Introduction What is sacred Christian art? Illuminated Manuscripts in Christian Art What are the foundations of Christian art? Sacred buildings The Sanctuary The Sacred Image The Function of the Icon The Decadence of Christian Art The Renewal of Christian Art

slide 3 of 10 What is the role of the illuminated manuscript in Christian art? "Because (illuminated manuscripts) could be taken from place to place, more so almost than any other kind of work of art, it served as a model for artistic creation, especially in areas where indigenous artists had not hitherto been able to see the like. Frequently miniatures from a manuscript served as models for a cycle of wall-paintings or even sculptures in relief. If the book came from a distant land, or if it was the work of the founder of a monastery, one saw in it the witness of tradition. Just as the text was given word for word, so the pictures belonging to it were carefully copied. In this way book illuminations can be traced like a silver thread running through the first millennium of Christian art. "For us, surviving early medieval manuscripts are often the only reliable witnesses of whole epochs and of cultural regions from which other work has hardly been passed down to us at all, in an unchanged form."