The Crucifixion and the scourging of Christ, full-page miniature divided into two compartments, on a leaf from a Sacramentary in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Rhineland (most probably Elsenhein, Lower Rhine), late twelfth century]

2 large bifolia, each leaf 360mm. by 235mm., most probably the original leaf size, with a very large central miniature of the Crucifixion between the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist, 180mm. by 170mm., within a green frame with red edges and red chevrons picked out within its body, surmounted by a smaller miniature of the Scourging of Christ, 75mm. by 155mm., the other pages with four very large initials in yellow with red bands punctuated with circles and dots (the largest 95mm. by 103mm., the smallest 80mm. by 80mm.), enclosing delicately painted swirls of coloured acanthus-leaves with serrated edges (one with a small ferret-like spotted animal biting the branches) all on blue and green grounds touched with white penwork, one- and 2-line initials in red with some simple flourishes to ascenders and baubles suspended within bodies of initials, rubrics in red, single column, 30 lines of main text in a fine and angular early gothic bookhand without biting curves but with pronounced fish-tailing to ends of ascenders, 3 pages with substantial additions of offices in lower margin in hands of c.1200 and thirteenth century, partially erased addition of fifteenth-century note directing the oblates in services at foot of last leaf, both bifolia recovered from bindings and with scuffs and stains, scuffing and rubbing to initials and miniatures, nearly erasing Christ’s two torturers, and damaging the frame and edges of the Crucifixion, Christ’s face, and the face and lower body of Mary Magdalene, overall in fair condition

These leaves are most probably all that remains of a grand Romanesque Sacramentary, used in the late twelfth century in the church of St. James the Greater in Elsenheim, just to the west of the town of Marckolsheim, on the border of Alsace and the Lower Rhine: thirteenth-century ex libris at head of fol.1r of second bifolium, “Notum sic presentibus et futuris quod iste liber adtinet in elsenhein apud martolzhein”. While the village of Elsenheim is recorded from the 1120s onwards, the present church there is first mentioned in a document of 1305, and thus these leaves back-date our knowledge of the church there by over a century.

decoration

These leaves are witness to the high achievements of Rhineland book decoration in the Romanesque period. The large and complex initials point towards the most sophisticated examples of the reinvention of the white-vine initial in German art (cf. the richly decorated Sacramentary, probably from Liège and the third quarter of the twelfth century, now in Cologne, Dombibl. Hs.157: Glaube und Wissen im Mittelalter, 1998, no.83, pp.400-05, which also shares the same bands around the bodies of the initials and splits within their ascenders), and individual details of the double-miniature find many parallels in Rhineland illustration (cf. the mid-twelfth century Sacramentary from Maria Laach Abbey, now Darmstadt Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Hs.891: see A. von Euw, ‘Zur Buchmalerei im Maasgebiet von den Anfängen bis zum 12. Jahrhundert’, in Rhein und Maas, II, 1973, pp.343-60, pl.16; cf. also the faces of the figures with long thin noses and tiny precise mouths, in the single leaf with the Crucifixion from the church of St. George, Cologne, made in the first quarter of the thirteenth century: Rhein und Maas, I, 1973, no. L16, pp.340-1). The musculature of Christ’s torso is soft and well-executed, and the drapery here is so delicately layered and flowing that it sets this composition among the finest to survive from the region.