While visiting victims of the recent tornadoes in Alabama, many raised eyebrows when President Trump visited a church and signed the personal bibles of some of those in attendance. But politics and bibles have a long, interconnected history dating into the Middle Ages.
in biblical terms the horrors they saw. Civilization as they knew it seemed to be falling apart.
But as political unity broke down, culture continued. The monasteries of the empire produced gorgeous works of art - illuminated manuscripts that are still stunning to behold. And unsurprisingly, given where they were produced, given the way in which they lamented their own times many of these books were Bibles.
Those books connected the ruler to those that produced them, as well as where the books finally ended up. The reason they did this, the reason they needed those books with those images of their rulers, is because that connection meant something. It drew the book owner/ creator and the ruler together by creating an object related to that materialized that relationship.
Matthew Gabriele is a professor of Medieval Studies and chair of the Dept. of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech. Follow him on Twitter at
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