The Arsenal Bible as Relic: The Sanctity of the East in the West (original) (raw)

The Arsenal Old Testament Bible (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 5211) was created in Acre in the early 1250s, contemporary to the period in which Louis IX of France held his crusading headquarters in or at least near that city. This presence of the king during the production of the Arsenal Bible has led to much discussion about Louis’s intentions and beliefs in regards to the qualities and contents of this manuscript. The relationship between Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean had become increasingly complex during the 13th century, and Eastern-made objects and ideas were being brought west with increasing frequency. Their intensified presence was changing the opinion and role of Eastern culture and history in the West. In fact, Byzantine objects brought to Europe were in some cases seen as relics of another great Christian empire, of the past, and of Christianity in general, all simultaneously. By analyzing contemporary relics and reliquaries that intentionally incorporate aspects of the Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantium, and by analyzing depictions of the “other” in the images of the Arsenal Bible, I propose that the Arsenal Bible was an “intentionally authentic” relic of the Holy Land, of the crusading efforts of Europe, and as a relic of Louis IX who had begun to frame France as the “new Jerusalem” of the West and himself as a martyred Christian hero who was firmly entrenched in a biblical past.