Telling the story of Bartholomew’s mission in India, his expulsion of the demon Astaroth, the conversion to Christianity of the king Polymius and his people, and the saint’s martyrdom, the text appears to have been transmitted from an earlier manuscript of the Virtutes Apostolorum focusing on deeds of the Twelve Apostles.Ĭomparable to the most sophisticated work in a two-volume bible now in Florence (Bibl. Together, these fragments offer a tantalising suggestion of the magnificent 12th-century volume from whence they came, a manuscript filled with monumental depictions of saints to strike awe into the reader.īartholomew himself forms the ‘I’ that opens a text on the life, mission and martyrdom of St Bartholomew (‘In ab h asser’).

no 805), published in Anne Korteweg’s 2013 catalogue. This miniature from a Passionary manuscript narrating the lives of the saints should now be considered alongside three sister fragments with depictions of St Lucia and two male saints (one possibly St Simon) in the collection put together by Jan Herman van Heek at Huis Bergh Castle in ‘s-Heerenberg (Inv. ST BARTHOLOMEW, initial miniature ‘I’ on a cutting from an illuminated Passionary Ī Tuscan Romanesque miniature of the finest quality, a 12th-century depiction of St Bartholomew unparallelled by any other offered at public auction.

Medieval illuminations demon leaving