Boulogne Aratea

The Boulogne Aratea is adorned with forty-one exquisite miniatures, each intricately framing its Latin poetic narrative. These miniatures vividly illustrate the composition and relative positions of constellations, portraying them as animals, humans, and objects against bright blue backgrounds. Two exceptional pages (found on fols. 20r and 30r) are dedicated to a celestial planisphere and a circular planetary diagram, graced with lively personifications of constellations, planets, and months.

At its core, this manuscript features an ancient Latin poetic translation attributed to Germanicus Caesar (d. 19 CE). It is a rendition of the Phaenomena, originally composed by the Greek poet Aratus of Soli in the third century BCE. This translation includes interpolations from another Latin rendition and expansions of Aratus’s work by Rufius Festus Avienius (4th century CE). Preceding the ancient astronomical text, one encounters a calendar and calendrical tables.

The manuscript’s vivid palette is dominated by hues of red-orange, blue, violet, and green, embellished with the luster of silver and gold.

The celestial journey commences with a captivating depiction of the Roman sky god, Jupiter, reclining on his eagle (fol. 20v). With a silver halo emitting seven radiant rays, Jupiter appears bare-chested, clad in a light purple robe. He grasps a silver orb and a golden staff.

The constellations within this manuscript take on diverse forms, transforming into Greco-Roman heroes like Hercules (fol. 21r) and Perseus (fol. 25r), as well as mythological figures, animals, hybrids, and inanimate objects. Notable among them is the winged horse Pegasus (fol. 24r) and the intriguing Centaur (fol. 29r). Even the classical sea monster, Cetus, adopts a unique guise, resembling a dog-like creature with a fantastical fish tail (fol. 28r).

An intriguing element is the use of gold dots, which denote star placements in the constellation miniatures, serving as celestial guides. These dots, though somewhat worn over time, once marked the stars in the constellation illustrations, even in the full-page planisphere.

The Boulogne Aratea is an exceedingly rare specimen, with only three illuminated copies known to exist of this Latin adaptation of Aratus’s poem. It shares textual and visual ties with the ninth-century Leiden Aratea, but whether the creators of the Boulogne manuscript directly drew from the Leiden manuscript remains a tantalizing mystery.

Both the Leiden and Boulogne manuscripts feature text written in Rustic Capitals, the script employed for literary texts in late Roman antiquity. Their texts and images harken back to late antique models. Within the calendar and computus tables, which were used for calculating the dates of Christian holidays, the manuscript incorporates another script from Roman antiquity, the rounded majuscule script known as Uncial (fols. 1-10). Only the explanation of the tables is inscribed in the Caroline Minuscule script characteristic of the period (fols. 11-19).

This venerable manuscript embarked on a journey through time, from its origins in a medieval monastery to its current abode in a modern library. It is one of eighty-one manuscripts from the renowned Saint-Bertin monastery that was carefully selected following the French Revolution to find its place in the newly established Bibliothèque municipale in the coastal city of Boulogne-sur-Mer. In 1975, these medieval manuscripts found a new haven in a renovated building once occupied by a contemplative Order of the Annunciation.

The facsimile edition of the Aratea is complemented by a case for its conservation and a complementary study book made by subject matter experts.

This facsimile is a unique edition of 400 books numbered and authenticated by notarial deed.