Domhnall

The Douce Apocalypse was an illustrated manuscript produced in 1270 for the future Edward I and his wife Eleanor of Castile, and fifty of its illustrations are reproduced with commentary in this attractive book. The original was never fully completed, apparently because when Edward (with Eleanor) set off on crusade the artists were no longer paid, and this has the benefit of showing incomplete work in progress, to give an impression of the steps by which such books were produced at the time.

It seems there was a fashion in this period for copies of the Book of Revelations and a demand for illustrations and guides because of its obscurity. Guides like the Douce Apocalypse combined selections from the Book of Revelations with selections from contemporary commentators. St Jerome suggested that every word had many meanings. The alternative view, that a text with that many meanings has no meaning whatever, is far too prosaic.

Christians from the time of st Paul have of course regarded the end of the world and the Final Judgement as something that would happen very soon - perhaps imminently. Revelations was written in response to Nero's oppression of Rome's Christians and surely expressed the distress and rage of its author arising from those dire events. Some 1200 years later, people of early middle age Europe had a strong impression that theirs was the moment in which its prophecies would come to fruition. Another 800 years further on, the prophecies remain in favour in many corners of our linked up e-world and not only are they due to be fulfilled shortly but also we have good people working hard to bring that about.

Whatever we make of all that, these illustrations are a wonder to browse through and what could be more colurful and lively a subject than the apocalypse itself, written as it was so long before Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker put pen to paper? As Coleridge observed, it is not a matter of believing so much as suspending disbelief to obtain full enjoyment.