucci, op. cit. V, pi. 315, 5. 
 
gospp:l miniatures 
 
 55 
 
 manuscript of the ninth century, are too uncertain in character to 
 be cited as indications of the evolution of the type.' 
 
 The earliest example of the scene on record in which all 
 twelve of the disciples were represented was a mosaic in Justin- 
 ian's church of the Apostles in Constantinople.'^ The church 
 was destroyed by the Turks in the fifteenth century, but the 
 description of Mesarites gives us a vivid idea of its splendid deco- 
 ration as it appeared in the twelfth century. According to this 
 account, the mosaic represented Christ and His disciples in a 
 house with closed doors. Christ, in the centre of the group, bared 
 His side, and Thomas, ashamed and hesitating, but urged forward 
 by his companions, touched the wound. The Saviour seemed to 
 shrink, the Byzantine writer tells us, from the touch of His disci- 
 ple. A picture of the same general character is found on one of 
 the reliefs of the Monza phials, which date about 600,'^ and in a 
 fragmentaiy fresco of S. Maria Antiqua^ of the eighth century. A 
 rather original rendering of this type of composition is to be seen 
 in a manuscript of the Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal at Paris,'' of the 
 eleventh century. Here Christ stands to the right of the picture 
 and raises His right arm, but seems to shrink from the insistent 
 finger of Thomas, who approaches from the left. A group of 
 three disciples stands behind him. No background is given. By 
 the end of the eleventh century the scene had reached the form 
 thereafter accepted, as we see it in the mosaics of St. Mark's at 
 Venice (Fig. 25), and on the bronze doors of St. Paul's at Rome.^ 
 The tendency toward symmetry, the most constant factor in 
 Byzantine art, arranged the disciples in groups on either side of 
 Christ, who always stands on a flight of steps, in front of the 
 "closed doors." The figure of the Saviour shrinks no more from 
 the hand of Thomas, but stands erect and immobile, with the 
 statuesque dignity that makes the subject so impressive in all its 
 subsequent renderings. St. Thomas approaches from the left and 
 touches the wound in Christ's right side. The same composition, 
 
 1 Cf. Heisenberg, Grabeskirche laid Apostelkirche. II, p. 264. note 4. 
 '■^ Heisenberg. op. cit. II, p. 264. 
 
 ^ Garrucci, op. cit. VI, pi. 434, 6. A similar representation is found on a lead ampulla in 
 the British Museum {Daltoii, Byz. Art cS^" Archaeology, fig. 399). 
 ■* Griineisen, Ste. Marie Antique., fig. 118. 
 ^ No. 33 c Rohault de Fleury, VEvaiigile, pi. xcvii, 3. 
 
 ^ Rohault de Fleury. op. cit. pi. xcvil, i. Also in mosaics of St. Luke in Phocis, 
 Daphni, and St. Sophia at Kiev. 
 
56 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 with unimportant variations of background, is used throughout 
 the twelfth century (Melissenda Psalter, mosaic in the Church of 
 the Nativity at Bethlehem, Monreale), and continues in late 
 Byzantine painting, appearing with the usual late Byzantine addi- 
 tion of architectural detail, in the fourteenth century frescoes of 
 the Peribleptos church at Mistra,^ in Duccio's altar-piece at Siena, 
 and in the Painter's Manual. Our miniature, therefore, conforms 
 to the iconography of the scene as established in the eleventh 
 century, and traditional after that period. 
 
 vi. Christ and the Holy Women — Plate IX 
 
 Folio IV recto is adorned with a miniature whose ruined 
 condition makes it difficult of interpretation until we compare a 
 better preserved example of the same scene in a gospel of Mt. 
 Athos^ (Iviron 5, Fig. 28). In this manuscript the miniature 
 occupies a place at the beginning of the twenty-eighth chap- 
 ter of Matthew, and illustrates the meeting of " Mary Magdalen 
 and the other Mary " with Jesus, having particular reference to 
 the words: "And they came and held him by the feet and wor- 
 shipped him." The episode is depicted in our miniature in a 
 fashion practically identical with that of the Athos manuscript, 
 except that the horizon line is lower, and the figure of Jesus is 
 larger in proportion to the size of the women. The Saviour's 
 tunic is painted in with a yellow wash, originally overlaid with 
 gold. His pallium was blue. The woman kneeling to the right 
 wears a reddish garment. The background was originally gold. 
 The ground-strip is the usual green, and the green cones to right 
 and left are the remains of trees — very conventional trees — 
 which indicate the garden of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 The theme is not common, save in late frescoes,^ and its earli- 
 est appearance is on an ivory in the treasury of Milan cathedral, 
 of the fifth or sixth century,^ wherein the two women kneel to 
 
 1 Millet. Mon. bys. de Mistra, pi. 121, i. Cf. also the rendering in the Chapel of St. 
 John, ibid. pi. 106. 3. 
 
 ' Brockhaus, op. cit. p. 217 ff. 
 
 * On Mt. Athos it occurs in thefrescoes of the Protaton (circa 1300), of Kutlumusi (1540), 
 of Dionysiu (1547). and of the cloister church of Lavra. No examples at Mistra are 
 recorded by Millet. Another example in manuscript illumination is the miniature of a 
 Greek gospel in the Public Library at St. Petersburg (Likhatcheff, op. cit. pi. 353). 
 
 ^ Garrucci, op. cit. VI, pi. 450, 2. 
 
Pl.ATK IX 
 
 ClIKISI AM) 
 
 11 1 1; 
 
PiAii; X 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 57 
 
 the left of Christ. Between them and the standing figure of the 
 Saviour rises a tree. In the Rabulas Gospel (586) the garden is 
 indicated by trees and the two women kneel to the right of the 
 risen Lord. A lost mosaic of the Apostles' church seems to have 
 resembled our miniature at least in the one respect that the two 
 women bowed their heads to the feet of Christ.^ In the Tri- 
 
 FIG. 28. Christ and the Holy Women. Miniature of a Gospel in 
 THE IviRON Monastery on Mt. Athos : Iviron 5. 
 
 vulzio ivory," Christ is seated on a rock to the left of the open 
 tomb. The women appear to the right, one kneeling, the other 
 half erect, stooping forward with outstretched hands. The ninth- 
 century manuscript of Gregory Nazianzenus in the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale indicates the garden by trees and again depicts the 
 women in differing attitudes, one prostrate at Christ's feet, the 
 
 ^ Heisenberg, op. cit. II, p. 259. 
 
 Garrucci, op. cit. VI, pi. 449, 2. 
 
58 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 other half upright.^ This distinction is maintained for a time 
 in the more symmetrical representations of the later period, and 
 the evolution of the composition into the hieratic type of the 
 Freer miniature was only a gradual one. Thus in the mosaic of 
 St. Mark's at Venice, of the late eleventh century (Fig. 25), we 
 find a composition essentially the same as that of our miniature 
 and of Iviron 5, but lacking the schematic symmetry of the twelfth 
 century. The garden has two little hillocks and several trees, and 
 the women are not yet prostrate on the ground. The woman to 
 the left retains a posture more nearly upright than that of the fig- 
 ure on the right. The St. Mark's version occurs again in a 
 mosaic of Monreale, of the latter half of the twelfth century, 
 wherein the earlier and freer type is reflected, but the garden has 
 already dwindled to two trees. Iviron 5, also of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, shows a still more schematic composition, in which the sym- 
 metry is complete except that a souvenir of the earlier position of 
 the woman on the left remains in the lifted head. Finally, the 
 Freer miniature represents the most advanced degree of formality, 
 and cannot be distant in date from the Athos manuscript, so close 
 is the resemblance of the two. 
 
 vii. Madonna and Saints — Plate X 
 
 The verso of fol. IV contains a charming figure of the Ma- 
 donna, standing on a low pedestal, holding the Child on her left 
 arm, and flanked by two bishop saints carrying books, whose 
 identity, in view of the condition of the miniature, it would 
 be useless to attempt to determine. The Virgin originally wore 
 a violet mantle above her undergarment, which is drawn over her 
 head in a veil. The bishops on either side also had violet pallia, 
 and their omophoria or stoles show traces of black and gold. The 
 background was once the usual gold. 
 
