Seeing the Middle Ages
This is a complicated picture. How can we tease out its meaning? We
know that the main subject is the evangelist Saint Luke, first because this
illustration precedes the text of the Gospel of Saint Luke in the
manuscript, and second because of the presence of the ox (who is labeled
“Luc”). Compare Plate 2.5 on p. 67, which shows the same symbol and
also includes the label “Agios Lucas”—Saint Luke. In that plate, Luke is
writing his gospel. Here Luke is doing something different. But what?
An important hint is at the bottom of the page: the Latin inscription
there says, “From the fountain of the Fathers, the ox draws water for the
lambs.” So Luke (the ox) draws water, or nourishment, from the Fathers
for the “lambs,” who are in fact shown drinking from the stream. Who are
the lambs? In the same manuscript, the page depicting the evangelist Saint
Matthew, which precedes his own Gospel, shows men, rather than lambs,
drinking from the streams: clearly the lambs signify the Christian people.
Above Luke’s head are the “Fathers.” They are five of the Old
Testament prophets, each provided with a label; the one to Luke’s right,
for example, is “Abacuc”—Habakkuk. Behind each prophet is an angel
(David, at the very top, is accompanied by two), and each is surrounded
by a cloud of glory, giving off rays of light that appear like forks jutting
into the sky. The artist was no doubt thinking of Paul’s Epistle to the
Hebrews (12:1) where, after naming the great Old Testament prophets and
their trials and tribulations, Paul calls them a “cloud of witnesses over our
head” who help us to overcome our sins. But the artist must also have had
in mind Christ’s Second Coming, when, according to Apoc. 4:2–3, Christ
will be seated on a “throne set in heaven” with “a rainbow round about the
throne.” In our plate, Luke sits in the place of Christ.
Thus this picture shows the unity of the Gospel of Luke with both the
Old Testament and the final book of the Bible, the Apocalypse. Luke is
the continuator and the guardian of the prophets, whose books are piled
on his lap.
There is more. The figure of Luke forms the bottom half of a cross,
with the ox in the center. The lamb and the ox were both sacrificial
animals, signifying Christ himself, whose death on the cross redeemed
