Mediaeval Manichaean book art: A study of design, function, and origin of Manichaean book illumination (China)

This dissertation explores a glorious, innovative episode in the history of mediaeval book art. It focuses on the illuminated books of a missionary world religion, Manichaeism, that existed between the 3rd and the 17th centuries. It reveals that between the 8th and 11th centuries, Manichaean illuminated books were invented with a curious, tolerant design in Turfan (Xinjiang Province, P. R. of China). Sponsored by the ruling elite of the Uygur tribal confederation, luxurious painted manuscripts were created by integrating texts from "text-books" with scenes from Mani's Picture-Book--a canonical work that communicated solely through visual means.; The primary sources of evidence for this study form a group of ca. one hundred illuminated book fragments examined as a corpus for the first time. These torn book pages are put through a set of analyses in order to understand the content and the appearance of their lost originals. First, a traditional codex analysis identifies the book formats and the techniques used by the scribes and the illuminators. Secondly, an analysis of the layout establishes the rules of page arrangement and the systematic perpendicular (i.e., sidewise) orientation of pictures. Thirdly, an analysis of contextual cohesion between the texts and their pictures reveals that the pictures are not subordinate illustrations of the texts. Rather, they are thematically independent units within the manuscripts that decorate the writing with scenes relevant to the life of the church among the Uygurs. Finally, the understanding of the layout and contextual cohesion gained through these analyses yields the recognition that the design of the Manichaean illuminated page incorporates components that were developed in initially separate contexts. With the help of documentary evidence and comparative examples, this study proves that originally independent textual and pictorial traditions were fused into a tolerant design to create luxury illuminated books for the wealthy sponsors of the Manichaean church.