Morgan Crusader Bible Folio 23v (MS M.638)
This brightly-colored illustration from the Morgan Bible shows King Saul taking the Ammonite city of Jabesh Gilead and being crowned king. The top section shows Saul, holding a lion shield, stabbing the Ammonite king, Nahash, in the head. In the bottom left, Saul holds a staff topped by a fleur-de-lis, a symbol of the French nobility. He is seated on a sella curulis, a special stool which symbolized political or military power in ancient Rome and medieval Europe. The artists drew Saul and his soldiers as medieval French crusaders, tying the Bible story to King Louis IX’s battle for the Holy Land.
What is the Morgan Crusader Bible?
The Morgan Crusader Bible, so-called because it was purchased by renowned American banker J. P. Morgan (1867–1943) in 1916, is a medieval picture Bible that contains over 380 scenes from the Old Testament. (The text known to Christians as the Old Testament is primarily based on the Hebrew Bible.) The Morgan Crusader Bible originally contained no text explaining the actions depicted on its pages. As time passed, individuals added explanatory text in Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian. These later annotations witness the appeal of the scenes to audiences of multiple faiths: a Christian audience who read Latin, a Muslim audience who read Persian (an Iranian language also known as Fārsī), and a Jewish audience who read Judeo-Persian (a Jewish dialect spoken by Jews living in Iran and written in the Hebrew alphabet).
The narratives in the Old Testament took place many centuries before the Middle Ages, but the figures and scenes in this manuscript appear to be set in 13th-century France. This visual translation of Old Testament narratives into contemporaneous crusading imagery connects the battles of the Old Testament to crusader battles in the Holy Land – here, the French king could imagine himself as a type of Gideon and Samson who, in the book of Judges, are reclaiming the Holy Land from the Midianites and the Philistines. King Louis IX of France (1214–1270), the Bible’s presumed patron, frequently commissioned religious works that articulated a militant Christian kingship, imitating Old Testament models. Louis IX led two crusades to Egypt and North Africa, the Seventh (1244–1254) and the Eighth (1270), which ended when Louis died of dysentery.
Augusta Holyfield ‘22, College of the Holy Cross
Emma Vanseveren ‘23, College of the Holy Cross
王謙謙 Qianqian (Audrey) Wang '25, College of the Holy Cross
How did the Morgan Crusader Bible come to bear Persian inscriptions?
Although the Morgan Bible was created during the Crusader era for a French patron, it crossed cultures in later periods. The manuscript’s relationship to Safavid Iran dates to 1604, when Pope Clement VIII sent members of the Discalced Carmelite order from Rome to the Safavid dynasty’s capital, Isfahan (in modern day Iran). The Carmelite friars stopped in Kraków, Poland, where Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski gave them the Bible as a gift for the Safavid shah, ʿAbbas I (r. 1587–1629). The mission was part of an ongoing campaign to form an alliance between European powers and the Safavids against the Ottoman Empire. Many features of the Morgan Crusader Bible would have appeared familiar to Shah ʿAbbas because the arts of the book were highly valued in Perso-Islamic society, and illustrated manuscripts were part of the Safavid court’s visual culture. The shah apparently asked for Persian glosses to be added to all the images, indicating his interest in the gift. Occasionally, the marginal notes will reveal the distance between the image and its interpreter, as is the case on folio 14 recto where, in reference to a story from Samson’s childhood, the Judeo-Persian gloss reads: “I do not know what this tale is.”
The folios shown here depict triumphs of the Israelites from the Old Testament. Folio (manuscript page) 13 narrates how, after Gideon destroyed an idol, God chose him to expel invaders from Israel. Folios 14 recto and 23 verso illustrate the glorious actions of Samson slaying the lion and King Saul defending his land.
As is convention for medieval manuscripts, the folia (pages) are identified by their front (recto, or r) and back (verso, or v) in relation to the book’s front cover.
Nadiia Fuchedzhy '22, Eliza Howlett '25, Natalia Ramirez '22, Bjorn Shurdha '25, Emma Villegas '25, Alexander Vollbrecht '25, Isabella Wellinghorst '22, Peyton Wilson '22, Boston College
