The Crucifixion and the Holy Sepulchre

Author: Klazina Botke

This sheet from a fifteenth-century manuscript is illustrated with a Crucifixion scene. On the right of the crucified Christ is Dismas, the penitent thief, with an angel carrying his soul up to heaven. A Roman soldier is on the point of breaking Dismas’s legs with a wooden club.^[1] On the left is Gestas, the unrepentant thief, with a devil wrenching his soul out of his mouth. Kneeling at the foot of the Cross is Mary Magdalen, with the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist standing beside her. The other onlookers are Roman soldiers. Longinus, mounted on a horse, is carrying the lance with which he stabbed Christ in the side, while Stephaton has the sponge and jar of vinegar. The Roman pointing up at the Cross is probably the centurion proclaiming his belief in Christ, while the soldier with the scorpion on his shield stands for betrayal and untrustworthiness. Seated at lower left are three soldiers throwing dice for Christ’s cloak. This type of Crucifixion scene with many bystanders who all play a part in the story was popular in the middle of the fourteenth century, partly through the work of Giotto (1266/1267-1337) and Altichiero (c.1330-c.1390).^[2] Another drawing below the Crucifixion shows Mary Magdalen meeting an angel at the Holy Sepulchre, Christ’s tomb.

In red ink above the two drawings are the inscriptions ‘Passio domini nostri ihu xpi’ (The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ) and ‘Sepulcrum domini nostri yhu xpi’ (The tomb of Our Lord Jesus Christ) respectively. There is also a text in two columns. At top right there is the folio number ‘x’, and down the left edge there are remnants of old stitching holes. Ed van der Vlist linked the text itself to De exemplis naturalibus contra curiosos, a work that Servasanctus Faventinus (c.1220/1230-c.1295) devoted to the basic principles of Catholic doctrine, the sacraments, and the virtues and vices. It never appeared in print, as far as is known.^[3] Our sheet is from the first part (De articulis fidei), and is the beginning of chapter 13, which describes Christ’s Passion.^[4] The authors mentioned by Servasanctus and their writings are acknowledged in the margin, making it easier for the text to be used by scholars. The same text can be found elsewhere, for instance in a codex of around 1412-45 in Paris, and in the Vatican, both unillustrated.^[5]

Our sheet is from a manuscript that was still in the possession of the art dealer Jacques Rosenthal in Munich in 1920.^[6] It is described by Grabmann (1920), who states that it contained four pen drawings: God surrounded by angels and kneeling priests, an Annunciation, the Crucifixion, and Christ’s tomb. According to him the latter was on folio 13 recto, which corresponds with our sheet having a pencilled ‘13' below the old folio number. Grabmann also stated that room was left for illustrations in each chapter, but only those four were added. It is clear that our sheet was only removed from the manuscript after he had seen it, undoubtedly so that it could be sold as a loose drawing. The rest of the codex is now in the Houghton Library in Cambridge (Mass.), where there is indeed a folio missing between numbers VIII and XI.^[7] The drawing of God surrounded by angels is also missing in that manuscript.^[8]

In the colophon at the back of the Harvard codex it can be read that Johannes de Luxia completed the text on 17 January 1444.^[9] He was chancellor of Cattaro (Kotor in modern-day Montenegro), a town on the Dalmatian coast that at the time was part of the Venetian Republic. Manuscripts copied in Dalmatia are rare, and this example is from a coherent group of five that were all signed by Johannes de Luxia. The manuscript is important for our knowledge of the production of manuscripts in the Venetian colonies, and proves that Venice had a hegemony in this region.^[10]