Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Gospel of Matthew 5: 6
David and Goliath. Porta Bible, 1300 Northern France. (Library of the Cantonal University in Lausanne) Goliath is dressed in the same 1300 fashion in this miniature. He wears a short haubergeon with a hood and chain mail gloves braided to the sleeves, a chapel-de-fer helmet, plate leggings and, again, a knight's shield in the shape of an iron, traditional for that time. Naturally, the cap helmet had to be drawn, otherwise how would David hit him on the forehead with a stone!
The fact is that for some reason our secondary school does not provide our students with the most banal information about … the number of medieval books. On the contrary, textbooks report that books were scarce, that they were expensive, and that they were chained to university departments. That is why people who have received such information quite seriously believe that these several very expensive books are worthless to fake, and therefore “change history”.
In fact, this is far from the case! Really medieval incunabula … tens, and maybe even hundreds of thousands, and it is simply impossible to accurately count them. For example, only the Vatican Apostolic Library contains … 50 thousand volumes of medieval manuscripts, most of which are signed and dated. And then there are such world-famous libraries as the British Library, the National Library of France, the Trinity College Library in Dublin, the libraries in Sorbonne, Oxford, Württemberg … Lord, their listing alone would take more than one page here. In France alone, there are 76 castles in the Loire River basin, many of which have libraries of average annual books, numbering several thousand books, and many of them have not yet been disassembled and put into scientific circulation due to … the position of their owners. Yes, and to process and even catalog them all simply do not have enough energy, time, or money.
So, even in the secret section of the Vatican Apostolic Library, about 1,500 researchers work daily, there is a special laboratory that digitizes ancient manuscripts, and the papal curia spares no money for this. But only "things are still there", so much is the amount of work required to complete the processing of all these books.
Let us emphasize that 80% of the manuscripts are dated by their authors. At the time, it was … let's say, decent, if not necessary, to indicate the year of completion. Books were decorated with miniatures depicting the lives of people from the time indicated in the book. That is, we have a kind of passport of a particular era, in which the role of a photograph with a portrait of the owner is played by "pictures" with the corresponding images. The latter are confirmed by artifacts that have survived to our day, as well as cross-references to surviving letters and documents.
For example, we see an illustration in the manuscript depicting a knight in characteristic armor. It is clear from the text that this is a Milanese armor, which we also see in a painting by a famous Italian artist. In addition, the correspondence of the English king Henry VIII, who invited masters from Milan to his court, is known. Finally, it is precisely such armor that we see in the museum, with the dates of manufacture embossed on them and the name of the masters who made them. The dates converge, the images are identical, therefore, the year is set, because otherwise it would be necessary: A - to forge not one, but a lot of manuscripts scattered across various castles and libraries (the task itself is very difficult and practically impossible due to its extreme complexity), B - to forge a lot of armor, including documents for their admission to a particular museum, and they themselves are sometimes very old, and, finally, C - to forge the correspondence of kings and … leave statements for masters of ale and meat, as well as salaries and other bureaucratic papers, whose name is "legion"! It is clear that only God can do all this, for he alone possesses omniscience, omniscience and omnipotence. Even the famous Orwellian Ministry of Truth would have been saved here …
But the most interesting thing, of course, is a visual analysis of the changes that have taken place from year to year in the depiction of human figures in miniatures. After all, if the year changed, then the clothes of the characters depicted also changed over time, and this, as we have already noted, is directly related to the material objects that have survived to this day.
Let's get down to doing that kind of research today. As its object, we will take the well-known Christian story from the First Book of Kingdoms, describing the killing of the giant Goliath by the shepherd David. We know that until the Renaissance, the people of the Middle Ages did not possess a historical vision of the picture of the world and revered it as unchanged. And if so, then each miniature will be a reflection of the miniaturist's idea of how the same Goliath might look, based on his personal impressions of the warriors of his time.
Capital B: David plays the psaltery harp for Saul (top), chops off Goliath's head (bottom), 13th century Tempera, gold, ink. Dimensions: 23.5 × 16.5 cm. (Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) Here, Goliath also lives up to its time: he wears a hauberk, chain mail chausses, a quilted cap and fabric knee pads. The helmet is a spire-de-fer or "iron hat", and even drawn with strings. The shield is depicted so that it is visible from the inside. It has the shape of an iron and many straps to help hold and carry it behind the back and around the neck.
But first of all, let us turn to the basis, that is, the plot from the Bible. It says the following:
Such is the story, in which everything is very simple and at the same time detailed. That is, it is very easy to illustrate such a text. You don't need to invent anything especially! David could be dressed as a shepherd boy, there are no special options, and in relation to Goliath everything is very clear - a copper helmet, copper scale armor and copper knee pads. In addition, he had a spear in his hands, and a sword on his belt, which was used by young David. Now let's see how this description changed in miniatures by artists of different time periods.
