6.2. Seeing Scripture
Beatus personifies a typical medieval tendency according to which the imagination—even the theological imagination—is eminently visual. It is no accident that Beatus’s text produced so many illuminated illustrations. The illuminators illustrated his text a posteriori, but Beatus was already writing a text to be illustrated, because the sacred text he had in front of him seemed to have been imagined as a series of vivid pictures.
Modern biblical exegesis appears to view this pictorial tendency with suspicion, as an historical residue from which John’s text must be freed if we are to interpret it correctly:
The modern Western reader must also beware of the tendency to translate the figures and scenes presented by the author into pictures. The author is in fact making use of conventional symbolic materials, without concern for the figurative effects thereby produced. A reader attempting to picture or imagine a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, or a dragon with seven heads and ten horns, wondering, for example, how the ten horns were distributed on the seven heads, would be off on the wrong track. Instead we must translate the symbols intellectually, without stopping to consider their effect on the imagination. Therefore, since the number seven is the symbol of fullness, the seven horns and the seven eyes signify that the Lamb possesses the fullness of power (the horns) and the fullness of knowledge (the eyes). (Rossano 1963: 342)6
The fact is that the medieval interpreter could not and would not read the text in this way, and did precisely the opposite, first of all because he was ignorant of those Oriental traditions of which the modern philologist has such a clear historical and ethnographical awareness. Therefore, if the text said seven heads and ten horns, it had to be taken literally. Second because, already in Beatus’s day, and even more after it, thinking in pictures was the preferred way—and for the vast masses of the illiterate, however rich and powerful they might be, who laid their eyes on an illuminated manuscript or any other pictorial representation, it was the privileged way, the only way even, in which they could understand and commit to memory the contents of the sacred text. It was therefore essential—especially for those with pedagogical intent—to picture events and characters visually down to the tiniest detail. And the more monstrous and marvelous the detail, the more the imagination was awakened and the interpretive passion inflamed.
A visual symbol crammed with details is bound to be richer in meanings, as we know from the evidence of dreams. And, as occurred in the Latin mnemonic tradition (as well as the Greek), which the Middle Ages knew in part from the surviving texts and in part at second hand, for an item of knowledge to be stored in our memories it had to be associated with a scene, the more astonishing and terrible the better (see Carruthers 1990).
We will not go so far as to say—overestimating the influence of mnemonic techniques—that the entire apocalyptic tradition is nothing more than an attempt to embody in memorable images a few moral and eschatological principles. But we feel confident in asserting that the medieval passion for apocalyptic imagerie is partly the result of the influence of the ancient arts of memory.
Beatus’s attitude toward the text, then, was the opposite of that of the modern interpreter: the scenes must be transposed into visual images, the interpreter must be concerned with the resulting pictorial effect, because the cryptography, the mystical enigma, depend on that effect. And if there are ten horns and seven heads, we must ask ourselves how these numbers, incongruous in themselves, can be represented congruously. The problem for the illuminator, who must solve the problem pictorially, is the same as that for the commentator, who must solve it symbolically. And the commentators often find themselves stymied because they are endeavoring to translate the text with an illustrator’s mentality. Beatus’s Commentarius is a glaring example of this predicament.
Let us see how this impulse to translate the text into clear visual images leads our scrutinist to misrepresent the text. We will start from the beginning, from John’s vision of the one seated on a throne and the four beasts (chapter 4) and from its most likely source: Ezekiel’s vision in the book that bears his name (Ezek. 1:4–26).
Ezekiel speaks of a whirlwind coming out of the north: and a great cloud, and a fire infolding it, and brightness about it: and out of the midst thereof, that is, out of the midst of the fire, “as it were the resemblance of amber.” And in the midst thereof the likeness of four living creatures and this was their appearance: there was the likeness of a man in them. Every one had four faces and four wings, straight feet and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot, and they sparkled like the color of burnished brass. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides. And these four living creatures turned not when they went but went straight forward.
So far so good. Up to now the vision looks like something that can be pictured. But at this point the prophet declares that, in addition to the face of a man, the creatures had the face of a lion on the right side and the face of an ox on the left side, and they also had the face of an eagle. Their wings were stretched upward, two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. Their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps.
Another confusing fact: although Ezekiel had said (twice) that they turned not when they went and all four went straight forward, he now informs us that the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning, and behold one wheel on the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces, And the appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl, and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. And they went in four directions, and they turned not when they went, and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up, and “whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels” (Ezek. 1:20).
As we will have occasion to observe in a moment, it is clear that Ezekiel is not, so to speak, indulging in ekphrasis, but recounting a series of oneiric events. But let us proceed with our reading of his text: now above the firmament that was over the living creatures’ heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. “And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain.” “This,” declares Ezekiel, “was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake” (Ezek. 1:27–28).
This is the same vision that appears, in an abridged form, in Apocalypse 4:2–8, with the difference that John seems to start where Ezekiel left off. The throne in the firmament appears right away, and on the throne someone is seated, similar in appearance to a jasper and a sardine stone. A rainbow like an emerald surrounds the throne. Around the throne are twenty-four seats and upon the seats are seated twenty-four elders clothed in white raiment, with crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne (before which burn seven lamps of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God) proceed lightnings and thunderings and voices. Before the throne is a sea of glass like crystal. “In the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within …” (Apoc. 4:6–8).7
At first blush John’s text appears to be a copy of Ezekiel’s, except for the fact that in Ezekiel each of the living creatures had the face of all four animals. John makes the same vision easier to picture: each of the beasts has the face of a different animal.
