“We’re taking words and translating them into images” (“The Saint John’s Bible” 2:13-2:17)
Father Michael Patella
My dad attended St. John’s University in Minnesota for his undergrad, and while in some ways it’s just another private university, something that always made it unique when we’d stop by on childhood summer trips to Minnesota was the monastery in the middle of campus. As my dad would start reminiscing, he’d remember monks by name and check with the information desk to see if any of them– his former professors–were on campus.
While going to Minnesota to see relatives and stop by St. John’s happened fairly often, we also received regular mail from the University, and from that mail and from relatives who bought coffee-table books or framed portions, I watched The Saint John’s Bible go from a concept to a realization. The Saint John’s Bible is a completely hand-written and illustrated production of the Bible completed over years of time with the collaboration of both monks and artists.
This week as we’ve read about handwriting, images, memory, and knowledge, among other things, this Bible is the familiar reference my mind keeps turning to.
In Mary Carruther’s chapter “Memory and the Book” from The Book of Memory, she writes about early manuscripts that followed principles that are evident in the work of The Saint John’s Bible. Carruthers writes, “It is not, in our sense, a picture of some thing but rather the means for memorizing and recollecting the same matter or story that written letters also record” (222). She continues shortly after, “Both textual activities, picturing and reading, have as their goal not simply the learning of a story, but learning it to familiarize and domesticate it, in that fully internalized, even physiological way that medieval reading required” (222).
Pictures used in this sense are used to reinforce and memorialize the text that the images support. Referring to a quote by Giraldus Cambrensis, Carruther explains, “figures grouped in the picture are designed both to recall and to stimulate further mental image-making in the reader” (255).
Carruther gives these near-final thoughts in her chapter: “the page is designed to make one meditate upon it, to look and look again, and remake its patterns oneself; the process of seeing this page models the process of meditative reading which the text it introduces will require” (257). The text and the images are interconnected in both purpose and meaning, and the combination of the two strengthens the message of the text.
Donald Jackson explains that even in his design of the font for The St. John’s Bible, he considered how to capture the content with how the calligraphy was designed: “its like an orchestral composition. There are going to be places where they are going to be trumpets blowing . . . . There are going to be places where you have serenity” (3:20-3:33).
Father Michael Patella describes The Saint John’s Bible as a process of “illuminating the Bible” (0:35-0:40). He says, “I realized that art and theology cannot be separated. . . . We’re taking words and translating them into images” (2:06-2:17). He explains, “I myself use it in my classroom . . . and right away I notice that when they can look at an image instead of reading a text, all the barriers go down” (3:37-3:48).
Jackson and Patella both realize the application of Carruther’s work, that text is experienced with images in a way that is remembered, and with that memory, there is lasting impact.
While my dad didn’t choose to attend St. John’s University for it’s future influence on my master’s education, it’s exciting to see how my learning now connects to so much of my life experience and deepens those experiences by giving them contexts they didn’t have before.
Works Cited
Carruthers, Mary. “Memory and the Book.” The Book of Memory. Cambridge U.P, 1990, pp. 221-220.
“‘Donald Jackson: The Calligrapher’ — The Saint John’s Bible.” Youtube, Canton Museum of Art, 20 Feb. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTS5m59DPoo.
“The Saint John’s Bible – Father Michael Patella.” Youtube, The St. John’s Bible, 24 Aug. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B24AM6sPYK8.
The Ordinary Pebble 