The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 59

Without any inscription orcaption, this frontispieceimage nevertheless recallsseveral passages in the Apocalypsetext: for example,"I am Alpha and Omega,the beginning and the end,saith the Lord God, who is,and who was, and who isto come, the Almighty"(Apoc. 1.8).The lamb is a mysticalimage of Christ used frequentlyin the Apocalypsetext, as in 7.17 ("For theLamb, which is in the midstof the throne, shall rulethem, and shall lead them tothe fountain of the waters oflife") and 22.14 ("Blessed arethey that wash their robesin the blood of the Lamb").Poles for the spear andsponge used to tormentChrist during the Passionrise out of the lamb's back,along with the tapered standof a gold processional cross.The Greek letters suspendedfrom the cross's crossbar,alpha and omega, are toggleboltedin place. The threenails of the Crucifixion areheld by one of the angels.One might at firstsuppose that the elegantcross, which dominates thefrontispiece, could refer toone of the two highlyrevered wood-and-goldcrosses in the treasury ofOviedo Cathedral. Thosetwo crosses may be consideredemblems of theAsturian rulers in northernLeon: Alfonso II (r. 791-842)and Alfonso III (r. 866-91o).The earlier and smaller ofthe crosses, dated 846 (8o8by the modern calendar), isrepresented frequently onthe frontispiece pages of"Mozarabic" Beatus manuscripts.Yet that cross, withits flared arms of equallength, as in a Greek cross,is obviously not the onerepresented here. Nor is theCardefna cross a likenessof Oviedo's second andlarger cross, with its slenderwooden core encrusted withintricate gold decorationand gems and its upper armsconfigured with trefoilextensions. The encasementof that piece, known asthe Cross of Victory, datesto shortly before its presentationto Oviedo Cathedralin 908.John Williams has writtenof the interconnectionsbetween the Carolingianmonastery of Saint Martin atTours, in France, and earlySpanish illuminated manuscripts,with a particularfocus on Leonese initialdecoration and such specificiconographics as the lambdepicted with instrumentsof the Passion, namelythe spear and sponge. Hepostulates that a TouronianBible of the ninth centurywas present in the northernportion of the Spanishpeninsula as early as thesecond quarter of the tenthcentury. A review of thecorpus of extant Touronianmanuscripts reveals severalparallels in the depiction ofthe cross, the suspendedalpha and omega, and thelamb with the spear, sponge,and flanking angels. There-fore, the Cardefna cross maybe designated as a Carolin-gian or Touronian type andnot a "Mozarabic" one.This change is a partialconfirmation of the pan-European orientation ofthe figure style discussed onpages 9 to 12.The prefatory portion ofthe Cardefna Beatus contin-ued with leaves identifyingeach of the four Gospelswith paired figures groupedbeneath column-supportedhorseshoe arches. The leavesfor Matthew and Mark, pre-served in Madrid, are fragmentary;those for Luke andJohn are missing entirely.The exuberantly foliatedcapitals and bases on thesurviving fragments arecousins to those supportingthe arcade on the recto ofthe Cardefia frontispiece(see p. 14).- 17 -