Beatus of Liébana

He is best remembered today as the author of the Commentary on the Apocalypse, written in 776, then revised in 784 and again in 786.[5] The Commentary is a work of erudition but without great originality, made up principally of extracts from the texts of Church authorities including Augustine of Hippo, Tyconius, Ambrose, Irenaeus, and Isidore of Seville. He relied most heavily on the lost Commentary by Tyconius, whose writing provided Beatus with much of the text for his work.[6] In his last revision, Beatus added the commentary by Jerome on the Book of Daniel.[4]

The Commentary was popular during the Middle Ages and survives in at least 32 manuscripts (usually called a beatus) from the 9th through the 13th centuries.[7] No contemporary copies of Beatus's work have survived. Not all of the manuscripts are complete, and some exist only in fragmentary form. Twenty-six of these manuscripts are lavishly decorated and have been recognized as some of the best examples of the Mozarabic style of illumination.[5][8][2]

Beatus was a vocal opponent of a Spanish variant of adoptionism, the belief that Christ was the son of God by adoption, an idea first put forward by Elipandus, Bishop of Toledo and Bishop Felix of Urgell on the Iberian Peninsula. Elipandus and Felix declared that Jesus, in respect to his human nature, was the adopted son of God by God's grace, thus emphasizing the distinction between the divinity and the humanity of Christ. Beatus and other opponents of adoptionism, such as Alcuin and Paulinus II of Aquileia, feared that this view would so divide the person of the Savior that the reality of the incarnation would be lost. In addition, many theologians were concerned that this adoptionism was a new version of the Nestorianism advanced by Nestorius.[10]

In 794, Elipandus attacked Beatus in a letter to the bishops of Gaul, calling Beatus a pseudo-prophet and accusing him of having falsely announced the imminent end of the world. In response to the controversy, Charlemagne called together the Council of Frankfurt in 794. The assembled bishops condemned adoptionism as a heresy and in 798, Pope Leo III confirmed the heresy of adoptionism.[5]

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Beatus of Liébana.

• Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). "Beatus" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). p. 584.
• Cavadini, John C. (1993). The Last Christology of the West: Adoptionism in Spain and in Gaul 785 - 817. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3186-1.
• Collins, Roger (2000). The Arab Conquest of Spain: 710 - 797. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-19405-7.
• Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2012). Apocalypse: The Illustrated Book of Revelation. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B008WAK9SS
• González, Justo L. (2010). A History of Christian Thought Volume II: From Augustine to the Eve of the Reformation. Abingdon Press. p. 109-111. ISBN 9781426721915.
• Piera, Montserrat (2010). "Beatus of Liébana (d. 798)". The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press.
• Vivancos Gomez, Miguel C. "Beato de Liébana". Real Academia de la Historia (in Spanish).
• Williams, John; Shailor, Barbara A. (1991). A Spanish Apocalypse: the Morgan Beatus manuscript. New York: G. Braziller the Pierpont Morgan Library. ISBN 978-0-8076-1262-0.
• Williams, John (1992). "Purpose and Imagery in the Apocalypse Commentary of Beatus of Liébana". In Emmerson, Richard Kenneth (ed.). The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-2282-9.
• Williams, John (1997). "Isidore, Orosius and the Beatus Map". Imago Mundi. 49: 7–32. ISSN 0308-5694. JSTOR 1151330.
• Wolf, Kenneth B. (2003). "Beatus of Liébana". In Gerli, E. Michael (ed.). Medieval Iberia : An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93918-6.
• Woodward, David (1987). "18 - Medieval Mappaemundi". Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-31633-8.

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