Bible illustrations, besides continuously in structing the people already converted, were used as instruments in missionary work. In order to convert the Anglo-Saxons, for instance, Benedict Biscop. who built the two greatest early monasteries in England, brought from Rome a series of small pictures illustrating the Old and New Testaments and had them reproduced on the church walls. For the conversion of the Saxons, Charlemagne's Capitnlaries insist, no new church was complete until it had its tale of instructive pictures. In the conversion of the Bulgarians, Methodius, the Apostle to the Slays, is said to have brought about the change of heart of the King and his people mainly through the effect of a painting of the Last Judgment. This priod—roughly, the Carlovingian Era—was one ofgreat activity in Bible illustrations, both in codices and iu church walls. The element of fear began to lie more emphasized than that of love and peace. The torments of hell were soon to replace the visions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, in the same way as in the Fifth Century the Heavenly Jerusalem had replaced the Carden of Paradise of the Catacombs; but this transforma tion progressed slowly, between the Eighth and Thirteenth centuries. culminating in the Tome110 mosaics and in poetry in Dante's Inferno.
Hitherto no distinction has been drawn be tween the Bible illustrations in the East and those in the West, because in this part of Chris tian art there was less chance for divergences than in other ]ranches; still, even here, Eastern art showed far more poetry and imagination. The age of the iconoclasts there was a crucial epoch in Eastern Bible illustration, and in many ways revived antique traditions, which were kept nmeh fresher in the East. The dull level of mediocrity which then ruled the West was not really broken until the approach of the Gothic Age, in the rw,irth Century. Then scholasti
cism eame to the rescue of art. The encyclo pa.die passion was vivified by religious fervor; the mysticism of a Saint 13ernard, it Saint. Vic tor, and a Saint Bonaventura gave to the pie torial image of the world's essence and history which was then attempted a •value far transcend ing the historic. Bible illustration, as pure his tory, was still faithfully carried on, but it no longer occupied the old-time prominent place. There was a return to symbolism, but on a far higher, more imaginative, as well as more in tellectual plane than that of the early Christian period. The "Wise and Foolish Virgins," the "Tree of Jesse," were Bible illustrations, but not in the historic sense. There was a new life in the teaching of religion. But, while the purely historic series no longer were so prominent on church walls, the work of Bible illustration con tinued in codices unabated. In fact., there were —perhaps there had been before—series of such illustrations bound together with descriptive in scriptions and text ; but without the Bible texts themselves. Such manuals continued in use un til very late. When printing and block-engrav ing were invented in the Fifteenth Century they could be multiplied in cheap form and circulated among the people. (See BInLIA PaurERum.) From these sprang the really artistic series of prints by such artists as Albrecht Thirer, from whom our more modern Bible illustrators de scend. But after the masses learned to read and write, and after the text of the Bible itself be came aecessible to the majority, such illustra tions no longer played the really important role in the development of Christianity which they had held for over twelve hundred years.