The Ashburnham Pentateuch and Its Contexts

A chance encounter can change one’s scholarly trajectory. Jennifer Awes Freeman first met the Ashburnham Pentateuch on a microfilm provided to her by mistake. She found that every book tells something of its story if researchers know where and how to look. Details in the Ashburnham Pentateuch, a late six- or early seventh-century illustrated Italian, or Spanish, manuscript (now Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS NAL 2334), reveal a great deal about its possible moments of production and the intellectual cultures through which it was transmitted and altered. The history of the manuscript’s miniatures—especially the Creation miniature on the verso of folio 1 (the sustained focus of this study)—shows how the manuscript was used in the invention of the Carolingian Renaissance, where a historical object like the Pentateuch was modified the better to reflect a Carolingian neoimperial agenda.The Ashburnham Pentateuch and Its Contexts is divided up into five core chapters that center principally on the forms and functions of images of the Trinity from the late antique period to the ninth century. The most substantive discussion is chapter 3’s broad-ranging contextualization, “Carolingian Conceptions of the Trinity.” This is scaffolded by chapter 1’s brief provision of key background moments to the production of the Ashburnham Pentateuch from the fourth to the sixth centuries, a period of theological contestation and controversy, including the identification and rejection of Arianism and the consolidation of the Western Church’s perspectives on the Trinity in distinction from the Eastern Church’s. Chapter 2 examines images of the Trinity in Early Christian art to determine iconographic parallels and potential analogies for the manuscript’s depiction of God and the Son four times on folio 1v, and the Holy Spirit, the latter of whom is presented once, but then overpainted in the Pentateuch. The Holy Spirit may have been originally, and remarkably, represented as a winged man (35). Other manifestations of God (in full form, as a bust, and as a disembodied hand) illustrate God at moments when He speaks, and the evidence suggests that in their modification, it was only the depiction of the Trinity that concerned the Pentateuch’s Carolingian users. Freeman also evaluates the artistic depiction of the Trinity in late antique sarcophagi and mosaics, and notes how their anthropomorphic representation disappeared by the sixth century to be replaced by figural or single-creator images.In the large third chapter, Freeman categorizes depictions and discussions of the Trinity during the late eighth and ninth centuries to explore how the theological phenomenon was perceived by the adaptors of the Pentateuch. Well-known manuscripts, such as the Utrecht Psalter and the Moutier-Grandval Bible, are brought to bear on the argument; as are textual descriptions in the works of writers, including Felix of Urgel, Alcuin of York, Hincmar of Reims, and Hrabanus Maurus. At this point, Freeman is descriptive, listing images, authors, their commentaries and details about the nature of the Trinity—whether that nature might be physical or immaterial; or understanding the Trinity as three persons in unity, depicted in art and literature as a single individual (usually the Son) to emphasize “one-ness” (117). This ties in well with the motivation for the erasure of the originally triune Trinity in the Ashburnham Pentateuch.The final two chapters on “Carolingian Image Theory” (chapter 4) and “The Carolingian Reception of the Ashburnham Manuscript” (chapter 5) return to the brevity of the first two chapters. Of principal concern in chapter 4 is the connection that can be made between the manuscript and the “theology of the image” (118) in the Opus Caroli Regis contra Synodum, a work written by Theodulf of Orleans as a commission by Charlemagne in 790 to respond to the Second Nicaean Council in 787. In this work, examined in detail here, Theodulf privileges the efficacy of the word over the image, while not wholly derogating the utility of religious images—a stance Freeman regards as indicative of Charlemagne’s. Yet, the Opus Caroli Regis was not widely adopted; indeed, it was archived almost as soon as it was produced. While Freeman assesses the evidence for connecting Theodulf with the erasure in the Pentateuch, she concludes he was not responsible for it. The final chapter seeks to evaluate the Carolingian reception of the manuscript at Tours and elsewhere, and both the conclusion and coda provide information about the subsequent influence of the manuscript on art and the world of the book trade.The physical volume, Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts, is, as Boydell books tend to be, a decently produced volume and color plates make a positive difference to the reader’s experience. There are some issues here and there, though. It is difficult to say at whom this book is aimed: the register varies considerably through the course of the chapters, and it seems, perhaps, to have been put together in different stages. Some parts of the book are a little disorganized, suggesting rapid reworking of an already established narrative (p. 11, for example, or 14–17). This hinders the development of a clear argument: definitions of “text” and “image” include the comments that texts and images are distinctly different (14) but also that images are “treated as ‘texts’ to be read” in this study (17). Indeed, Freeman does not consistently help the reader; she explains the differences between text and image but doesn’t explain Pentateuch or anthropomorphic. There is a significant amount of repetition, sometimes of whole paragraphs as at pages 20–21 and 64–65 on Jeffrey Hamburger; at pages 12–13 and 151–52 on the modifications to the Pentateuch; and at pages 16–17 and 152–53 (on Camille). These suggest that the author and copyeditor lost track of successive corrections and rewrites in the book’s preparation. In terms of scholarship, Freeman goes along with previous interpretations of the Ashburnham Pentateuch’s dating and localization based on style but does not say why she adheres to particular opinions, deciding to accept a date in the second half of the sixth century, but without providing new or compelling evidence. Freeman might helpfully have engaged in a fuller analysis of previous scholarship on the manuscript’s production, even though her emphasis is on the ninth-century reception of the book and its continued use. The exemplary work, cited by Freeman, of Leslie Webber Jones on pricking in early medieval books, for example, is now in need of substantial reappraisal simply because so much more evidence is available for analysis, particularly digitally. It is also interesting to note that the Ashburnham Pentateuch passed through the hands of the nineteenth-century book thief, Guilelmo Libri, who rebound the book and erased an ex libris. Given his proclivity to tamper with the manuscripts he pilfered, his role in the Pentateuch’s history might have merited more space than the page or two he is given here.In sum, this is a promising study of an important manuscript, and its emphasis on reception history reminds scholars that medieval (and all) books are living objects with long and complex biographies. Further investigation of the manuscript’s readership and use through time are clearly merited and Freeman’s work demonstrates multiple potential avenues for such subsequent research

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