The emphasis on the Baptist’s typological relationship to Christ developed alongside the growth of his cult in the fourth century. Augustine is the first witness to a feast commemorating the birth of John the Baptist on 24 June. His significant remarks on the Baptist—in the dozen or so surviving sermons he preached on the Nativity of the Baptist, in three of his tracts commenting on the gospel of John the Evangelist, and in one of the De diversis quaestionibus—lay the basis for the medieval understanding of the Baptist. Augustine’s commentary is primarily concerned with analyzing the parallels between the Baptist and Christ, both of whose births the gospels presented as miraculous events announced by the angel Gabriel. John was born above hope, to a sterile woman, while Christ was born above nature, to a virgin. For Augustine, John the Baptist, the forerunner and herald of Christ, is the voice to Christ’s word and the lamp to Christ’s light. He is the boundary stone between the two testaments, the Old and the New.23
Following Augustine, early medieval exegetes continued to underscore the similarities between Christ and John the Baptist, but beginning with Bede, they particularly highlighted John’s priestly lineage. While Bede follows Augustine in describing the Baptist as the line between law and gospel, Bede adds to Augustine’s discussion that John came from a priestly lineage in order to proclaim a change in the priesthood. In a homily for the Vigil of the Nativity of John the Baptist, Bede deliberately narrates John’s bloodline through his father back to Abijah, the descendant of the high priest Aaron, who was the eighth priest David had selected to serve as chief to one of the twenty-four orders into which David divided the priesthood (1 Chronicles 24).24 Carolingian exegesis on the Continent, such as the sermons of Haimo of Auxerre and Hrabanus Maurus, continues in the same vein.25
The Bernward Gospels infancy cycle includes significant liturgical content that suggests an attempt to draw particular attention to the fact that John was born of priests. In the Annunciation to Zacharias, there is a special emphasis on ritual implements. Zacharias holds a censer, featured prominently as it crosses over the column that appears between Zacharias and the angel. The area between the chains that carry the censer is activated by squiggly lines on a blue band that contrasts with the predominantly pink tones of the painting; the implement thus stands out starkly from the page. On the far right appears a series of liturgical objects—a hanging lamp, bowl, and candelabra, whose strict alignment emphasizes the importance of these works to the painting’s meaning. Finally, as already described, the paintings of the Visitation and of John’s naming include allusions to canticles recited daily as part of the Divine Office. Although by no means a direct sign of John’s priesthood, it is worth noting that the references to these prayers are uncommon additions that add one more liturgical reference to the infancy cycle. Finally, in the last representation of the Baptist, which illustrates the gospel of John (fol. 174v above; plate 15 and fig. 20), the Baptist performs a paradigmatic priestly act, the sacrament of baptism.
The Bernward Gospels presents the Baptist not only as a type for Christ and the priesthood in general, but also as a surrogate for the manuscript’s episcopal patron, a point the codex makes explicit in certain unusual aspects of the iconography of the Baptist. The choice to vest John in the contemporary liturgical garb of a deacon in the scene that shows him preaching (fol. 75r above; plate 7 and fig. 17) relates to the emphasis that the dedication painting places on the fact that Bernward wears Mass vestments (fol. 16v; plate 2). Bernward is clothed in the alb, cope, stole, and dalmatic required by the liturgy. His garments are highlighted by an inscription in the lower frame that reads “Bernwardus ornatus tanti vestitu pontificali” (Bernward adorned with such great episcopal vestments). Like John’s father, Zacharias (fol. 111r above; plate 10 and fig. 18), Bernward stands before an altar set for the celebration of a ritual—the Eucharistic sacrament, with the chalice, paten, and portable altar. Bernward’s book helps move him into the space of the altar toward the saints. Similarly, Zacharias’s censer crosses into the innermost sanctuary of the Jewish temple toward the angel. Finally, Bernward’s two-handed grip on the gospel book during a moment that the dedicatory picture constructs as both gift-giving and sacramental performance imitates the Baptist’s unusual touch of Christ’s shoulder in the Baptism, which was for the Church the sacramental act through which Christians became part of the community of the saved (fol. 174v above; plate 15 and fig. 20).26
Baptismal rites played a significant role in developing John as a model more specific to the episcopate; they involved the priest’s authority of incorporation, an authority to which Western bishops sought to maintain a privileged relationship throughout the Middle Ages.27 The Baptism is John’s most celebrated act from the gospels and the earliest to be represented in art. Yet where the gospels use the event primarily to develop John’s identity as a witness to Christ’s divinity, the liturgy offered a way to understand John typologically in relation to the baptizing priest. Already in the fourth century, monuments used images of the Baptism to develop connections between the biblical narrative and contemporary baptismal rituals. In the baptisteries of Ravenna, for example, a mosaic rendering of the Baptism appears at the center of each dome directly above the baptismal font. This placement establishes a visual link between the Baptist above and the living bishop below.28 When Christian artists first started representing John the Baptist as an isolated figure in the sixth century, they continued to relate him to the episcopacy. The ivory cathedra made for Archbishop Maximian of Ravenna in the middle of that century may be the earliest direct comparison between the Baptist and a historical bishop, while the ivory book covers of the Carolingian Drogo Sacramentary (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 9428) use the Baptist to present Bishop Drogo, the patron and user of the manuscript, as part of the sacramental priesthood.29
In light of such liturgical and pictorial associations, it is not surprising to find that eighth- and ninth-century hagiographers often compared historical bishops to the Baptist when establishing claims for their subjects’ sanctity. Much of the point of the textual comparison’s focus in this early period is on the fact that the Baptist’s saintliness was indicated even before his birth. The early anonymous life of Saint Cuthbert, a bishop and monk from Northumbria, for example, explains how Cuthbert was like Samuel, David, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, all having been “a vulva matris sanctificati leguntur” (sanctified for the work of the Lord in their mothers’ wombs).30 Alcuin’s life of Archbishop Willibrord and Hincmar of Rheims’s biography of Bishop Remigius compare their episcopal subjects to the Baptist on the same grounds.31
Among these, Hincmar offers the most extensive presentation of his subject’s Baptist-like attributes, arguing two main points. First, Hincmar suggests—conventionally—that Remigius’s sanctity was indicated even before his birth.32 With his second point, however, he offers a fresh comparison for which the Baptist serves specifically as a model of pastoral action. Hincmar explains that Remigius converted the Franks to the light of the gospels, just as John had brought his people to Christ.33 The Baptist serves in these Carolingian texts to establish the hagiographic subject’s holiness as an intrinsic quality, one with which the saint is born, although the comparison might be extended to characterize a bishop’s engagement in the world as