The miniatures tell the story of Cassinese art. In the so-called ‘Dedication Scenes’, the great abbots who built churches, commissioned mosaics, frescoes, icons and goldsmithing, and had the codices used for liturgical celebrations, for the school and for the monastery library copied and decorated, dedicating constant care to the scriptorium, are portrayed as donors.
The first to be portrayed as a patron of monastic publishing was John I (915-934). He had a new manuscript of the ‘Rule’ (Cod. 175) produced. After the Saracens destroyed the monastery in 883, the monks took refuge first in Teano and then in Capua. They managed to save and take with them the original manuscript of the ‘Rule’, which was lost in a fire in Teano. The volume depicts a particularly significant scene. The protagonist is John I, who gives the manuscript to St. Benedict. This gesture symbolises the devotion of the monastic community to the founder of the Order at a time of great struggle and distance from the mother house
