Corpus Apocalypse

Corpus Apocalypse

The last book of the New Testament, namely the Book of Revelation, was generally referred to as the Apocalypse. The revelation contains visions of the Day of Judgement, the end of the world, and finally the dawn of God’s Kingdom. This very vivid and symbolic biblical text had a strong influence over the whole of occidental culture. The Corpus Apocalypse is the richest in imagery and one of the most artistically valuable copies of this text. It originates between 1340 and 1350 and contains the 5th-century apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul in addition to the Book of Revelation, as well as a transcript of the English coronation rules. In total, the 144 pages of text are illustrated with 121 extensive miniatures on a gold and silver background, with 280 blue initials in fire read intertwined tendrils and 59 high-quality gold initials.

Commissioned by a Venerable Family

The magnificent manuscript originates from the commission of the Cobham family. The Lords of Cobham were great landholders in southeastern England and high officials of the English court. Lord Henry Cobham, chief justice of the treasury at Westminster, had taken part in the coronation of Edward II in 1308. His son John, who most likely commissioned the codex, was likewise an attendant at a coronation, namely that of King Edward III in 1327. The coronation rules in the codex were a very personal remembering of the esteem and dignity that the family experienced with the participants of this ceremonial act. The masters who created this work are not known by name. Nevertheless they shirked no cost or labor in the furnishing of this valuable jewel.

An Eventful History

After the death of its commissioner, the Corpus Apocalypse entered into the possession of the English noblewoman Juliana de Leybourn. After her death in 1337 she bequeathed the manuscript to Benedictine Abbey of St. Augustine in Canterbury, which was dissolved in the early years of the Reformation. The book collector Mathew Parker succeeded in saving hundreds of codices from the abbey, including the Apocalyptic text. Parker, who served as the director of the Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, was named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559 by Elizabeth I and therewith head of the Church of England. He bequeathed to his erstwhile college an enormous collection of manuscripts, among which was the Apocalypse. To this day the codex is in Cambridge and is one of the oldest and costliest works of the Parker Library.

Uniquely Rich Illustrations

There is no other manuscript of the Book of Revelation that exhibits a similar wealth of miniatures. One or possibly two gifted masters appointed the work with magnificent, artistic, and inconceivably elaborate pictures. The miniatures are painted in luminous colors on a shimmering gold background, which are designed with the help of the finest tools. There are numerous silver elements to be rediscovered in the miniatures. For the first time, the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul is visually represented with an impressive pictorial cycle. The text pertaining to the coronation rules are heralded with whole page, festive miniatures.

An Unusual Text Combination

The Corpus Apocalypse consists of three bodies of text: the canonical Book of Revelation, accompanied by a rhymed version and a commentary, followed by the apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul, also known as Visio Sancti Pauli, and the English Coronation Ordo of 1308. It was common for medieval codices to combine several such diverse texts into a single volume—whether bound together as a single book after their original composition or gradually inserted into a codex. The Corpus Apocalypse, however, was written in a single session. The text of the work is largely Anglo-Norman, the language of the English authorities at the time, which had been brought from France. In this way, it was guaranteed that the commissioner could read and understand his work in a language familiar to him. The biblical Apocalypse of John, however, is also included in its “official” Latin version.