Abstract

In her study of the so-called Philomena manuscripts, Dr. Ellen J. Beer proposed Arras as the center of thirteenth-century illumination in Artois and French Flanders. She reaffirmed this opinion in a more recent article on Bibles of the same region and period. The present study will cite evidence to show that by about the middle of the thirteenth century the city of Lille, a trade center hardly less important than Arras, was probably also prominent in the production of fine books. This evidence derives in part from a study of the fourth volume of the Marquette Bible, owned by H. P. Kraus of New York, and its relationship to two volumes of a Bible in the Royal Library at Brussels . It can be demonstrated beyond any doubt that these three volumes were once part of the same four-volume Bible. It will be proposed that this and several stylistically related Bibles were made at Lille, but that, as Beer suspected, Arras played a central role in the diffusion of the style