 The Virgin apparently holds the Child with both hands and 
 bends her head to His in a graceful attitude of motherly solici- 
 tude. The human quality of the group gives our Madonna con- 
 siderable importance as one, at least, of the earliest examples of 
 the " tender " Virgin. The Byzantine type " throughout the 
 
 1 Omont, Fac-si7iiilcs des ininiatiires de Mss. grecs. de la Dihl. Nat., pi. xxi. 
 - Exception must be made of the remarkable sixth century Madonna at Kiev 
 (Muiioz, op. cit. fig. 5) and some Coptic examples. 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 59 
 
 earlier period, in the twelfth century, and frequently even in later 
 times, was a thoroughly hieratic conception of the Mother and 
 Child, both being represented in frontal attitude, usually gazing 
 directly at the spectator, the Virgin holding her head erect. The 
 humanizing droop of the head was introduced into Italian art by 
 the Tuscans of the thirteenth century, and the transformation of 
 the type in Byzantine art is usually ascribed to the same period. 
 As our manuscript cannot be placed later than 1200, its Madonna 
 possesses an historical interest quite as great as her indubitable 
 charm. 
 
 viii. John the Baptist and the Virgin? 
 
 Folio V, recto, contains the remains of a group of two saints. 
 There is so little left of the painting that I hesitate to identify 
 the figures, but it seems likely that they represent St. John the 
 Baptist and the Virgin. The irregular outlines of the garment 
 worn by the figure on the left indicate the mantle of skins char- 
 acteristic of the Baptist, and the figure to the right is dressed, 
 so far as one can determine, like a woman. But conjecture is 
 futile in the face of the ruined condition of the painting. There 
 is no miniature on the verso page. 
 
 ix. Date and Value of the Miniatures 
 
 The date of this series of miniatures has so frequently been 
 suggested during the course of the preceding discussion that it 
 needs few words of further definition. The text points to the thir- 
 teenth century, but is not inconsistent with the second half of the 
 twelfth, and the style and iconography clearly indicate the period 
 last named as the time when the manuscript was illustrated. An 
 earlier date would probably be inconsistent with the use of the 
 Evangelistic symbols, and certainly with the text. The introduc- 
 tion of scenes unusual in Gospel illustration, like the Appearance 
 to the Holy Women and the Doubting of Thomas, also points to 
 a date subsequent to the earlier half of the twelfth century. An- 
 other indication of the same character is the curious combination 
 of realism and convention which is often met with in later Byzan- 
 tine art, and is here observable on the one hand in the pedestal 
 on which the Madonna stands, and on the other in the motherly 
 droop of her head. 
 
6o 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 The thirteenth century is an impossible date, for reasons quite 
 as good. In the first place, manuscripts so profusely illustrated 
 are rare in that period. Again, in the scenes of the Descent into 
 Hell and the Doubting of Thomas, we have found our best par- 
 allels in monuments close to the year iioo, like the bronze doors 
 of St. Paul's and Trani, the mosaics of St. Mark's and the Melis- 
 senda Psalter. Iviron 5, the manuscript which is so like ours in the 
 rendering of the Appearance to the Holy Women, is dated by 
 Brockhaus "about the twelfth century." Lastly we have the 
 definite evidence of the iconography of the Descent from the 
 Cross in favor of the latter half of the twelfth century, for the well- 
 defined type of the thirteenth century requires that both arms of 
 the Saviour be detached from the cross, and Nicodemus employed 
 in removing the nails from His feet. The Freer miniature main- 
 tains the earlier form in which one hand is still nailed to the cross- 
 bar, but shows a later phase of the theme by omitting the angels 
 which appear above the cross in the Melissenda Psalter. The 
 period between 11 50 and 1200 is therefore the time when our 
 miniatures were produced. 
 
 The compositions are quite consistent with this date. Between 
 the creative Neo-Hellenic art of the ninth, tenth and eleventh cen- 
 turies and the diffuse realism of the fourteenth, the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries intervene as an epoch of simplification and 
 fixation of types. The iconography often shows this, and we have 
 seen how the twelfth century stereotyped the Descent into Hell, 
 crossing the gates of Hell and omitting the figure of Satan. The 
 episodes of the Melissenda Psalter reflect the same tendency toward 
 abbreviation and convention, and it is precisely on this account 
 that the Psalter and the Freer miniatures seem so closely related. 
 
 The latter have not escaped the conventionality of their time. 
 The pedestal under the Virgin's feet in the Descent from the 
 Cross and the " Madonna with Saints," and the hieratic rendering 
 of the Appearance to the Holy Women, so marked in its dry con- 
 trast to the example of St. Mark's, are witness to an indifferent 
 grasp of reality on the part of our artist. All the episodes are re- 
 duced to their lowest terms. The lanky figures, the uninventive 
 drapery, with its broad, straight surfaces or minute and numerous 
 folds, the feet which rest on nothing, the awkward attitudes, are 
 indeed features which already are present in Byzantine painting 
 of the eleventh century, but here appear in sharper relief. And 
 
GOSPEL MINIATURES 
 
 6i 
 
 still there is in the very human rendering of the Madonna a pre- 
 monition of the mundane style of the fourteenth century. 
 
 As a draughtsman our artist shows himself uneven, and like 
 most East Christian painters, he relied on the usual thick over- 
 painting to conceal his blunders. Thus he took two tries at the 
 left foot of Joseph of Arimathea, and nodded decidedly in his 
 drawing of Adam's left leg. His innocence of anatomy is ap- 
 parent in the Christ of the Descent from the Cross, where he 
 draws impossible knee-caps and repeats the summary rendering 
 of the muscles of the breast and arm which was used in the mo- 
 saic Crucifixion of Daphni, a hundred years before. The at- 
 tempt at the expression of sorrow on the face of Mary in the 
 same scene has resulted in an unconvincing grimace. 
 
 Herein, however, he shows himself but the child of his time, 
 and a comparison with the Melissenda Psalter and Iviron 5 will 
 make it clear that he was above rather than below the average of 
 the twelfth century. It must be remembered that Byzantine 
 drawing, with its sweeping and confident lines produced by the 
 practice of hundreds of years on unchanging compositions, is usually 
 bolder in its preliminary stage than in the finished picture, after 
 the application of the overcolor, since the latter conceals much of 
 the detail of the design, and deprives the preliminary sketch of 
 freshness and vivacity by rigid adherence to clean-cut contours. 
 Consequently, it is somewhat unfair to compare our artist's best 
 sketches, where the loss of the overpainting has revealed them, 
 with the finished miniatures of the Melissenda Psalter. Yet there 
 can be no doubt that the spirited figure of Nicodemus in the De- 
 scent from the Cross is in every way superior to that of the Psalter, 
 and it is impossible to find in the twelfth century another Virgin 
 so appealing as that which appears in the miniature of the Ma- 
 donna and the Bishop-Saints. The artist and his manuscript 
 were among the best of their time. The unusual scenes included 
 in the surviving series betoken a large number in the original 
 manuscript. Apparently the artist eschewed ornamental borders, 
 but for richness and variety of illustration the gospel in its pris- 
 tine state must have equalled, if it did not outrank, the existing 
 Byzantine manuscripts of the twelfth century. 
 
 The disappearance of the overpainting makes our miniatures 
 of unique assistance in determining the processes of Byzantine 
 painting, and the technique of our artist is not hard to follow. 
 
62 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 He drew his preliminary sketch on the parchment in an ink that 
 has faded brown, using a pen or fine brush. After this a yellow 
 priming or sizing was laid on to form a ground for the gold wher- 
 ever this was to be used — in the background, on the foot-stools 
 of the Evangelists or the Gates of Hell, or in the draperies of 
 Christ, who always wears a blue pallium and a gilded tunic except 
 in the Descent from the Cross, where He wears a loin-cloth of inde- 
 terminate color, and in the Descent into Hell, where both tunic and 
 pallium show traces of gilding. The green ground-strip (gray-blue 
 in the portrait of John) was probably the next thing to be painted 
 in. Details in black were often added on the yellow sizing before 
 the gold was applied, but the inscriptions seem to have been painted 
 in minium on the gold itself. The latter has almost entirely dis- 
 appeared, leaving the yellow sizing to indicate the portions of the 
 miniatures that were originally gilded. After these preliminary 
 steps the final color was laid on within the outlines of the sketch 
 directly on the parchment. Shadows were obtained by deeper 
 applications of the tone the artist happened to be using, along the 
 lines of the preliminary drawing. The flesh color was a reddish 
 yellow of much the same cjuality as the priming spoken of above. 
 Hair and features were drawn in ink, and possibly afterwards re- 
 inforced with black. The final task of the artist was to correct 
 and deepen with black the main contours, and to add such minor 
 touches as the decorative details in gold and black, and the black 
 with which he picked out the folds of Christ's gilded garments. 
 
