The cover of the month

From 1 September to 4 October, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi—in 2026 we mark the eighth centenary of his death—the Church leads us into the Season of Creation. In the spirit of this season, we contemplate this illumination painted around 1480, which comes to us from the close of the Middle Ages, when the image, with its poetic and symbolic language, sets us before the very foreground of the creative act.

And now, behold

See how everything begins, not in matter, but in glory. There is not a primordial chaos; there is gold. This burning sheet, silent, sovereign, does not represent a thing, but the glory of Being. Gold, here, is the radiance of glory; it is light before it has encountered any obstacle; it is the first morning of the world, even before the dawn has received a name. God said, “Let there be light!”

The gold background does not merely fill the image; it grounds it. It does not decorate the world; it proclaims its source, its life, and its fulfilment. It is the signature of uncreated light. It is the first day that endures beneath all days. It is the Let there be light that never ceases to resound. It is the brightness before the sun, the brightness of God, the brightness of the light that does not wane, the radiance of divine glory, by which creation is a transfiguration.

And here, at the threshold of the world, is the uncreated Light, ­begotten of uncreated Light, the first-born before all creation. Look: all things are created through him and for him (Col 1:15-17). See how, even before the creation of man and woman, it is a human figure that, rightly, the ­illuminator gives us to contemplate. Yet it is not the venerable old man representing the Father in so many images: it is a young man. Yes, it is indeed he: it is already Christ—before Bethlehem, before Nazareth, ­before the Jordan, before the cross, before the empty tomb—Christ in his creative eternity: the Word.

For when Scripture narrates the work of the six days, it is marked by this decisive formula: God said. God speaks, and it is done. God creates by his Word. Now the Word of God is not a breath lost in the air: it is Someone. He is the Son, the Only-Begotten, the Image of the invisible God, the One in whom all things were created.

The hand that speaks

Thus the illuminator has clothed him with all his signs. First, his youth: not the passing testimony of his age, but the eternal newness of the Son. His blue halo rayed with gold: the blue of the heavenly heights, the gold of glory, of the light that does not dim. His crown consecrates him King of the universe, but with a disconcerting kingship: he does not ascend the throne to dominate others; he will descend from it in order to raise them to it; he does not have subjects under his feet, but brothers and sisters whose feet he will wash; he does not weigh upon humanity with his divine omnipotence; out of love, he will become man so that man may become God.

And precisely his red mantle, which covers his heavenly blue tunic, speaks of his ardent Love, of his life given, of his blood ­already ­mysteriously poured out in the very dawn of creation. And his hands! The right hand is the hand of the Pantocrator, the hand of Christ the Almighty: the hand that speaks, the creative hand that says Fiat and it is done. The left hand is open: it also speaks, it says: Father, thy will be done.

Thus, through the image, the artist makes us see the Word as he unfolds his creative power. In the upper right, here is the ­firmament of the second day, spread out like a great blue mantle in which the clouds dispense the freshness of the first morning. In this sky are kindled the lights of the fourth day. That they have a face is not naïveté, it is a poetic language:

Praise to you, my Lord, for all creation,
Most specially our noble Brother Sun,
Bringing the day by which you grant us light.
He shines, so fair and radiant in his splendour,
We recognise in him, Most High, your likeness.
Praise to you, my Lord, for Sister Moon
And all the stars you set among the heavens,
Which are so precious, bright, and beautiful.

The better part

Lower down appears the dry land of the third day, with its plants, its trees—this first green mantle that already covers the ground like an altar cloth. At the bottom, the water stirs with gentle life, replete with fish: a memory of the fifth day, when the abyss itself becomes fertile. And the birds, ­suggested within this vast order of the living, prolong this rising movement of life that goes from wave to breath, from root to wing, from matter to surge.

Finally, before God, on the seventh day, entrusts to us the task of bringing his creation to fulfilment, here are the animals of the sixth day, quiet beasts and livelier ones, all gathered in a peace not yet wounded and turned ­towards their God. Nothing here is ­surrendered to predation. And at the very feet of the creative Word—a little white rabbit. The humblest of creatures, the weakest, the most vulnerable, and therefore the most harmless, has chosen the better part, the part that shall not be taken away from him, close to the source. Already the artist shows us what the imitation of Jesus Christ consists in.

Behold, Paradise is ready. The Garden of Eden is waiting. For whom? The man and the woman? But where are they? If they are missing from the image, is it not to invite us to enter it? For we are awaited in this ­garden; we are invited to come and dwell there so as to discover that to be created is not only to begin to be; it is to be willed. It is to be desired, and desired solely out of Love. It is to be called into being by our name, that name which God alone knows how to pronounce, in conferring upon it all its potentialities of love, of beatitude, and of glory. Then, indeed:

“Praise to you, my Lord, for Mother Earth,
Who feeds and governs us. From her we gain
All luscious fruits, all coloured flowers and herbs.”

Pierre-Marie Dumont

The Creation (c. 1480–1490), illumination from Ms 101, fol. 7, Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Image: Courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program.