Collection in Focus: The Morgan Beatus

Take a closer look at this 1000 year old Spanish illumination with Josh O’Driscoll, Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts as he shares the incredible story. St. Beatus of Liébana completed his commentary about 776. The long cycles of pictures accompanying it constitute the greatest achievement of medieval Spanish illumination. The Morgan Beatus is important because it is the earliest complete copy and thus stands at the beginning of the Beatus tradition. Although the book was ordered for Escalada (consecrated in 913), it was not made there, as Maius worked in the tower scriptorium at San Salvador de Tábara, where he died and was buried in 968. Maius tells us he made the book so that the “wise may fear the coming of the future judgment of the world’s end.”