UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW LIBRARY
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT
Book of the Month
| Perhaps the most striking illustration is that which couples the rapturous visions of God that were experienced separately by Saint Benedict and Saint Paul through contemplation. A blazing light appeared to Benedict while he was in prayer, in the splendour of which he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, being carried to heaven by angels. Paul is said to have experienced a similar blinding revelation. According to Sandler, the two visions are brought together here as meditative models to bring the reader closer to God.Divided into three compartments, the giant face of God - surrounded by flames and radiant streams of light - is at the top. In the background are four angels, one holding up the naked soul of a mitred Bishop Germanus. In the middle - positioned between heaven and earth - are Benedict and Paul. Benedict holds a crozier in his left hand, gazing upwards as he kneels and points with his right forefinger to the diagram of the Universe below. Paul kneels in adoration behind a huge sword, point downwards. In the lower compartment, Roger and another figure (possibly Roger again), are shown praying on either side of a diagram of the twelve spheres. The two speech scrolls read: "All creating I beg, as I hope, have mercy on Roger" and "May all things created by God be my medicine". The figure of God found here is a possible model for a similar miniature found in the Omne Bonum manuscript (BL Royal 6 E VI-VII), a fourteenth century encyclopaedia of universal knowledge. |  full page miniatures accompanying St Benedict's Vision of the Universe (page 85) |
 detail of lower compartment of full page miniature from St Benedict's Vision of the Universe depicting the spheres (page 85) |
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