“Here comes the serpent and tempts Eve and Adam with the fruit God had given them.”
The tree of knowledge with two snakes with human heads wound round it is flanked by Eve eating the forbidden fruit and Adam clutching his throat, a gesture that conveys his awareness of his error. The reader is referred to the interpretation of Adam and Eve’s sin analysed earlier. It must be said that the Bible of Naples eliminates the homosexual lovers shown in the Bible of Vienna and uses an image also featured in the three-volume Bibles. Incidentally, the main item the devil uses to cast the two guilty parties into hell – “and the devil ties knots around their neck and mouth and waist and legs and feet” – by tying them together around the waist, is the end of the sheet on the bed shared by these two lovers.
Yves Christe
University of Geneva
Marianne Besseyre
Illuminated Manuscripts Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Fragment of the Bible moralisée of Naples commentary volume
“Here comes the serpent and tempts Eve and Adam with the fruit God had given them.”
The tree of knowledge with two snakes with human heads wound round it is flanked by Eve eating the forbidden fruit and Adam clutching his throat, a gesture that conveys his awareness of his error. The reader is referred to the interpretation of Adam and Eve’s sin analysed earlier. It must be said that the Bible of Naples eliminates the homosexual lovers shown in the Bible of Vienna and uses an image also featured in the three-volume Bibles. Incidentally, the main item the devil uses to cast the two guilty parties into hell – “and the devil ties knots around their neck and mouth and waist and legs and feet” – by tying them together around the waist, is the end of the sheet on the bed shared by these two lovers.
Yves Christe
University of Geneva
Marianne Besseyre
Illuminated Manuscripts Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Fragment of the Bible moralisée of Naples commentary volume
