(active 1109-1133 at Citeaux)

Moralia in Job by Gregory the Great 1111 Illumination on parchment Bibliothèque Municipale, Dijon

The Cistercian order was founded in France at the end of the eleventh century. It began as a break-away movement in 1098, when a group of monks from the Cluniac abbey of Molesme settled in a desolate region south of Dijon, called Citeaux. The Cistercians developed their own attitude to both art and architecture. The earliest Cistercian art to survive is a series of remarkable illuminated manuscripts made at Citeaux between 1109 and 1133, when the abbot was an Englishman named Stephen Harding.

The Moralia in Job contains a series of initials showing monks engaged in everyday tasks, the design of which imaginatively follows the shape of the letter. For example, the initial I becomes the trunk of a tree, with a lay brother cutting of its upper branches with a hand axe, while below him a monk cuts away at the base of the tree with an axe, seemingly oblivious to the consequences of his action for his colleague.

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Author: MINIATURIST, French Title: Moralia in Job by Gregory the Great Time-line: 1101-1150 School: French Form: illumination