Appendix 2: The Ezra Miniature
APPENDIX 2
THE EZRA MINIATURE
Renowned for being the oldest extant complete Vulgate Bible, the Codex Amiatinus is also famed for its opening quire of decorative pages. One of these (fol. Vr) joined Bede's commentary in fostering
Ezra's acclaim in eighth-century Northumbria. It contains a painted miniature of a scribe in the guise of a Jewish priest; seated in front of a cupboard containing nine volumes, he writes in a book on his lap, the floor around him strewn about with the tools of his scribal trade.
At the top of the page a couplet identifies the figure as Ezra restoring holy scripture: Codicibus sacris hostili clade perustis / Esdra Deo fervens hoc reparavit opus ('After the sacred books were destroyed by enemy devastation, / Ezra, in his zeal for God, restored this work').1
Although crafted at Wearmouth–Jarrow sometime before 716 quite probably under the direction of Bede himself, this famous miniature has long been discussed primarily with reference to Cassiodorus and the intellectual and artistic programme of sixth-century Vivarium, as much scholarship has sought to locate its exemplar there.2 No attempt can be made in this short appendix to take stock of this or other aspects of the miniature's critical history, nor will space be devoted to the problems surrounding other parts of Amiatinus's opening quire.3 In keeping with the aim of the present volume, our focus must remain
Bede's commentary, which, surprisingly, many commentators on the miniature have ignored. Accordingly, what follows will address a few pertinent connections that obtain between them.
First, Bede's words hostili clade perustae ('destroyed by enemy 1 See the front cover of this volume. For a good colour reproduction, see Marsden
1995b.
2 On the miniature's connection to Cassiodorus and the Codex Grandior, see BruceMitford 1967; Merten 1987; Meyvaert 1996; Henderson 1993 and 1999: 77–87; Marsden
1995a: 120–21 and 1995b; O'Reilly 2001; and Vessey 2003: 67–71 and 2004: 7–12. For other views, see Nordhagen 1977; Corsano 1987; Nees 1999; and Chazelle 2003.
3 For a range of opinion on the first quire, see Bruce-Mitford 1967; Corsano 1987;
Meyvaert 1996; and Chazelle 2003.
BEDE: ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH
devastation') in Book 2 echo a portion of the couplet above the miniature.1 Because the full couplet appears word for word in a poem by Alcuin (Carmina 69), it was once thought to be authored by him and added to the miniature later. However, in an article published in 1995,
Paul Meyvaert suggested that the appearance of this quotation in Book 2 of Bede's commentary, along with comparable echoes of the wording elsewhere in his oeuvre, constitutes sufficient evidence for Bedan authorship of the couplet.2 Whether Bede composed it specifically for inclusion in the miniature or adapted it from something else he had composed, and what we might infer from the verbal overlap about the miniature's chronological relation to the commentary, are less easy to resolve. Meyvaert, in a more recent discussion, has claimed further that the overlap in fact indicates that the commentary was written early, between the years 711–715 when Amiatinus was being prepared, and that Bede's remarks in Book 2 served as the source from which the couplet, added to the miniature just before Amiatinus left from Rome, was crafted.3 But the attractiveness of such a scenario does not make it true. We saw that there is credible evidence for dating the commentary much later than circa 715.4 Moreover, as proof for dating the commentary, such meagre verbal overlap is in my view far from a conclusive piece of evidence. Whether Bede borrowed the couplet from some unidentified exemplar or composed it himself, there is nothing to compel the conclusion that he made use of it only during the years 711–715; presumably he could have retrieved or recalled and redeployed it at any time during the remaining nineteen years before his death in 735. And even if while he did work on both the image and the commentary early in his career, there is no reason that his early work on Ezra and Amiatinus could not have led him to think about Ezra over a period of years, with the commentary in its complete three-book format emerging later on as the matured fruit of that reflection and forming part of a larger exegetical project that included On the Tabernacle and On the Temple.
Moving from chronological to thematic associations puts us on a more solid ground for connecting the two productions. For example,
1 See In Ezr. 2.774–75 and the accompanying note.
2 See Meyvaert 1996: 877; also Marsden 1995a: 121–22. On Bede's involvement with Amiatinus, see Marsden 1998 3 See Meyvaert 2005: 1098–99. On other arguments for an early date, see
Introduction, pp. xxxviii–xli.
4 See Introduction, pp. xxxix–xlii.
APPENDIX 2
the emphasis on the dual roles of priest and scribe, plainly visualized in the miniature, is also at the centre of Bede's exegetical treatment of Ezra; there is no need for Vivarium to make sense of them.1
Wearmouth–Jarrow possessed one of the greatest scriptorium in the early medieval West; what better emblem was there of scribal zeal and scriptural learning for its biblical scholars to identify with than Ezra scriba velox ('the swift scribe') who, Bede informs us, single-handedly rewrote the whole run of the Scriptures destroyed in the Chaldean sack of Jerusalem.2 In thematizing this detail, drawn not from Ezra–
Nehemiah but from non-canonical and exegetical sources,3 both commentary and miniature converge in characterizing Ezra as an adept textual scholar, the latter picturing something of what the former explains: that in restoring the canon, Ezra the scribe had added material to some texts, chose not to re-edit others, and even devised his own special script to speed along the re-writing process.4 For the Northumbrian scholars who crafted the Codex Amiatinus and the other pandects, and not least for Bede himself, Ezra's editorial activities thus provided, in Jennifer O'Reilly's words, 'a practical context'5 for their own scholarly endeavours.
