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Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece

Morgan MS M.638 23v Crusader Bible

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Morgan Crusader Bible Folio 23v (MS M.638) By Augusta Holyfield '22

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
Sources and further reading by Augusta Holyfield '22

C. Griffith Mann, 'Picturing the Bible in the Thirteenth century', in The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible, ed. by William Noel and Daniel Weiss (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum and Third Millennium Publishing, 2002), pp. 38-59.
Bradley, John William. Illuminated Manuscripts. General Books, 2010.

Brown, M. (1994). Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts : A Guide to Technical Terms. J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Library.

Hindman, S. (1994). Sealed in Parchment : Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes. University of Chicago Press

Branner, R. (1977). Manuscript Painting in Paris during the Reign of Saint Louis : A Study of Styles. University of California Press.

Doyle, Kathleen, and Patricia Lovett. “How to Make a Medieval Manuscript.” British Library. Accessed December 15, 2021. https://www.bl.uk/medieval-english-french-manuscripts/articles/how-to-make-a-medieval-manuscript.

“Provenance.” The Morgan Library & Museum, January 2, 2015. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/crusader-bible/provenance.
What does this tell us about the Crusades? by Augusta Holyfield '22

The Morgan Crusader Bible gives us insight into the political uses of the crusades for leaders in Western Europe. By choosing to depict scenes of biblical kings and wars but to visually set the events in medieval France, the creators of the Morgan Crusader Bible were making a clear commentary on who were the successors of King David's legacy. King Louis IX wanted to draw comparisons between himself and the first Jewish kings, between his crusade to reclaim the Holy Land and the divinely anointed battles fought by Saul. He was chosen by God to rule France and to wage war against anyone who stood in the way of Christian occupation of Jerusalem.
Through this analysis, we can see that the motivations for the Crusades were not purely religious or purely political. Just as politics and religion were intertwined in western Christian society, so were they intertwined in the excitement to retake the Holy Land. Because western Europeans -- and the French -- were understood as God's chosen people, any action that served western European -- or French -- interests must also serve God's interests.