The Bernward Gospels. Jennifer P. Kingsley

beloved apostle, resting his head against Christ’s breast (fol. 185v–186r; fig. 16). Byzantine manuscripts that have also been proposed as possible models for the Bernward Gospels follow a related pattern. Greek codices that include a painting of Mark accompanied by Peter usually substitute it for Mark’s portrait and do the same thing with the picture of Luke with his teacher, Paul.⁶ In those instances Matthew and John generally appear alone, each portrayed as an author. The Bernward Gospels varies from each of these Carolingian and Byzantine strategies. Why?

      One possibility is that the shift in the codex’s decorative scheme discussed in the introduction occurred as a series of progressive modifications in the program. An alternative is that the differences among the gospels’ illustrations are the result of amalgamating independent models. Indeed, the biographical scenes depend heavily on the Prague gospels, while the Ascension that is paired with the portrait of John draws on Anglo-Saxon iconography.⁷ Neither of these explanations is entirely satisfactory, however, especially because each portrait combines a limited set of varying details—the background, portrait type, and composition—in ways that, in effect, link the paintings each to the others. For example, the portrait of Mark echoes some characteristics of Matthew’s portrait, and other aspects of Luke’s and John’s. It is worth noting that a fundamental tenet of the medieval understanding of the New Testament is the harmony of the gospels, a principle that more or less explicitly informs the decoration of most gospel books from the period.⁸ While not a main focus of the pictorial program in the Bernward Gospels, the alternating details of the miniatures do allow for this harmony while developing different themes in the portraits of Matthew and Mark versus those of Luke and John.

      Of the evidence that these two sets of portraits (one paired with images of Christ, the other not) should be treated independently, the most important to consider is the inclusion in the manuscript of additional pictures of Christ that share the same iconic pictorial mode. These will be the subject of the next chapter. At the same time, the codex physically connects the paintings of the Crucifixion and Ascension, respectively, to the portraits of Luke and John just as the placement and content of the biographical episodes link the pictures of the Calling of Matthew to the portrait of Matthew, and the depiction of Peter charging Mark to write the gospels to the portrait of Mark. It is therefore important to consider how these two types of pictures might relate to each other.

      Since the studies of George Galavaris and Robert Nelson on the relationship between textual prefaces and the illustrations of Byzantine gospel books, representations of Mark with the apostle Peter have been connected to a particular evangelist portrait type in which an accompanying figure is introduced. Galavaris and Nelson have argued that this genre derived from the gospels’ prefatory commentary and served generally as a motif of witness, authority, or inspiration.⁹ Rainer Kahsnitz has made similar arguments about the Calling of Matthew in Byzantine and Western art.¹⁰ Kahsnitz’s conclusions point to the possibility that both biographical episodes in the Bernward Gospels function as authentication or inspiration motifs. However, as Kahsnitz also recognizes, outside of the Bernward Gospels and one manuscript from Corvey (a center closely connected to Hildesheim), there are no Ottonian paintings of Mark with Peter (or Luke with Paul, for that matter), and the programmatic linking of the Calling of Matthew to the “accompanied evangelist” picture is found only in the Prague Gospels and the Bernward Gospels. Kahsnitz’s argument also depends on interpreting the depictions of all four evangelists in the Prague Gospels, including the connections the manuscript draws between John’s portrait and John’s image at the Last Supper, which is not a feature of the Bernward Gospels.

      Except for the Bernward Gospels, the rare Ottonian examples of the Calling of Matthew appear without any connection to an evangelist’s portrait. In Archbishop Egbert of Trier’s tenth-century lectionary, the scene, together with a depiction of Christ dining at the house of Levi, illustrates the pericope for the sixth week after Epiphany (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, cod. 24, fols. 28v–29r). The placement of both miniatures in the manuscript follows the liturgical calendar. The evangelist portraits, in contrast, appear together at the beginning of Egbert’s lectionary (fols. 3v–6r).¹¹ In a later manuscript that may have been influenced by Egbert’s manuscripts, the Codex Aureus from Echternach (ca. 1030), the same scenes do directly precede Matthew’s portrait (Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MS 156142, fols. 19r–20v). However, they form part of a larger group of seventeen narrative miniatures laid out on two bifolia.¹² A final parallel may be the now-lost frescoes that once decorated the Cathedral of Mainz.¹³ According to extant verses that may have served as tituli for Mainz’s pictorial cycle, a scene involving a tax collector appeared among a series of healing miracles, a placement that logically derives from the order of events narrated in the gospel.¹⁴ There are no Ottonian examples to compare to the painting of Mark with Peter in the Bernward Gospels.

      The evidence suggests that although not unknown in the West, these biographical episodes featuring the evangelists were far from popular. The only scene for which other Ottonian examples exist, the Calling of Matthew, did not bear the specificity of associations for Ottonian patrons and viewers that it held for Byzantine ones or for the Carolingians who commissioned the Prague Gospels. Moreover, the representation of the Calling of Matthew in the Bernward Gospels differs from the other depictions cited thus far in two main ways (fol. 18v; plate 5 and fig. 11). The first is that the Bernward Gospels portrays Matthew with a halo even in the narrative scenes. The second is that it offers a more dramatic presentation of both this and the gospel story depicted below (Christ dining in the house of Levi) than other Ottonian or Carolingian and Byzantine examples. In the painting of Christ calling Matthew to his service, Christ faces Matthew directly, but at a certain distance. Traces of the outline of a figure appear between Matthew and Christ, partly overlapped by Christ’s right hand. These remains suggest that the painting’s design was changed to show Matthew seated and to create more distance between Matthew and Christ. Indeed, in the Carolingian model for this scene, Matthew walks behind Christ, already following him (Prague, Kapitulni Knihovna, Cim. 2, fols. 23v–24r; fig. 15). In contrast, the Bernward Gospels composition places the energy of Christ’s command at the center of the painting. The focal point of the scene becomes the empty space between Christ and Matthew, which is charged with the force of Christ’s call. Behind Jesus, two disciples turn their bodies and gaze toward each other, absorbed not by the event before them but by their own conversation.

      The miniature below depicts Christ dining at the house of Levi (fol. 18v; plate 5 and fig. 11). The scene centers on the moment when the Pharisees express reservations about Christ’s decision to keep company with publicans, tax collectors, and other sinners (Matthew 9:10–14; Mark 2:15–18; Luke 5:29–33). The men who stand for the Pharisees appear in the same place as Christ’s two disciples in the miniature above; this helps link the two groups and underscores that both doubted Christ. Although the two paintings show consecutive episodes in the gospels, the scene of Christ dining at the House of Levi is not necessary for narrating Matthew’s entry into Christ’s ministry. Together, however, they emphasize