III. THE PAINTED COVERS OF THE WASHING- 
 TON MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPELS 
 
 A DESCRIPTION of these interesting panels, together with a 
 brief and tentative discussion of their date, was pubHshed by the 
 present writer in the Introduction to the Facsimile of the Wash- 
 ington Manuscript.^ In describing them here, therefore, it will 
 be necessary only to summarize the account previously published, 
 and to refer the reader, for details of color, to the two plates in 
 the Facsimile which exactly reproduce the paintings. 
 
 The covers of the Washington Manuscript (Plate XI), which 
 are now separated from the text, are two wooden panels, bevelled 
 on the outer and the inner faces at top and bottom, and also on the 
 sides in the case of the outer faces. The left-hand board, which is 
 badly worn (Plate XII), varies in width from 14 cm. to 14.3 cm., 
 and in length from 21 cm. to 21.3 cm. The right-hand board 
 (Plate XIII) measures 14.3 cm. x 21.3 cm. The thickness of the 
 covers varies from i cm. to 1.6 cm. 
 
 The back binding consists of a leather backing applied over 
 interlacing cords of the same material. The ends of these cords 
 were inserted in twenty-six holes in the side of each cover, and 
 fragments of the cords still remain in place. Their protruding 
 ends were bound by a strip of cloth, about 2.5 cm. wide, pasted 
 along the inner face of each board. Over this is pasted a parch- 
 ment backing, covering the whole inner face. 
 
 Along the upper part of the right-hand edge of the left panel 
 is a row of seven holes, and another row of the same number of 
 holes runs along the lower part, leaving a space of about 7.5 cm. 
 between the two rows. On the upper edge of the same cover 
 is a row of ten holes. The other cover has no such holes in its 
 edges, except one in the upper outer corner, corresponding to a 
 hole similarly placed in the left cover. A fragment of a wooden 
 peg, still remaining in the corner hole of the latter, shows that 
 
 1 Facsiinile of the Washington Manuscript of the Four Gospels in the Freer Collection. 
 With an Introduction by Henry A. Sanders. The University of Michigan. 1913. See p. 83. 
 
 63 
 
64 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 cords were once inserted in these holes, probably to tie the covers 
 together when the book was not in use. The rows of holes in 
 the left cover, not being repeated in the other panel, seem to have 
 been used for the attachment of flaps with which to lift the left- 
 hand cover, or of a casing of cloth which was folded about the 
 book. 
 
 The metal chains attached by staples to the upper outer cor- 
 ners of the covers ^ were probably meant to keep the book from 
 opening to its full extent, so as to prevent abrasion of the paint- 
 ings. They are undoubtedly later additions to the book. 
 
 The covers were painted after the book was bound ; for irregu- 
 lar traces of the yellow paint used in the border remain around 
 the holes of the back binding and on the fragments of the leather 
 cords, and, while the same color has invaded the space between 
 the holes into which the binding cords are inserted, it stops 
 short at the line of the binding itself. 
 
 The figures on the covers are the four Evangelists, depicted 
 in the order in which their gospels appear in the manuscript,^ 
 Matthew and John on the left cover, Luke and Mark on the right. 
 John's figure is almost entirely erased. Mark is labelled by an 
 inscription placed vertically to the right of his figure: MAPKOCi 
 and to the left of Luke may be seen the last two letters of his 
 name: AC. 
 
 The painter used no priming and has left no traces of his 
 preliminary outline. The green filling of the background was 
 put in after the figures were drawn ; the brush-strokes are guided 
 by the contours of the figures. The strokes are crude and irregu- 
 lar, indicating a rough reed brush of the kind described by Gayet 
 in his description of the processes of Coptic painting.^ The 
 figures are painted in masses of ground color, and all the details 
 of features, drapery, etc., including the hair and the black outlines 
 of the figures, are overlaid upon this. The painting originally 
 covered the entire panel, with a yellow border running around the 
 edges, overlaid with a crude leaf design in green and greenish 
 brown. The yellow was the poorest color in the painter's palette, 
 and has peeled badly, particularly on the edges of the panels. 
 
 1 The one attached to the left panel measures 15.3 cm. ; the other 17.7 cm. 
 '■^ Cf. Sanders, The Washington Manuscript of the Four Gospels (University of Michi- 
 gan Studies, Humanistic Series, Vol. 9, Part i), p. 27. 
 3 VArt Copte, p. 263. 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 65 
 
 Here it disappeared early and left a strip of bare wood which 
 has weathered more than the rest of the panel, and thus gives the 
 appearance of a border, especially on the left cover. The fugitive 
 character of Coptic yellow was noticed by J. E Quibell in his 
 examination of the frescoes at Saqqara.' The detail colors are 
 all very thickly laid on, and the same is true in less degree of 
 the ground color. Heavy painting has caused the green back- 
 ground to shade almost to black in places, especially in the centre 
 of each panel, where the brush-strokes up and down have mingled 
 in a thick layer of paint. 
 
 The artist used a limited palette, — black, red, yellow, slate- 
 blue, white and green. To Matthew and Luke he gives black 
 hair, and clothes them in a white tunic, on which the shadows are 
 brought out in blue, and a pinkish pallium, whose folds are pro- 
 duced in red. Both garments are outlined in black, and the 
 tunic of Luke has black stripes and dots. Both Evangelists 
 carry a yellow book, with details and edges in black, and jewels 
 indicated with red. The color-scheme, drapery and attitude of 
 the ruined figure of John must have been, as the remaining frag- 
 ments show, practically identical with that of Mark: gray hair, 
 white tunic with black stripes and dots, and shadows indicated in 
 black and slate-blue ; red pallium with white folds ; yellow book 
 with red jewels, and black dots and edges. Both tunic and 
 pallium were outlined with heavy black contours, as in the case of 
 the other Evangelists. Huge yellow haloes, originally outlined 
 in white, adorn the heads of all four figures. The flesh-color is 
 white, shaded with pink. Eyes, ears, mouth and nose are drawn 
 in red, and the nostrils of Matthew and Mark are indicated by 
 touches of black. The hand of Mark is outlined in black, with a 
 trace of a red line along the wrist. The feet of the four saints are 
 clad in sandals, summarily indicated by thickening the black con- 
 tour of the pinkish white feet at the heel and toe. 
 
 The artist shows a tendency to mix his lights with the colors 
 used in the shadows. Thus the flesh color of the faces is made 
 pinkish by the admixture of the red details of the eyes and ears, 
 and the pallia of Matthew and Luke are of a pinker hue by reason 
 of the red folds. The slate-blue shadows have similarly qualified 
 
 1 Excavations at Saqqara, 1906-1907, II, p. 66. But compare Cl^dat's description of 
 the paintings at Bawit (in Cabrol, Dictionnaire d'archeologie chrHienne et de liturgie, 
 s.v. Baouit, col. 232), where red and yellow are named as the most tenacious colors. 
 
66 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 the white of the tunics. Practically identical colors and processes 
 were employed in the wall-paintings at Saqqara, to judge from 
 Quibell's description, particularly in the decoration of the north 
 wall of Cell A in the monastery.' Here "four colors were used, 
 black, yellow, slate blue, red, and for the flesh of the figure on the 
 left, pink with a greenish mixture in the shadows. The figures 
 were painted in with broad streaks of color and the black outline 
 added last." 
 
 The portraits of the Evangelists afforded by our panels are of 
 great value to the student of Coptic iconography, since they give 
 us a series in which the several Evangelists can be identified, and 
 in which the figures are well preserved or capable of restoration. 
 According to our portraits Matthew and Luke were visualized in 
 Egypt as men in the prime of life, with black hair and beards, 
 while Mark partakes of the more advanced age of John, and is 
 represented with gray hair, head slightly bald and long pointed 
 beard. These types of the Evangelists are the ones usual in East 
 Christian art," with the important exception of Mark, where we 
 have a portrait distinctly differing from the current one of 
 Byzantine art, and amounting to a characteristic Coptic type. 
 
