The Book of Job. Patmos, Monastery of St. John the Theologian, codex 171, fol. 52-53.

The Book of Job is the oldest illuminated manuscript surviving in the Monastery's Library and the only one that can be identified with certainty in the Monastery's Inventory of the year 1200. All the more so, it might be the oldest of all the Greek illuminated manuscripts still located in the Eastern Mediterranean. The volume is written in uncials and bears so many commentaries that in many pages there is but space for only a few lines of actual text. The remarkable miniatures, sorely flaked, add optical commentaries and faithfully follow the textual narrative. The origin of the manuscript has not been located and the proposed chronologies vary from the 7th to the 10th century. The Book exhibits both a late antique character (the use of uncials, the costumes, the movements and physiognomy of the figures, the landscapes) and a medieval one (the high walls, the carpet-like arrangement of the compositional elements). Comparative research of the work links it with the last decades of the 9th century. Its dimensions, the diligent writing and the secular character of its miniatures suggest a layman donor or recipient of the upper class. Undoubtedly, it is a luxurious creation that was meant for private and not liturgical use. On pages 52 and 53, two miniatures refer to the humiliation of Job. On the left one, four men emerge from a walled city with gestures of disgust and despair. On the right, Job sits on the ash heap, full of wounds and bearing only a girdle, while his wife -that stands next to him- reproves him. His wretched appearance is opposed to her stylish attire, thus emphasizing the dramatic quality of the scene. On their left, the four men bear witness to his shame.