Abstract
This thesis examines the series of Apocalypse illustrations appearing in a thirteenth-century copy of the Liber Floridus, MS lat. 8865 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The Liber Floridus is an illustrated encyclopedia completed in 1120 by Lambert, a canon of the church of Nôtre Dame in Saint-Omer in northern France. The autograph manuscript of the Liber Floridus has survived to the present day (Ghent, University Library MS 92), along with nine copies. Lambert’s encyclopedia is a compilation of excerpts from a range of Classical and medieval writers, and a number of the texts in the Liber Floridus are or were accompanied by figural illustrations. The Ghent autograph once contained a series of full-page miniatures depicting scenes from the Apocalypse of Saint John. Though fragments are present in several of the copies, this Apocalypse cycle is now missing from the autograph manuscript. MS lat. 8865 is the only copy to have retained a complete series of Apocalypse illustrations. This thesis argues that its iconography is an accurate reflection of the lost cycle in the autograph manuscript.
Because of the survival of the autograph manuscript, the Liber Floridus has generated a substantial amount of scholarly interest. As a result, the series of Apocalypse images, which is no longer present in the autograph, has gone largely unnoticed. By examining the relationship between the Apocalypse cycle and the other textual and figural elements of MS lat. 8865, I demonstrate that the cosmological and eschatological elements of the Liber Floridus are visually and thematically related, and were so in the autograph. In his choice of texts and illustrations, Lambert tries to structure the universe and situate himself in history and time – in relation to past events and to events of the apocalyptic future. In Lambert’s original, the use of similar pictorial arrangements in the Apocalypse cycle and in the rest of the Liber Floridus encyclopedia, particularly the didactic cosmological diagrams, strengthens the thematic connection between these schema and the Apocalypse illustrations. The specific selection of texts and the arrangement of the components in MS lat. 8865 reveal a significant concern with the end times and with systematizing knowledge.
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