 In Byzantine painting the Evangelist is always a man in the 
 prime of life with round full beard — a tradition that dates back to 
 the sixth century and is represented by the portrait of Mark in the 
 Codex Rossanensis (Fig. 15). The earliest Coptic monument 
 I know which depicts the Evangelists is a relief in the Metro- 
 politan Museum in New York,'' which can hardly be later than 
 the fifth century. In the centre of the relief Christ is represented 
 seated with twelve baskets of loaves at His right hand, arranged 
 vertically in rows of four. Two angels stand at His left hand, 
 and another beside the baskets. The subject is of course the 
 
 1 Op. cit. p. 64. A quite similar palette was used at Deir-Abou-Hennes (Gayet, op. 
 cit. p. 273). 
 
 2 John is represented regularly throughout the fourth and fifth centuries as a young 
 and beardless man. In later East Christian art he becomes an aged man when depicted as 
 the Evangelist, and a young man when portrayed as an apostle. The differentiation of the 
 Beloved Disciple from the aged writer of the fourth Gospel commences in the sixth century. 
 For example, while in the sixth century mosaics of S. Vitale in Ravenna all four of the 
 Evangelists are represented as men advanced in years, the medallion portraits of the Codex 
 Rossanensis. of the same period, give John an aged appearance, but represent Matthew, 
 Mark and Luke in the prime of life. 
 
 3 Ninth Egyptian Room: lo . 176 . 21. 
 
Plate XII, 
 
I 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 67 
 
 Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, but the artist has added two 
 seated figures holding books in their left hands at either end of 
 the relief, which evidently are meant for the Evangelists. They 
 are not, however, distinguished by labels or other attributes, and 
 the heads are defaced. 
 
 So far as the Coptic type of Mark is concerned, the charac- 
 teristic features which distinguish it from the Byzantine rendering 
 were noticed by Strzygowski in his publication of a piece of Early 
 Christian wood-sculpture from Egypt in the Berlin Museum. ^ 
 Strzygowski cited the head of Mark on a wooden door (early 
 tenth century) of the church El-Hadra in Deir es-Suriani to show 
 the existence of a " Paul "-type of Mark in Coptic art, and argued 
 therefrom that the Evangelist was also represented in the seated 
 figure of a bald-headed man with a pointed beard, holding a book 
 and surrounded by thirty-five ecclesiastics, in a carved ivory in the 
 Louvre. He explained the thirty-five figures as the successors of 
 Mark on the episcopal throne of Alexandria, which would date 
 the piece in the reign of Anastasius, the thirty-sixth patriarch, who 
 presided over the see from 607 to 609. The same type is used in 
 a series of panels in the Museo Archeologico at Milan, and in a 
 panel of the Victoria and Albert Museum, representing the Acts 
 of St. Mark in the Pentapolis. It is a question, however, whether 
 the last-named group is of Egyptian origin, or sufficiently early in 
 date to count in this connection.'' The Freer portrait is thus the 
 first published monument definitely to confirm Strzygowski's con- 
 tention of a distinctive type for the Evangelist in Coptic art, that 
 is, a slightly bald and elderly man, with pointed beard, and much 
 resembling the traditional portrait of Paul. 
 
 The date of the covers must be determined chiefly on the basis 
 of style, but some evidence on this point is furnished by the manu- 
 script itself, which shows traces of rebinding. There are, for 
 instance, two cases of the sewing-in of half-leaves, where the 
 opposite half has been torn out and is lost. In one case, a half-leaf 
 has been torn out and pasted back in the manuscript. All these 
 instances show that the manuscript was apart at the time, for the 
 ends of the leaves, and the sewing as well, were concealed in the 
 binding. The manuscript must therefore have been rebound, and 
 
 1 Orient oder Rom, p. 71 fF., and Oriens Christ. I, p. 366. 
 
 ^ See Dalton, Byzantine Art Gr' Archaeology, pp. 213 and 234. 
 
68 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 the worn condition of the leaves, betokening long use, points to 
 more than one rebinding. It is likely therefore that the paintings 
 of the covers are considerably later than the text, none of which 
 antedates the fourth century. 
 
 This is borne out by a comparison of the paintings with other 
 Coptic monuments of reasonably certain date, particularly the 
 paintings discovered in the funerary chapels at Bawit, and in the 
 monastery cells at Saqqara.' Cledat, to whom we owe the best 
 publications of the Bawit paintings, allows a range from the fifth 
 to the twelfth century for the Bawit monuments in general,^ and 
 - is very reluctant to give definite dates to the paintings, though 
 inclining to put most of them in the sixth century. Only one of 
 the chapels which he explored produced material evidence as to 
 date; that is, Chapel XVII, one of whose paintings, decorating a 
 niche in the east wall, is reproduced in Fig. 29, Grafifiti scratched 
 on the walls of this chapel contain dates belonging in the eighth 
 century, and the decoration, as Cledat pointed out, must therefore 
 be no later than the eighth century, " ou meme Vlle."^ Cledat 
 elsewhere says'* that the paintings of Chapel XVII seem to belong 
 to the sixth century. 
 
 It will be noted, in comparing the figures on the covers with 
 those in the Bawit painting, that they are cruder than the latter 
 in design, but show so striking a similarity to them in the treat- 
 ment of details that it is impossible to suppose that the monuments 
 are very far apart in date. The apostle on the Virgin's left hand 
 in the Bawit painting has many points of contact with the Mark 
 and Luke on the covers. We may compare, for example, the 
 angular beard of the apostle with that of St. Luke. Again, we 
 note a close correspondence in the stripes on the wrists of both 
 the apostle and St. Mark, in the black stroke separating right arm 
 and breast, in the dots and stripes and the arrangement of the 
 drapery, and the way in which the right leg is indicated beneath 
 the pallium. The enormous haloes afford another common feature, 
 while both the Bawit painting and the covers show the same 
 summary way of painting the sandalled foot, and the ground-strip 
 
 1 Cf. for Bawit, Cledat, Comptes rendus de I'Acad. des Inscr. 1902 and 1904; Mem. de 
 rinstitui franq. d'' Archiologie orient. XII ; s. v. Baouit in Cabrol, op. cit. For Saqqara, 
 J. E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara, 1906-1907. 
 
 '•^ Comptes rendus de VAcad. des Inscr. 1902, p. 537. 
 
 ^ Mem. de V Instit . franc. d''Arch. orient. XII, 2, p. 83. 
 
 * In Cabrol, op. cit. s. v. Baouit, col. 229. 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON AiANUSCRIPT 
 
 69 
 
 on which the figures stand. The real difference between the two 
 paintings is not one of style, but of quality ; the Bawit figures are 
 at once freer and more sure in execution, while the covers betray 
 their decadence and a later date by a certain laxity of conception 
 and drawing. Another point of divergence is the attitude of 
 Mark, who stands in an easy pose, resting the weight of the body 
 on one leg, a posture rarely seen in the sixth century, but increas- 
 ingly common thereafter, and characteristic of Byzantine art. 
 
 FIG. 29. The Ascension. P.\inting in CHArm. XVII at BawIt. 
 
 The Bawit figures, on the other hand, are more squarely planted 
 on both feet. The same marks of later date, with the exception 
 of the attitude of Mark, are visible in a similar painting found in 
 Chapel XLII, representing Christ in glory surrounded by the 
 symbols of the Evangelists, and below Him the Virgin and Child 
 enthroned in the midst of the apostles.^ Here, if we may judge 
 from Cledat's drawing, the treatment of drapery, faces, hands and 
 feet betrays the same decadence, and points to the .same relative 
 
 ^ Cabrol, op. cit. fig. 1280. 
 
 1 
 
70 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 date as that of the covers. This date should be measurably later 
 than that of the painting of Chapel XVII. 
 
