Eighth-century Spain witnessed the conquest of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths by Muslims and the fracturing of the Iberian peninsula into various kingdoms. It was in this era the Spanish monk Beatus of Liebana (d. 785) wrote a book called _Commentary on the Apocolypse_, and depicted here is an extremely rare painting from a twelfth-century illustration of a scene from it: the First Angel of the Apocolypse sounding the trumpet, raining down fire, hail-stones, and blood upon the earth. In his _Commentary_, Beatus mostly blames fellow Christians for The Problems of the World. He hesitantly suggests that End Times would perhaps come in about 801 CE. There are 27 extant “Beatus” manuscripts that survive from the Middle Ages, and they represent some of the most exquisite examples of the Spanish artistic style known as Mozarabic, from the period of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish “conviviencia” era of Spain.
