General description of the manuscripts

Manuscript dated to the beginning of the 10th century that includes two very distinct parts. The first is a copy of the Apocalypse of Valenciennes in which all the miniatures are imitated although with a different style and in this case they are not full-page but are interspersed without borders in the texts. The second part is made up of ten illuminated animal fables, written by Avianus in the fourth century, of which another 32 have been lost. Its origin is some monastery in the North of France but with a treatment of the images very different from the rest of codices of that time in the area.

Dated around the year 900, by its size we can assume that it was dedicated for public use in some church of Cambrai, from which it must have passed to the cathedral library and from this to its current situation.

It is one of the oldest European Apocalypses and at the same time one of the most beautiful and best preserved of its time. With 46 full-page miniature texts framed on the page opposite the corresponding image, it contains complex scenes, of great color, which has maintained its luminosity for more than 1,100 years.

Manuscript commissioned by Philip the Fair, King of France, for his daughter Elizabeth, Queen of England. It was completed in 1313 by the miniaturist Colín Chadelves. With its 162 large, high-quality miniatures, most of them full-page, which form one of the longest picture cycles of the Apocalypse, to which is added a very complete text translated into French from an earlier Latin, to which are added 78 folios of commentaries also in French, which do not include images, is one of the most interesting illuminated manuscripts of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

Of English origin, dated around 1250, he is one of the oldest representatives of the Gothic version of the Illustrated Apocalypse. In its preparation different models were used for the text and for the 90 images of half page, framed, which includes. In addition to the biblical text, it includes in the first and last pages the life of Saint John. It is considered one of the 58 Apocalypses of which are considered as the result of the commission of a particular individual.

This is the oldest surviving version. Created between the years 800 and 820, in the middle of the Carolingian period, possibly in a monastery located in the west of the Carolingian Empire, in the vicinity of the Abbey of Saint-Martin de Tours. With a usual structure in the Carolingian minature, with the text on the full page in front of the image on the opposite page. While the text seems to come from an Ialian Vlgate, the cycle of images possibly comes from Late Antiquity.

It is the first of the group of four copies of the Apocalypse of Saint John produced in Normandy throughout the 14th century, which in this case also includes Berengaudo’s commentary and is the only case in which the Latin version is added to another in French. Of the four it is the one that best preserves the aesthetics of the Romanesque in miniatures of great quality, with a refined technique and a perfect combination of colors, all of half-page framed.

To our French friend Jean-Luc Monneret who has sent us his work on this manuscript. which we recommend, from which we have obtained all the images in our file.

Manuscript created in the Netherlands around 1400, within the tradition of the English Apocalypses of the thirteenth century, which includes in addition to the Apocalypse images of the life of St.John, It consists of 47 folios of parchment with 90 half-page miniatures and another four full-page, colourful and decorated with gold, located in the verse of the folios, while the text, which only always occupies the verse up to folio 22, leaving the others blank

After his name, not at all usual in Spain of those times, Apringio seems to be of oriental origin. He became bishop of Beja in the middle of the 6th century and has left a vast literary production, from which his Comments on the Apocalypsis stand out, mainly because it was one of the three books on this subject that the Blessed of Liébana recognizes to have utilized it in making his version, that became the most copied illustrated book in Spain throughout all the Middle Ages.