Pamplona Bible

Pamplona Bible

A parchment manuscript originated ca. 1200 in the Spanish province of Navarra with an impressive wealth of imagery. The Pamplona Bible is enriched by 542 pages with 976 mostly half-page and sometimes full-page miniatures of the text of the New and Old Testaments as well as the Apocrypha and saints’ legends. 61 of them are additionally adorned with gold. King Sancho VII of Navarra (1154–1234), given the epithet “the Strong” because of his unusual height of 2.2 meters (7 feet 3 inches), commissioned the picture Bible and presumably used it personally as a moralizing handbook. The precious manuscript was probably manufactured in the royal chancellery in Pamplona under the direction of the cleric Petrus Ferrandus.

An Exceptionally Large Picture Cycle

The Pamplona Bible represents a very special manuscript, because it contains, along with another Bible from Amiens, the largest pre–13th century biblical picture cycle ranging from Creation to Judgement Day. Additionally, the drawings are exceptionally finely outlined with black ink and painted with watercolors. The scenes themselves are highly compressed and dispense with unnecessary details, which explains the invariably limited number of figures. What makes these reduced compositions interesting are the elaborate gestures as well as the dramatic poses of the persons depicted. Thus, they bow, extend their hands to one another, or let their shoulders hang dispiritedly.

Rare Format

The great richness of imagery comes along with the format of the Bible. In order to have enough space for the half-page miniatures, each of them has only a two- or three-line explanation at their disposal, which are found on the top and bottom of the page. Only three manuscripts of this kind are known to exist in the entire world. The Pamplona Bible from the collection of the Princes of Oettingen-Wallenstein is a manuscript from the Amiens State Library and the New York Public Library. Since the pictures of the Bibles in Amiens and Pamplona are so similar, researchers hypothesize that both of them were potentially furnished by the same illustrators.