# Rabanus Maurus: De Universo [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MINIATURIST, Italian]() - Date: 1001-1050 - Technique: Manuscript \(Cod. 132\) ## Commentary Rabanus Maurus: De Universo c. 1023 Manuscript \(Cod. 132\) Monastery Library, Montecassino Rabanus \(or Hrabanus\) Maurus \(c. 780-856, Winkel\), archbishop, Benedictine abbot, theologian, and scholar whose work so contributed to the development of German language and literature that he received the title Praeceptor Germaniae \(Teacher of Germany\). The archive of the Montecassino Abbey, the religious community founded by St. Benedict in the 6th century that was the hub of medieval monastic life, boasts the invaluable Rabanus Maurus Cassinese manuscript, which was produced at Montecassino during the time of Abbot Theobald \(1022-35\) and contains the great encyclopedic dictionary De Universo, or De rerum naturis, which Rabanus Maurus, a monk from Fulda who became Bishop of Mainz, wrote in the 9th century, at the zenith of the Carolingian epoch. This large-size codex \(49x35 cm\) consists of 530 pages in Beneventan script and splendidly illustrated with over 360 miniatures with lively figures and colours. However, the true importance of the codex goes beyond its high artistic worth, since De Universo is one of the leading medieval encylopedias and the first one compiled after two centuries of silence, that is, after St. Isidore of Seville's Etymologies. The present miniature from this manuscript depicts the building of the Tower of Babel. ## Related artworks - [Alessandro Cortesi: Poem]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphonary]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Antiphoner]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics]() - [Armiranda]() - [Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae]() - [Averulino: On the Architecture]() - [Baldo Martorelli: Grammar]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()