Beatus of Liébana

Beatus of Liébana (Spanish: Beato; c. 730 – c. after 785) was a monk, theologian, and author of the Commentary on the Apocalypse, mostly a compendium of previous authorities' views on the biblical Book of Revelation or Apocalypse of John. This had a local influence, mostly in the Iberian Peninsula, up to about the 13th century, but is today remembered mainly for the 27 surviving manuscript copies that are heavily illustrated in an often spectacular series of miniatures that are outstanding monuments of Mozarabic art. Examples include the Morgan Beatus and Saint-Sever Beatus; these are covered further at the article on the book. Most unusually for a work of Christian theology, it appears that Beatus always intended his book to be illustrated, and he is attributed with the original designs, and possibly the execution, of the first illustrations, which have not survived.

Aside from his work, almost nothing is known about Beatus. He was a monk and probably an abbot at the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, Cantabria, in the Kingdom of Asturias, the only region of Spain remaining outside of Muslim control. It is thought that he was probably one the large number of monastic refugees who moved north, to lands remaining under Christian rule after the Muslim conquest of southern and central Spain. Beatus appears to have been well known by his contemporaries. He was a correspondent with the notable Christian scholar, Alcuin, and a confidant of queen Adosinda, daughter of Alfonso I of Asturias and wife of Silo of Asturias. He was present when Adosinda took her vows as a nun in 785, the last record we have of his life. A supposed biography, the Life of Beatus, has been identified as a 17th-century fraud with no historical value.

For Beatus, the observation and reading of such works was a sacred action, akin to communion. Beatus treats the reading of the book as the same as the body, and so by reading the book, the reader is one with Christ. He also led the opposition against a Spanish variant of Adoptionism, the heretical belief that Christ was the son of God by adoption, an idea first propounded in Spain by Elipandus, the bishop of Toledo.

An important, and enduring, influence of Beatus seems to be that he established the idea in Spain that Iberia had been converted by the Apostle James.