Why & How > Reflections > Christopher de Hamel
 

Christopher de Hamel

Director of Western Medieval and Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures
Sotheby's, London

I am passionately excited by the idea that Saint John’s has commissioned a vast manuscript Bible. The earliest surviving example of a monumental Bible in western Europe was made by the Benedictines of Wearmouth and Jarrow in Northumberland at the start of the eighth century. They wrote it in three copies, no less, and they sent one to Italy as a present for the Pope in 716.

One of the last such enormous manuscript Bibles was commissioned by the Benedictines of San Vito in Pisa in October 1168. The cost of making it was met by a fund-raising campaign organized by the priest Gerardus. He recorded the names of over sixty people who contributed to the vast expenses of purchasing enough parchment and of employing a scribe and several illuminators for the huge project. Local people contributed sums ranging from three pence, given by Ebriacus (who may have been Jewish), to 25 shillings given by Burnettus the carpenter and 32 shillings given by Mannus, son of Ciufettus, in memory of his mother Qualdrada. Most of the donors were laity, including a baker and two fishermen. The scribe whom the monks commissioned to write their Bible was a professional, Alberto of Volterra, brought in from abroad... The manuscript itself was completed, paid for, and it still survives.

It is to me utterly captivating that the Benedictines are once again commissioning another monumental manuscript Bible, almost exactly the same, over 800 years later. Furthermore, Saint John’s is famous to medievalists for its Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, which keeps record of ancient texts by the most advanced computer technology in the world. It is infinitely pleasing that in a single scriptorium, as it were, the community of Saint John’s simultaneously employs the newest technology to serve medieval students and, in parallel, turns to the most ancient of crafts to furnish the Bible itself.

The Bible, of course, is not only at the very core of Benedictine life but is also the most important text for study of the Middle Ages. We will all learn a great deal as Donald Jackson works on the Bible, page by page.

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