 We find the style of the covers reflected again in the painting 
 reproduced in Fig. 30, which represents part of a group decorating 
 a niche in Cell F at Saqqara. In this the crudeness is accentuated, 
 
 FIG. 30. Three Saints. W'Ai.L-rAiNTiNG in Cell F in 
 THE Monastery at Saqqara. 
 
 and visible in the exaggerated curvilinear treatment of the hands. 
 The feet dangle, and the artist found it impossible to render the 
 folds of the drapery. We have here a monument obviously later 
 than the covers, but the community of style is seen in the triple 
 vertical division of the tunic, the arrangement of the drapery of 
 the central figure, the angular beards, the indication of the sandals 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 and the dots on the tunics. A graffito scratched on one of the 
 figures in the niche was seen by Grcnfell, who pronounced it to be 
 of the eighth century.' It was afterwards washed away by rain, 
 but Grenfell's judgment may be taken to indicate the tert)iiinis ad 
 t]7iem for the date of the painting under di.scussion. 
 
 The style of the book-covers may, therefore, be traced through 
 a series of monuments in which a chronological sequence can be 
 established as follows: (i) Chapel XVII, Bawit ; (2) Cha})el 
 XLII, Bawit, and the Freer covers; (3) the Saqqara painting in 
 Cell F. The evidence of the graffiti shows that (i) and (3) are no 
 later than the eighth century. This establishes the lower limit 
 for the period in which the covers must be placed. It remains to 
 find the terminus post quern, in other words, to date, if we can, the 
 earliest one of our series, the painting in Chapel XVII at Bawit. 
 And this is the more important since Strzygowski- has questioned 
 the propriety of the sixth century as the average date for the 
 Bawit paintings, and is inclined to place them earlier than Cledat. 
 
 The composition which decorates the niche in Chapel XVII 
 obviously represents the Ascension. Christ sits on a jewelled 
 throne in the midst of a glory, blessing with His right hand, and 
 holding an open book in His left, on which one reads the word 
 ayto9, ' holy,' three times inscribed. From the clouds that support 
 the glory emerge the heads of the Evangelical beasts. To right 
 and left are angels carrying wreaths, and near each appears a 
 woman's head framed in a medallion. Below we see the Virgin 
 and the apostles, with St. Peter holding a key and book in his 
 left hand, occupying the place of honor to the right of the 
 Virgin. 
 
 The composition is of Syro-Palestinian origin,'' and first 
 appears in a form essentially similar to the Bawit example in 
 the Syriac Gospel of the Laurentian Library at Florence, which 
 was written in Zagba, Mesopotamia, by the monk Rabulas, in the 
 
 1 Quibell, op. at. II, p. 67. 
 
 Denkschriften der Wiener Akad. (Phil. -Hist. Kl.), 1906: Eine alexandrisclie 
 Weltchronik, p. 193. 
 
 ^ The type was derived, according to Heisenberg {pp. cit. II, p. 1961!".), from a lost 
 mosaic of the church of the Apostles in Constantinople, dating in the time of Justinian 
 (see p. 55), which formed the model of the composition on the Monza phials, and of the later 
 Byzantine versions. It seems more likely, however, that the archetype is to be sought in 
 an earlier Palestinian mo.saic. and interesting data on this point may be expected from 
 Strzygowski's forthcoming publication of the Byzantine gold ornaments in the Morgan 
 collection. 
 
72 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 year 586. The Syrian miniature (Fig. 31) also depicts Christ in 
 the glory, and the wreath-bearing angels on either side. As at 
 Bawit, we find the Virgin below, standing in an attitude of prayer 
 among the apostles. But the miniature adds the busts of the sun 
 and moon in the upper corners of the picture, groups the symbols 
 of the Evangelists below the glory, inserts two half-figures of 
 
 FIG. 31. The Ascension. Miniature of the Syriac Gospel of Rabulas. 
 
 angels above it, depicts Christ standing, and holding an unrolled 
 scroll instead of a book and lastly inserts on either side of the 
 Virgin an angel who carries a staff and directs the attention of 
 the apostles to the ascending Christ. The two medallions with 
 the female heads are also omitted in the manuscript. The chief 
 difference is found in the treatment of the lower group. In the 
 Rabulas miniature there is much movement, the apostles gaze 
 and point upward with expressive gestures and attitudes, and are 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 73 
 
 huddled in groups of six on either side of the Virgin. The latter, 
 too, partakes in a measure of the general excitement. In the 
 Bawit painting the lower group is stiff and quiet, the apostles 
 stand in frontal attitudes holding books in their hands, and are 
 rendered in a hieratic fashion that suppresses the dram.atic con- 
 nection of the lower zone with the scene above. 
 
 The distinctly Palestinian version of the type is represented 
 by a number of reliefs on the famous oil-flasks of Monza, which 
 were made in Palestine about 600^ (Fig- 32). In these reliefs, 
 Christ is depicted seated on a 
 throne, and holding a book, as 
 at Bawit. The symbols of the 
 Evangelists are omitted, and 
 two or four angels sustain the 
 aureole. A dove and the Dex- 
 tera Domini are in one case 
 inserted below the glory and 
 above the head of the Virgin.'- 
 Below stand the Virgin and the 
 apostles. The latter are di- 
 vided into two groups as in the 
 Rabulas Gospel, and usually 
 show the excited gestures and 
 attitudes of the Syrian type. 
 At least one of the flasks, how- 
 ever,^ gives a composition that 
 closely resembles the Bawit 
 painting, in that only two 
 angels are represented beside the glory that surrounds the 
 Saviour, and the apostles below are quiet figures standing in a 
 row on either side of the Virgin, giving thus the air of detach- 
 ment to the lower group which was noted above. 
 
 The conventionalized version of the Ascension type which 
 was used in the relief of the Monza flask just mentioned must 
 have been in the mind of the artist who composed the peculiar 
 mosaic in the chapel of S. Venanzio at Rome (a. 640-649).^ This 
 
 1 Garrucci, op. cii . VI, pis. 433, 8.10; 434. 2.3; 435, i. 
 Garrucci. op.cit. VI. 434. 3. Heisenberg. op.cit. II. p. 198 maintains that in tliis case tlie 
 artist has adapted the Ascension type to a representation of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. 
 3 Garrucci, op. cit. VI. pi. 433. 8. ^ De Rossi, Musaici cristiani di Ro)na, pi. XI.X. 
 
 FIG. 32. The Ascension. Relief on an 
 E.VRLY Christia.v Oil-flask at Monza. 
 
74 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 indeed is not an Ascension, but the composition is evidently based 
 on the type that we have been discussing, for we see a half-figure 
 of Christ among the clouds of heaven in the vault of the apse, 
 flanked by two half-figures of adoring angels, and below is the 
 figure of the Virgin-orant, with Peter and Paul on either side, 
 heading a series of the saints commemorated in the oratory. Here 
 again the upper and lower parts of the composition are distinct, 
 and the same statuesque pose is given to the saints of the lower 
 zone. Another adaptation of the type is found in the painting 
 above mentioned in Chapel XL 1 1 at Bawit, where the concept of 
 the Ascension again is lost, and the Virgin-orant is replaced by a 
 seated Madonna holding the Child in her lap. 
 
 The Bawit painting shows an eclectic use of both the Syrian 
 and the Palestinian types of the Ascension. It retains the four 
 symbols of the Evangelists which are omitted in the Monza flasks, 
 and thus shows affinity with the miniature in the Rabulas manu- 
 script, though it distributes them symmetrically around the 
 aureole, and does not group them below it, as is the case with the 
 miniature. On the other hand, it coincides more closely with 
 the composition of the Monza flasks in rendering Christ en- 
 throned and holding a book, instead of standing and holding a 
 scroll as He is represented in the Syrian Gospel, and is very 
 like one of the flasks, and also like the seventh century mosaic 
 of S. Venanzio, in conventionalizing the scene by means of the 
 hieratic treatment given the lower group. Judging therefore from 
 its iconography, we should incline to give the Bawit painting a 
 date coeval with, or somewhat later than, the date of the Monza 
 flasks. 
 
