MEDIEVAL IMAGES OF SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX - MA036.jpg


Category	Manuscript
Origin: artist/workshop	workshop diocese of Cambrai
Date	13C/4
Reference No	MS 1787, f 8r (detail)
Size
Provenance	Nizelles Nuns' Abbey, Nivelles, Brabant
Present Location	Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale Albert 1er
Bibliography	SBOp 5:73; Brussels 1990, 57; Leclercq 1953, 41; van den Gheyn 1901-6, 2:No 1454; Aurenhammer 1959-67, 340
	Paecht & Thoss 1983, 162-4; France 1998, 142; Dijon 1953, 48; Gaspar & Lyna 1984-9, 1:156-8
Illustration From	Brussels 1990, 22
Other illustrations	France 1998, ill 91; Paecht & Thoss 1983, ill 1 (in Textband)
	Leclercq 1966, 51
Country	Belgium

Description:
This historiated initial in a late thirteenth-century manuscript of Bernard's Sermons shows Bernard sitting on a stool, nimbed and in a brown habit, a crozier in his left hand at the beginning of his sermon for Easter - V(icit leo de tribu Juda). He blesses a group of seven kneeling nuns in brown habits and black veils with his right hand. It is very similar in style to a historiated initial also featuring Bernard blessing a group of nuns in another manuscript now in the Austrian National Library (see MA37). They probably both belonged to the famous abbey of Nizelles, near Nivelles in Brabant, and as their format is also the same, it may well be that they were originally the summer and winter halves of the same work.

Description:

This historiated initial in a late thirteenth-century manuscript of Bernard's Sermons shows Bernard sitting on a stool, nimbed and in a brown habit, a crozier in his left hand at the beginning of his sermon for Easter - V(icit leo de tribu Juda). He blesses a group of seven kneeling nuns in brown habits and black veils with his right hand. It is very similar in style to a historiated initial also featuring Bernard blessing a group of nuns in another manuscript now in the Austrian National Library (see MA37). They probably both belonged to the famous abbey of Nizelles, near Nivelles in Brabant, and as their format is also the same, it may well be that they were originally the summer and winter halves of the same work.