Artwork

Course outline · Artwork gallery

This image also appears in week 9, the century in which it was made. The prologue uses it because it shows the course’s focus in one picture.

• Title: Christ in Majesty with the Symbols of the Four Evangelists (folio 2 verso, Gospels of Lothair)
• Artist: Unknown illuminator of the scriptorium of St Martin’s abbey, Tours
• Date made: about 849–851, in the ninth century
• Medium: Painted miniature with gold on parchment
• Current location: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Latin 266
• Source page
• License: Public Domain Mark 1.0

What you see

Christ sits on a green globe inside an almond-shaped frame. His right hand is raised in blessing, and his left hand holds a book. In the four corners are winged creatures that stand for the four Gospels. The Latin verse on the page says that four books flow from one fountain. The fountain is Christ, and the four books are the Gospels.

Why it opens the course

Christ is at the center, and the witnesses who tell of him stand around him. The course reads every century the same way. The saints are the witnesses, and Christ is the one they point to. The same Gospels give Baptism its promise in Matthew 28 and the Lord’s Supper its words of institution.

For the full description and the artist’s setting, see the week 9 artwork page.