 Such imitation of Syro-Palestinian models on the part of 
 Coptic artists is by no means new to students of the Christian 
 art of Egypt. A fresco at Antinoe representing the Massacre of 
 the Innocents is clearly derived from the rendering of the same 
 subject in the Rabulas Gospel, and the Journey to Bethlehem in 
 the same cycle of paintings is similarly related to the correspond- 
 ing scene on the ivory cover of the Etschmiadzin Gospel, which 
 is recognized as a Syrian work.^ A distributing centre of such 
 influence on Coptic iconography may have been the Syrian clois- 
 ter of Deir es-Suriani, and there in fact we find a tenth-century 
 
 ' I am indebted for these observations to Mr. E. B. Smith. 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 75 
 
 painting of the Ascension,' which, while conforming in most 
 respects to the version of the Monza flasks, still retains the sun 
 and moon of the Syrian type. The earlier painting which it 
 replaced has left sufificient traces of itself to show that it was even 
 more like the Rabulas miniature in that it contained the two staff- 
 bearing angels in the lower group. 
 
 We have said that, so far as the iconography of the Bawit 
 Ascension is concerned, it should be dated about 600, or some- 
 what later. But dates based on iconography must always be elas- 
 tic, and in this case, the strong Hellenistic survivals visible in 
 other paintings of Chapel XVII, notably in the head of an angel 
 tormenting the damned in a representation of Hell,'- and in cer- 
 tain details of the Baptism of Christ,^ make it unlikely that the 
 decoration of the chapel is later than the sixth century. Nor is 
 the formal treatment of the theme, as compared with the livelier 
 versions of the Rabulas Gospel and most of the Monza flasks, 
 necessarily indicative of a later date, for the tendency toward a 
 hieratic rendering is a factor constant in the Coptic. The white 
 cloth in Mary's girdle is of little assistance in determining the 
 date, for, while it is characteristic of the Virgin in later Ascen- 
 sions, it nevertheless occurs in the Rabulas miniature and has 
 been pointed out by Strzygowski in an Annunciation among the 
 Syrian miniatures of the Etschmiadzin Gospel, which he dates as 
 early as the first half of the sixth century.^ We shall scarcely 
 err, in view of these considerations, in placing the Bawit Ascen- 
 sion between 550 and 600. The decadence manifested in the 
 style of the book-covers would date them in a somewhat later 
 period, and they can therefore be assigned roughly to the first 
 half of the seventh century. The middle of this century, or its 
 latter half, is thus indicated as the date of the painting in Cell F 
 at Saqqara. 
 
 The evolution of Early Christian art is understood to-day 
 (thanks chiefly to the investigations of Strzygowski) as the grad- 
 ual Orientalizing of the Hellenic forms bequeathed to the Chris- 
 tian era by antiquity. The tide of Greek naturalism which over- 
 ran the Mediterranean basin in the wake of the conquests of 
 Alexander never obliterated the artistic traditions of Egypt and 
 
 1 Strzygowski, Oriens Christ. I, pp. 360 ff. ^ Cabrol. op. cit. fig. 1278. 
 
 8 Cabrol, op. cit. fig. 1282. * Byz. Denkmiiler, I, p. 71, pi. V. 2. 
 
76 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 Mesopotamia. Hardly had Greek art become established in Asia 
 and the valley of the Nile when there began against it and within 
 it the reaction of the Orient, traceable in a number of significant 
 symptoms such as the obliteration of the background, the growing 
 contrast between the lights and shadows, frontality, one-plane re- 
 lief, symmetrical composition, and above all a conventional render- 
 ing of animate life. 
 
 Egypt furnished perhaps the most fertile soil in which the 
 seeds of this reaction could grow. Greek art was really never at 
 home in that country. Alexandria itself was the most Hellenistic 
 of cities, but the country as a whole clung to ancient modes of ex- 
 pression, as indeed may be seen from the small impression made 
 by Greek notions on the religious art and architecture under the 
 Ptolemies and Rome. The Christian religion, nevertheless, came 
 in Greek guise to the Copts as well as to the other peoples of the 
 Mediterranean. Its stories and dogmas were cast in Greek ar- 
 tistic moulds, and the sanction thus given to Hellenistic forms pre- 
 vailed long against the rising influence of Eastern art. 
 
 In Egypt, therefore, the conflict took the form of a duel be- 
 tween the Hellenistic Christian fashions of Alexandria and the 
 native traditions of Upper Egypt. Alfred Gayet has devoted an 
 interesting volume ^ to the thesis that the Copts, the native Chris- 
 tians of Egypt, were but passive recipients of the early Hellenistic 
 phase of Christian religion and Christian art, and that the subse- 
 quent history of their indigenous painting and sculpture, as well 
 as of their theology, is but a series of successive and successful re- 
 actions of a spiritual people, lovers of the mystic, dealers in sym- 
 bolism, against the materialism of Greek thought. Hence the 
 monophysite Coptic theology, and the conventional, unreal Coptic 
 art. Certain it is that none of the early schools displayed so 
 marked a contrast between its first essays and its later develop- 
 ment. The early products of the Christian ateliers of Alexandria 
 are the most Hellenic of Christian monuments, with the possible 
 exception of the works produced in Asia Minor ; and nowhere at 
 a later period do we meet with so crude and conventional a render- 
 ing of nature, and so pronounced a tendency on the part of formal 
 ornament to elbow out the naturalistic, as in Egypt. Gayet indeed 
 finds much to support his contention that Mohammedan polygonal 
 ornament is but a development of Coptic design. 
 
 ^ UArt Coptc, Paris, 1902. 
 
 1 
 
Plate XIII. 
 
 Luke and Mark 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 It may be said therefore that the history of Coptic art is the 
 transformation of a free Greek naturahsm into a conventional 
 style of the crudest character. That this change was conditioned 
 in some degree by influences from Syria and Palestine seems 
 clear from what has been pointed out with reference to the effect 
 of Syro- Palestinian iconography on Coptic representations of 
 sacred subjects, but the extent to which these influences made 
 themselves effective in Egypt is not yet thoroughly understood. 
 It is, however, worthy of note that the time when Syria and Pales- 
 tine most affected the rest of the Mediterranean basin, the sixth 
 and seventh centuries, is also the period when the last vestige of 
 Hellenism was squeezed out of Coptic art. 
 
 To illustrate in detail the evolution of the Christian art of 
 Egypt is no part of the present writer's task, but its general 
 character may be indicated briefly by pointing out certain changes 
 which gradually manifested themselves in the treatment of the 
 human figure. As is well known, later Greek art showed a 
 pronounced preference for a figure in free movement, unconfined 
 to a given plane, in contrast to the frontality, or unifaciality, 
 which characterizes Oriental art, and the earlier phases of Greek. 
 This preference expressed itself most often in a fondness for the 
 three-quarters view of the face and body, and the artists, particu- 
 larly in the Roman period, frequently enhanced this effect by 
 shifting the pupil of the eye in a direction angular to that toward 
 which the face was turned, giving the appearance of a sidewise 
 glance. It is this oblique gaze which marks the survival of 
 Hellenistic tradition in Christian art wherever it is found, — in 
 the primitive phase before the frontality of the East brought in 
 the curious stare that is so marked a feature of the mosaics of 
 the sixth and seventh centuries, and in the post-iconoclastic 
 Byzantine, when a fresh infusion of Hellenism followed a revival 
 of interest on the part of the East Christian craftsmen in their 
 Greek patrimony. 
 
 This feature might be illustrated by any number of examples 
 drawn from Egyptian monuments which reflect the early Alexan- 
 drian style, such as the Joshua Roll and the famous illustrated 
 codices of Cosmas Indicopleustes. It will be more interesting 
 to examine an example wherein the Hellenistic element is but 
 a reminiscence struggling to view through the already dominant 
 Coptic formalism. Such a case is presented by the miniatures 
 
78 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 of Fig. 33, which adorn a page of a History of the World, written 
 in Greek on papyrus, now in the Golenisheff collection at St. 
 Petersburg.^ The text on the page contains a chronicle of 
 the events of the years 389-392. In the illustration above to the 
 left, we see the Emperor Theodosius, with the diminutive and 
 hardly visible figure of the Caesar Honorius at his right. Below 
 
 FIG. 33. Miniatures of a History of the World in the 
 Golenisheff Collection at St. Petersburg. 
 
 this group stands Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, and beneath 
 his feet is the temple of Serapis, within which appears the statue 
 of the god, wearing the characteristic modms on his head. The 
 miniature refers to the great achievement of Theophilus' reign, — 
 the destruction of the Serapeion by the Christians of Alexandria. 
 
