The Gospels of Saint-Médard de Soissons

The Gospels of St Médard de Soissons were probably made for Charlemagne c.800 and attest to the excellence of the Palace school. The manuscript contains the text of the Vulgate with the prefaces, canons, summaries, and the capitulare evangeliorum, which follows the Roman rite that was used c.755. This text is written in golden minuscules and is unframed; in the rest of the book, the Gospels and their prologues were written in uncials in gold ink in two columns, and decorated with various frames.

The manuscript is also decorated with full-page paintings, like the portrait of the four Evangelists (Mathew, f. 17v; Mark, f. 81v; Luke, f. 123v; John, f. 180v) or the representation of the Fountain of Life (folio 6v) and the Adoration of the Lamb (folio 1v). Some of these illustrations do appear in earlier manuscripts, in particular the Evangelary of Charlemagne (dating from 781–783 and held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAL 1203), but here they are far superior.

Each Gospel recounts the life, death, and the resurrection of Christ, for whom one of the symbols is the Lamb of God. The latter is represented right at the top of the image that occupies the entire folio 1v of the Gospels of St Médard de Soissons, thereby introducing the manuscript’s main theme. The image is unframed but structured architecturally: four columns with varied colours and motifs, imitating marble, support an entablature where four medallions enclose the symbols of the Evangelists, each medallion being the extension of a column. The layout of the columns is reminiscent of the tables of canons. In the medallion above is the Lamb with halo, from which radiate rays of light that touch the symbols of the Evangelists and the two groups of twelve people who are adoring the Lamb, representing the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse, bearing golden bowls and musical instruments. The inscriptions, which are placed on the level of the entablature, are taken from verses 4–10 of chapter 4 of the Apocalypse according to St John, which St Jerome mentions in his prologue. The moulding that separates the medallions from the upper scene is adorned with many fish, some birds, human beings, and winged creatures, and everything is finely drawn and subtly painted in a grey-green camaieu.

The Byzantine influence can be clearly seen in this very special way of adorning the image’s architectural structure, as well as the sumptuous red curtain with its gilded folds, suspended between the two central columns, behind which it passes before being draped with great suppleness around the external columns. The folds are flowing and regular, in striking contrast to the rectilinear columns and the architecture painted in a blue-grey camaieu in the image’s background, which strongly resembles the theatre of Bosra (first half of the second century BC). The use of red as a contour for the faces and forms is also a Byzantine heritage.

These references to Byzantine art emphasize the importance placed by Charlemagne on the heritage of the Roman Empire, in both the political and artistic spheres: the Greek and Roman cultures were clearly favoured in the framework of what historians refer to as the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’, as distinct from the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.