Yet, while the Wearmouth–Jarrow scribes, as fellows in the trade, could no doubt appreciate such textual activities in and of themselves,
Bede's commentary, by connecting Ezra's scribal endeavours with the spiritual reform of his people,6 suggests that the figure depicted in the miniature may have been designed to represent much more, a symbol of this Northumbrian community's charge to preach and teach God's Word to the people. Indeed, Wearmouth–Jarrow's corporate concern not only with the preservation and transmission of Scripture, but equally with its propagation to wider audiences, evident in Bede's own exegetical undertakings, can be profitably understood as a latter-day extension, if not the purposeful re-enactment of, Ezra's own edifying scribal mission.7
1 Indeed, to my knowledge we lack any evidence to suggest that Cassiodorus considered Ezra an important figure.
2 See In Ezr. 2.791–821.
3 See In Ezr. 2.791–821 and the accompanying notes.
4 See In Ezr. 2.796–821.
5 O'Reilly 2001: 28; on Bede's involvement in Amiatinus's production, see Marsden
1998 and Meyvaert 1995.
6 See In Ezr. 2.772–78 and the accompanying note; also Introduction, pp. xxxi–xxxvi.
7 On Bede as a 'Northumbrian Ezra', see Introduction, p. xxxv and DeGregorio 2004:
16–18.
BEDE: ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH
Surely these contemporary ramifications found in Bede's treatment of Ezra's scribal vocation would not have been far from the minds of the Northumbrian artists who crafted the miniature. Placed prominently in Amiatinus's opening quire, Ezra the scribe thus does not simply prefigure Christ the Heavenly Scribe, whose image appears in Amiatinus before the New Testament; he also registers Bede's and Wearmouth–Jarrow's own sense of its Ezra-like charge to spread the Word through texts and teaching.
Concerning the role of priest, much debate has surrounded the priestly dress worn by the figure in the miniature. The standard view is that his jewelled breast-plate and the head-dress are meant to identify him as a pontifex or high priest. Paul Meyvaert has argued that this high-priestly component of the image is attributable to Bede and the Wearmouth–Jarrow artists, who, unaware that the portrait in their exemplar represented Cassiodorus, concluded that it must be Ezra and decided to clarify this by vesting him with high-priestly insignia. As support for this hypothesis, Meyvaert cites Bede's reference to Ezra as pontifex in his Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings as proof that Bede earlier on erroneously believed Ezra was really a high priest, a view Meyvaert believes Bede later corrected when he came to write on Ezra–Nehemiah.1
While the priestly outfit may be attributable to Bede, one may question whether it was meant to represent Ezra as an actual high priest or that Bede was muddled in calling Ezra a pontifex. In the first place, that the figure in the miniature is not literally intended to represent a high priest is evident insofar as he wears only two of the eight vestments specified in Exodus 28:4, namely the breast-plate and head-dress.2 But if these two insignia were not intended to indicate
Ezra's high-priesthood, what else could they mean? Here, Bede's commentary and other exegetical writings are invaluable, for they direct our attention not to the literal meaning of these garments, but to their spiritual interpretation. Hence, in the commentary, Bede states that the head-dress signifies 'the dignity of the priesthood',3 while in his more extended meditation on the priestly vestments in De tabernaculo he points out that the reason a priest must wear a head1 Meyvaert 1996: 870–77 and 1997: 285.
2 See O'Reilly 2001: 20.
3 In Ezr. 3.1886–89.
APPENDIX 2
dress is '…so that he may be admonished by this garment to consecrate all the senses of his head to God, lest his eyes should look to vanity'.1 In that same work, he identifies the breast-plate with 'the priest's heart and thoughts',2 and equates the garments protecting the chest with the priest's constant need to 'discern good from evil with careful examination'.3 And the breast-plate is studded with gems, he says, so that for all people the priest will always 'exhibit both confession of true faith and the examples of good action, so that by imitating his right faith and action they may themselves also merit to be made members of the High Priest'.4
For Bede, then, these high-priestly insignia may be said to denote religious leadership. In the miniature, they accordingly serve to underscore Ezra's role as pontifex, not in the sense of a real high priest, but rather in Bede's notable reformist definition of the word: pontifex, id est archiepiscopus ('a pontifex, i.e. an archbishop'). That is to say, the miniature with its priestly and scribal ornaments is a pictorial allegory: it reveals Ezra as a special hieratic figure to be sure, yet in terms meant not to characterize him historically, but rather to translate his relevance into the contemporary moment as a symbol of religious authority.5 The Ezra of the miniature, like the Ezra of Bede's commentary, is at once scribe and teacher and pontifical leader: miniature and commentary are thus of a piece in their depictions of this Old
Testament figure. Thus, even if we do have something in the miniature that goes back ultimately to Cassiodorus and Vivarium, reading it in the light of Bede's commentary shows still more that we have something traceable to the intellectual and spiritual values of Wearmouth–Jarrow itself, whose artists, scribes and house author joined together in forging and promoting an image of Ezra as a culturally and ideologically relevant figure.
1 De tab. 3 (117.932–35); trans. Holder 135.
2 De tab. 3 (102.383–86); trans. Holder 118.
3 De tab. 3 (102.391–103.395); trans. Holder 118.
4 De tab. 3 (104.456–60); trans. Holder 120.
5 For more on this interpretation, Introduction, pp. xxxiii–xxxv and DeGregorio 2004: 18–20.