 ^ Published by A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski in Denkschriften der Wiener Akad. 
 (Phil. -Hist. Kl.) 1906. Cf. also Wilpert's critique of portions of Strzygowski's article in 
 RbJH. Quartalscrift, 1910, pp. 1-29. 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 
 
 79 
 
 The theatrical figure to the right is the pretender Eugenics, 
 whose death is chronicled in the accompanying text, and below 
 him we see again the temple of Serapis, assailed by two fragmen- 
 tary figures of Christians, who are hurling stones at the structure. 
 The manuscript is assigned by Strzygowski to the early part of 
 the fifth century, and betrays in many ways an origin in Upper 
 Egypt, thus constituting one of the earliest 
 existing examples of native Christian art. 
 
 The reaction against the traditions of Hel- 
 lenism may here be seen in the frontality given 
 to the figure of Theophilus, the elimination of 
 any rendering of environment, the flatness of the 
 modelling, and indeed the general unreality of 
 the whole. Yet even here the telltale traces 
 of Greek technique are visible in the sidewise 
 glance of the eyes and the three-quarters pose 
 of the dying Eugenios. The face of the latter 
 marks in striking manner the decay of Hellen- 
 istic drawing. The Greek habit of drawing 
 the face in a three-quarters view has led the 
 artist to a summary indication of eyebrow and 
 nose by a zigzag stroke ; thus ~]_ J", a device 
 which was employed in the features of Theoph- 
 ilus. But in the face of Eugenios he gives 
 us a zigzag which points the nose toward the 
 right, while the head and gaze are turned in 
 comical contrast to the left. Such an instance 
 of misapplied technical tradition is eloquent 
 of the painter s waning grasp of reality. 
 
 It is obvious that the forms of naturalism will 
 survive longer in episodes and scenes of action 
 than in isolated figures like that of Theophilus 
 or groups of the kind we have seen in the Bawit 
 paintings. It is worth while therefore to compare in this con- 
 nection another Coptic monument which shows the growth of 
 Coptic convention even in the rendering of episodic scenes. 
 This monument (Fig. 34) is a wooden panel in the same Goleni- 
 sheff collection, first published by Ainaloff in 1898.^ Certain 
 
 FIG. 34. The Nativ- 
 ity AND THE BaP- 
 
 T I .s M. Painted 
 Wooden Panel in 
 the golenisheff 
 Collection at St. 
 Petershurg. 
 
 1 Viz. Vrcinenik, V, pp. 181-186, pi. II. 
 
8o 
 
 EAST CHRISTIAN PAINTINGS 
 
 affinities with the Rabulas Gospel which are manifest in the panel 
 make it certain that it is to be dated at least a hundred years later 
 than the " History of the World." Strzygowski ' believes that it 
 formed one of the side pieces of a five-part leaf of a diptych, a 
 form common in Christian ivories, but of which this would be the 
 only example in wood. The upper scene represents the Nativity. 
 Mary reclines upon a couch, and Joseph is standing or seated be- 
 side her. Above is the crudest sort of representation of the Child 
 in the manger. His head is marked with a cruciform nimbus 
 which tapers off to form the shapeless body. Behind the Child 
 appears a portion of the head of the ass. The lower scene is the 
 Baptism. Christ is bearded (a departure from Hellenistic tradi- 
 tion), John bends slightly to place his right hand on the head of 
 the Saviour, and an angel to the right holds His garments. 
 
 There is scarcely anything in Christian art more uncouth than 
 this panel. The staring frontality of the faces, which the artist 
 has been unable to escape even in the bent head of the Baptist, 
 the joining of the adjacent haloes, the summary indication of the 
 swaddled Child, the hopeless crudity of the reclining Mary, — be- 
 token an almost completely atrophied sense of the actual. Only 
 here and there may Hellenistic tradition be surmised — in the 
 face of the angel perhaps, and more clearly in the zigzag stroke 
 still used to indicate the brow and nose, but already supplemented, 
 to render the nasal ridge, by a secondary parallel line. 
 
 The Golenisheff panel, being painted on wood, is an excellent 
 parallel for our book-covers, and there are many features common 
 to both monuments. Such are the heavy black outlines, the 
 enormous haloes, the angular beard of Joseph, the peculiar curve 
 to indicate the hair above the middle of the forehead, and the 
 circle and dot with which the artist draws the eye and pupil. 
 But the panel shows its earlier date in the use of gold for the 
 nimbus, and a stucco priming on which the painting is overlaid 
 — features reminiscent to a degree of Hellenistic technique. The 
 book-covers, on the other hand, substituting plain yellow for the 
 haloes, and showing no trace of priming, reflect the processes of a 
 later period. 
 
 The Freer book-covers in fact represent the final step in the 
 evolution briefly sketched, the fully developed Coptic style. No 
 
 1 op. cit. p. 201. 
 
 I 
 
COVERS OF WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT 8i 
 
 trace of Hellenism remains in these curiously formal figures, un- 
 less it be the easy attitude of Mark, which, as previously sug- 
 gested, is rather an indication of Byzantine influence. The ridge 
 of the nose is now rendered by two parallel lines, bodies and faces 
 are flat, the figures repeat conventional types, and differentiation 
 is merely a matter of color of hair and drapery. The complete 
 divorce from reality reflects the last stage of the Coptic revolt 
 against the formulas of Hellenism. The covers are unique 
 examples of the purest artistic expression of this strange race of 
 symbolists, devoid at once of that interest in things human which 
 inspires the rudest works of Western Europe, and the sense of 
 abstract beauty which relieves the most formal phases of the 
 Byzantine. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 For the convenience of readers who may wish to refer to the 
 colored reproductions of the covers of the Washington Manuscript 
 of the Gospels, a list of the libraries containing the Facsimile cited 
 in the footnote on p. 63 is here added. 
 
 LIBRARIES CONTAINING THE FACSIMILE OF THE WASHINGTON 
 MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPELS, JULY i, 1914 
 
 United States 
 
 Amherst, Massachusetts : Amherst College. 
 Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of 
 Michigan. 
 
 Auburn, New York : Auburn Theological 
 
 Seminary. 
 Austin, Texas : University of Texas. 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Uni- 
 versity- 
 
 Beloit, Wisconsin : Beloit College. 
 Berkeley, California : University of Califor- 
 nia. 
 
 Bloomington, Indiana: University of In- 
 diana. 
 
 Boston, Massachusetts : Boston Public 
 Library. 
 
 Boulder, Colorado : L'niversity of Colo- 
 rado. 
 
 Brunswick, Maine : Bowdoin College. 
 Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania : Academy of 
 
 the New Church. 
 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania : Bryn Mawr 
 
 College. 
 
 Burlington, Vermont: University of Ver- 
 mont. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts : Andover Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts : Episcopal Theo- 
 logical School. 
 
 Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Chapel Hill, North Carolina : University of 
 North Carolina. 
 
 Charlottesville, Virginia : University of 
 Virginia. 
 
 Chester, Pennsylvania : Crozer Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 Chicago. Illinois : Chicago Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 Chicago, Illinois : McCormick Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 Chicago, Illinois : Newberry Library. 
 
 Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago. 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio : Lane Theological Semi- 
 nary. 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio: University of Cincinnati. 
 Cleveland. Ohio : Western Reserve Uni 
 versity. 
 
 Clinton, New York : Hamilton College. 
 Colorado Springs, Colorado : Colorado Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Columbia, Missouri : University of Mis- 
 souri. 
 
 Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University. 
 Crawfordsville, Indiana : Wabash College. 
 
 Delaware, Ohio: Ohio Wesleyan Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Denver. Colorado : Denver Public Library. 
 Des Moines. Iowa : Drake University. 
 Detroit, Michigan : Library of the Uni- 
 versity Club. 
 
 Detroit, Michigan : Detroit Public Library. 
 
 Easton, Pennsylvania : Lafayette College. 
 Eugene, Oregon : University of Oregon. 
 Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 83 
 
84 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Galesburg, Illinois: Knox College. 
 Geneva, New York : Hobart College. 
 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania : Lutheran Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 Greencastle. Indiana: De Fauw University. 
 Grinnell, Iowa : Grinnell College. 
 
