And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
- And did those feet, William Blake

tirsdag 25. februar 2020

Minor pleasures - an initial from a twelfth-century manuscript




This week is an incredibly busy week, and my mind is compartmentalising my sundry tasks to such an extent that I pretty much have a tunnel vision. This leaves very little energy for other tasks, so as a way to unwind it's pleasant to idly ruminate on some of the minor treasures I have accumulated in my files throughout an as-yet continuing academic career.

One such treasure is the initial below, belonging to Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi by the second-century Roman historian Justinus. An epitome in this sense is a summary, or a shortened version of a longer work, a kind of digest that extracted the elements of key importance and adapted it according to the new author. I encountered this initial by chance and was mesmerised by it. To me, the O appeared as a miniature model of the universe, the earth placed in the middle per the geocentric cosmological view. I have since been reliably informed by a friend and colleague who is an art historian that this is not the case, but the initial remains a wonder of medieval quillwork.   


Justinus, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi
(courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr.)







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