The Word of God in Pictures
Gloria Cigman looks at the Bible as an illustrated story book in medieval France.
When is a Bible not a Bible? Surprisingly, this question is never asked in the context of the many different versions of the scriptures originating in north-eastern France from the early thirteenth century onward. Mostly in Picard French, each was part translation, part paraphrase; abridged here, expanded there, retelling and explaining selected sections of the Bible, with narrative elements augmented or dominated by pictures.
Not only were these compilations regarded as quite innocent of sacrilege or heresy, but they came to be accepted as the true Bible throughout all levels of lay society, in effect taking over from the Vulgate, Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible (c.390-410) that had been the ‘authorised version’ for almost a thousand years.
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