 Hamilton, New York: Colgate University. 
 Hanover. New Hampshire : Dartmouth 
 College. 
 
 Hartford, Connecticut : Hartford Theologi- 
 cal Seminary. 
 
 Hartford, Connecticut : Trinity College. 
 
 Haverford, Pennsylvania : Haverford Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Holland, Michigan : Hope College. 
 
 Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana State Li- 
 brary. 
 
 Iowa City, Iowa : University of Iowa. 
 Ithaca, New York : Cornell University. 
 
 Lawrence. Kansas : Uni\ ersity of Kansas. 
 Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Lexington, Kentucky : Transylvania Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Lincoln, Nebraska : University of Nebraska. 
 Louisville, Kentucky : Southern Baptist 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 Madison, New Jersey : Drew Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 Madison, Wisconsin : University of Wis- 
 consin. 
 
 Meadville, Pennsylvania : Meadville Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 Middletown. Connecticut : Wesleyan Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 MinneapoHs, Minnesota: University of 
 
 Minnesota. 
 Mount Vernon, Iowa : Cornell College. 
 
 Nashville, Tennessee : Vanderbilt Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers Col- 
 lege. 
 
 New Bnmswick, New Jersey: Theological 
 Seminary of the Reformed Church of 
 America. 
 
 New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University. 
 New Orleans, Louisiana : Tulane University. 
 New York : American Bible Society- 
 New York : Columbia University. 
 New York : Library of the Grolier Club. 
 
 New York : J . Pierpont Morgan Library. 
 
 New York : New York Public Library. 
 
 New York : New York University. 
 
 New York : Union Theological Seminary. 
 
 Newton Center, Massachusetts : Newton 
 Theological Institution. 
 
 Norman. Oklahoma : University of Okla- 
 homa. 
 
 Northampton, Massachusetts : Smith Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Notre Dame. Indiana : Notre Dame Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 Oberlin, Ohio : Oberlin College. 
 Olivet. Michigan : Olivet College. 
 Oxford, Ohio: Miami University. 
 
 Philadelphia. Pennsylvania : American 
 Philosophical Society. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Dropsie Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Lutheran The- 
 ological Seminary. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: Carnegie Library. 
 
 Poughkeepsie, New York : Vassar College. 
 
 Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 Providence, Rhode Island: Brown Univer- 
 sity. 
 
 Richmond, Indiana: Earlham College. 
 
 Rochester, New York : Rochester Theologi- 
 cal Seminary. 
 
 Rochester, New York : University of Roches- 
 ter. 
 
 Rock Island, Illinois: Augustana College. 
 
 St. Louis. Missouri : Concordia Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 St. Louis, Missouri : Washington University- 
 Salt Lake City. Utah : University of Utah. 
 Schenectady, New York : Union University. 
 Seattle, Washington : University of Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 South Bethlehem. Pennsylvania : Lehigh 
 University. 
 
 South Hadley, Massachusetts : Mount Hol- 
 
 yoke College. 
 Stanford University. California: Leland 
 
 Stanford Junior University. 
 Swarthmore. Pennsylvania: Swarthmore 
 
 College. 
 
 Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Topeka, Kansas : Washburn College. 
 Tufts College, Massachusetts : Tufts College. 
 
 Urbana. Illinois : University of Illinois. 
 
 Washington. D. C. : Catliolic University of 
 America. 
 
 Washington. D. C. : Library of Congress. 
 
 Washington, Pennsylvania: Washington & 
 Jefferson College. 
 
 Waterville, Maine : Colby College. 
 
 Wellesley, Massachusetts : Wellesley Col- 
 lege. 
 
 Williamstown, Massachusetts : Williams 
 College. 
 
 Argentine Republic 
 Buenos Ayres : Universidad Nacional 
 
 AU.STKIA-HlNGAKV 
 
 Budapest : University of Budapest. 
 Cracow : University of Cracow. 
 Innsbruck; University of Innsbruck. 
 Prague : University of Prague. 
 Vienna : University of Vienna. 
 
 Australia 
 Melbourne : University of Melbourne. 
 .Sydney: University of Sydney. 
 
 Belgium 
 Brussels : University of Brussels. 
 Liege : University of Liege. 
 
 Brazil 
 
 Rio de Janeiro : Bibliotheca Nacional. 
 
 Canada 
 Kingston : Queen's University. 
 Montreal : McGill University. 
 Toronto: Knox College. 
 Toronto : University of Toronto. 
 
 Chile 
 
 Santiago : University of Chile. 
 
 China 
 
 Peking : University of Peking. 
 
 Denmark 
 
 Copenhagen : University of Copenhagen. 
 Egypt 
 
 Cairo : Vice-Regal Library. 
 
 England 
 
 Birmingham : University of Birmingham. 
 Cambridge: Cambridge L^niversity. 
 
 Leeds : University of Leeds. 
 Liverpool: University of Liverpool. 
 London: British Museum. 
 Manchester: John Rylands Library. 
 Manchester : University of .Manchester. 
 O.xford : Bodleian Library. 
 
 Finland 
 
 Helsingfors : University of Helsingfors. 
 France 
 
 Bordeaux : University of Bordeaux. 
 Grenoble : University of Grenoble. 
 Lille : University of Lille. 
 Lyons : University of Lyons. 
 Montpellier : University of Montpellier. 
 Paris : Biblioth^que Nationale. 
 Paris : University of Paris. 
 Toulouse : University of Toulouse. 
 
 Germany 
 Berlin : Royal Library. 
 Bonn : University of Bonn. 
 Breslau : University of Breslau. 
 Erlangen: University of Erlangen. 
 Freiburg : University of Freiburg. 
 Giessen : University of Giessen. 
 Goettingen : L'niversity of Goettingen. 
 Greifswald : University of Greifswald. 
 Halle : University of Halle. 
 Heidelberg : University of Heidelberg. 
 Jena: University of Jena. 
 Kiel : University of Kiel. 
 Koenigsberg : University of Koenigsberj 
 Leipzig: University of Leipzig. 
 Marburg : University of Marburg. 
 Muenster: University of Muenster. 
 Munich : Royal Library. 
 Rostock : University of Rostock. 
 Strassburg : University of Strassburg. 
 Tuebingen : University of Tuebingen. 
 Wuerzburg : University <if Wuerzburg. 
 
 Greece 
 Athens : University of Athens. 
 
 Holland 
 Amsterdam : Vrije University. 
 Groningen : University of Groningen. 
 Leyden : University of Leyden. 
 Utrecht : University of Utrefht. 
 
 India 
 
 Calcutta : University of Calcutta. 
 Lahore : Punjab University. 
 
86 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Ireland 
 
 Dublin : National Library of Ireland. 
 Dublin : Trinity College. 
 
 Italy 
 
 Bologna: University of Bologna. 
 Naples : University of Naples. 
 Rome: American Academy in Rome (Li- 
 brary of the School of Classical Studies). 
 Rome : British School at Rome. 
 Rome : Vatican Library. 
 Turin: University of Turin. 
 
 Japan 
 
 Kyoto : Kyoto University. 
 Tokyo : University of Tokyo. 
 Tokyo : Waseda College. 
 
 Mexico 
 
 Mexico City: Biblioteca Nacional. 
 
 NORV^AY 
 
 Christiania : LIniversity of Christiania. 
 Peru 
 
 Lima : University of Lima. 
 
 Russia 
 
 Dorpat : Imperial University. 
 
 Moscow : Imperial University. 
 
 St. Petersburg: Imperial University. 
 
 Scotland 
 Aberdeen : Aberdeen University. 
 Edinburgh : Edinburgh University. 
 Glasgow : Glasgow University. 
 St. Andrews : University of St. Andrews. 
 
 Spain 
 
 Barcelona : University of Barcelona. 
 Madrid : University of Madrid. 
 
 Sweden 
 Lund : University of Lund. 
 Upsala : University of Upsala. 
 
 Switzerland 
 Basel : University of Basel. 
 Zurich : University of Zurich. 
 
 Syria 
 
 Beirut : American College. 
 
 Turkey 
 Constantinople : Robert College. 
 Wales 
 
 Aberystwyth : National Library of Wales. 
 Lampeter : St. David's College. 
 
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