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  • Vulgate Bible Page: Gospel of John and Prologues to the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Romans

  • ca. 1247
  • Workshop of Johannes Grusch (French)
  • Ink, gouache and gold leaf on vellum
  • 29.1 x 19.2 cm., 11-1/2 x 7-5/8" sheet
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase in Memory of Professor James Breckenridge, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2006.40.a and b

Essay by David Arbesu, Former Assistant Professor of Spanish

The illuminated manuscript of the Vulgate Bible, written on vellum, is in gothic script. The stunning illuminations of the initials R and P have been attributed to the workshop of Johannes Grusch (France, ca. 1247). The presence of gold and the color blue-which was very expensive, as it could only be obtained from the mineral lapis lazuli, found in Asia-indicate that vast quantities of money were put into making this manuscript. The folio on display (recto, f. 4) is written in two columns, each with forty-eight lines of text. The first column contains the end of the Gospel of John—chapter 21—which ends in the first line of the second column. The text that follows is Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, as indicated by the rubric Incipit epistola ad romanos (here begins the letter to the Romans). What is interesting is that in the standard Vulgate Bible, the Acts of the Apostles is included between these two books, while in this version it has been omitted, or moved somewhere else. More interesting, however, is the Prologue to the epistle, also indicated by a rubric—Incipit prologus in epistola ad romanus. In addition to the Biblical text, the Vulgate Bible contains seventeen prologues, sixteen of which were written by Saint Jerome, and one of them is, indeed, a general prologue to the Pauline epistles. However, the short prologue included here is one of the so-called "Marcionite prologues," which were composed by Marcion of Sinope, one of the most prominent heretics in early Christianity. The original Greek text of these prologues has been lost, but as this folio attests, Latin translations survive in most Vulgate manuscripts (their heretical source having been forgotten):

Romani sunt in partes ytalie. hii preuenti sunt a falsis apostolis. et sub nomine domini nostri ihesu xpisti in legem et prophetas erant inducti. hos reuocat apostolus ad ueram et euangelicam fidem scriuens eis a corintho. [The Romans are in the regions of Italy. They were reached by false apostles, and under the name of our Lord Jesus Christ they were led away into the law and the prophets. The apostle calls them back to the true and evangelical faith, writing to them from Corinth.]