The Ashburnam Pentateuch (hereafter AP) is a biblical manuscript probably produced in late sixth-century Italy that found its way to Tours by at least the third quarter of the eighth century. The AP was apparently conserved at St.-Gatien until after Napoleon, when it was moved to the city's municipal library. In 1842 it was stolen, probably by Guglielmo Libri, who sold it to Lord Ashburnam. When scholars began studying it, Léopold Delisle, Conservateur en chef of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, recognized it as a missing Tours manuscript and retrieved it. The manuscript is now BNF, NAL 2334.
Freeman's book focuses on the creation image on folio 1v, which originally presented an anthropomorphic Trinity, specifically four Father and Son images and one Holy Spirit image. Almost certainly in the Carolingian period, someone very carefully painted over most of these images, leaving only one human figure. The book therefore asks why an anthropomorphic Trinity was acceptable in the sixth century but not in the years around 800. Freeman also wants to consider images and acts involving images—fabrication, alteration, destruction—as “texts” that can be read, hence the “Contexts” of the book's title.
Freeman surveys the sixth-century world for possible issues that might have led the scribes and painters of the AP to depict the Trinity in human form. She points to Arianism, the Filioque controversy, and the Three Chapters struggle as possibilities. The manuscript portrays God as a full figure, as a bust, and, most often, as a hand. There are also symbolic representations: ark, candles, pillar of cloud. So depicting God in various ways was of venerable precedent. Freeman concludes: “It seems likely that the AB's conception of God as three equal, similarly rendered men was a visual and triumphant assertion of the orthodox doctrine of the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity” (61).
Why did someone paint over this image? The Carolingians were not reluctant to portray God, and they figured the Trinity too: as hand, man, and dove; as man, infant, and dove; and as man, lamb, and dove. What they apparently never did was portray the Trinity as three human figures. Why not? Freeman again seeks context in the Adoptionist quarrel and the Filioque controversy. She also ventures the possible influence of Jews, Muslims, and non-Nicene Christians. The Carolingians, she argues correctly, stressed the unity of the Trinity. From images and from commentaries on Genesis, she shows that both text and image present a single creator. Moreover, the “imagability” of the Son makes Him the most likely person of the Trinity to be represented and likely by Himself a representation of the Trinity. Freeman also reviews Carolingian image theory to argue that in the period's hierarchy of word and image, the word was definitely privileged. From these contexts, Freeman infers that some Carolingian was offended by AP's portrayal of the Trinity by means of three human figures. This seems to me entirely plausible but an omnium gatherum of possibilities does not constitute proof.
Freeman also says two questions underlie her study: How does an image formulate an argument differently than a text? And how is that argument affected when an image is changed? She does not quite answer either question because she cannot decide whether the “erasure” (actually overpainting) targeted the Son or the Father. This understandable indecision throws into question what offended the unknown Carolingian redactor. As she says, the Utrecht Psalter and the Corbie Psalter depict the Father as a man, so that particular depiction was not uniformly offensive. And Carolingian art presents many images of Christ.
Freeman does a nice job of tracing possible influences of AP on later manuscripts and frescoes, especially those of St-Julien of Tours. She speculates intriguingly on whether Theodulf, the author of the period's great reflection on sacred art, the Opus Caroli Regis contra Synodum, might have visited Tours and seen the AP. I wondered why she does not deal more fully with manuscripts of Hrabanus Maurus's De laudibus sanctae crucis, which begs questions about text and image more forcefully than any other Carolingian books. While she nicely summarizes the essential arguments of the Opus Caroli Regis, she gives short shrift to the hundreds of pages of ninth-century art-talk. To her credit, Freeman dips into huge topics, but sometimes her documentation is rudimentary. She missed the Lamberz edition of II Nicaea. On the whole she prefers translations to original texts. Even here I wonder why she used the old Alexandrenko dissertation for Theodulf's poems instead of the recent and better version by Theodore Andersson. While she was wondering about Theodulf and Tours, she ought to have cited Rob Meens's Speculum article of 2007. Her theoretical reflections would have gained from the work of Natalie Carnes and Francesca Dell'Acqua. The book's color plates are well done but the black and white ones are a bit fuzzy. The writing is occasionally rough.
In the end, Freeman's book will make the AP better known, will raise interesting questions about its enigmatic first folio, and will spur further work.
