Zoey M. Kambour
(City University of New York, Graduate Center)
Abstract of Paper
intended to be
presented at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2025)
Session on
“Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries”
Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Organized by
Mildred Budny and Vajra Regan
2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
” ‘The Speaking Mouth of Terrible Vastness:’
Visualizing the Fourth Beast of the Apocalypse
in Beatus Manuscripts”
Abstract
In the Beatus Apocalypse Commentary corpus, the actual texts that the commentary derives from are frequently not included. Therefore, a reader had to be well-versed in the biblical passages and other texts that the commentary drew from in order to fully grasp the commentaryʼs meaning. This means that when illustrating a commentary, the illuminator had the choice to depict what is in the original text or passage, or what is written in the commentary.
In the Beatus manuscripts, a brief quartet summarizes Daniel 7:2–10, in which Daniel sees visions of beasts of the apocalypse: a lioness with wings of an eagle, a bear, a leopard with four wings of a fowl, and a fourth beast. While the Daniel 7:7–8 goes into great detail about what this fourth beast looks like, the commentary text in the Facundus Beatus (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS Vitr. 14-2) only describes it as, “The speaking mouth of terrible vastness of the Roman Kingdom.” Other Beatus manuscripts have a similar brief description next to the image. The official translation of the commentary reads, “A terrible beast rose up having iron teeth, seven heads, and ten horns,” which combines both the text from Daniel and descriptions of the beast of the apocalypse from Revelation 12:3, 13:1, and 17:3. Yet the beast in the Beati do not exactly resemble the description from the official commentary.
One would expect that this provides some artistic freedom for the illuminator, but across the Beatus corpus, this beast looks relatively similar and translates the Daniel and Revelation texts into the image. Using the Facundus Beatus as a basis, this paper questions the iconographic origin of the fourth beast, why the beast looks similar across the corpus, and the interpretation of the Daniel and Revelation texts to the Commentary.
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitrina 14-2, fol. 287r. Facundus Beatus. Image via Biblioteca Digital Hispánica via https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051522.
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