The Berthold Sacramentary: Volume I

There are only very few books which stand out from the relatively large medieval production of prime quality manuscripts, one of them being the Berthold Sacramentary. It was produced upon the request of Abbot Berthold, probably immediately after the big fire of 1215 in which the library of the monastery was severely damaged, and surpasses all comparable books of the late Romanesque period in both formal and material aspects.

The Berthold Sacramentary is held in safekeeping today in the Morgan Pierpont Library and Museum in New York and is one of the most important and beautiful manuscripts from the European Middle Ages during the transition from the Romanesque period to the Gothic period. It contains 21 full-page and 5 half-page miniatures, block pictures, decorated pages with initials and historicized and ornamented initials, which use a dramatic and striking composition to express different scenes and in which one also finds the free interpretation of well-known themes. All of these features, along with the colour modelling used, make it one of the most unique examples of Middle Age book illumination. Miniatures and most of the initials are decorated in gold and silver, which gives the other colours a powerful radiance.