7 - The Beginnings of Book Illumination and the Ethnic Paradigm in Modern Historiography

Summary

The “transformation of the book” in late antiquity was addressed in a book by Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, who discussed not only the shift from role to codex but also other aspects of both content and form. They set this “transformative” change in a thoroughly Christian context, but one in which leading figures such as Origen and Eusebius are also patently masters of the previous Greco-Roman tradition. Grafton and Williams conceptualized that “transformation” as founded upon intellectual change within the Greco-Roman tradition, in this case the spread of Christianity playing a leading role. The previous chapters of this book have addressed that which might be termed the “second transformation” of the book, the creation of the illuminated book. Why has the character and origin of this second transformation so often been, and continues often to be, treated so differently by scholars?