Title Page of St. Gregory's "Moralia": Job Visited by His Three Friends (above) and Gregory the Great and His Deacon Peter (below) (c. 1143–1178): Art, History and Details

Title Page of St. Gregory's "Moralia": Job Visited by His Three Friends (above) and Gregory the Great and His Deacon Peter (below) (c. 1143–1178) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Abbot Frowin (Swiss).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This leaf originally formed the title page of a four-volume Moralia (Commentary on the Book of Job) by Gregory the Great, pope and father of the Latin Church. The books still survive in the library of the Monastery of Engelberg, near Lucerne. Both the copying and illumination of the books are attributed to the hand of Engelberg's greatest abbot, Frowin, who ruled from 1143 to 1178. Frowin seemed to be responsible, either as a writer, illuminator, or donor, for nearly 30 manuscripts still preserved at that monastery.

Object facts

• Title: Title Page of St. Gregory's "Moralia": Job Visited by His Three Friends (above) and Gregory the Great and His Deacon Peter (below)
• Date: c. 1143–1178
• Creator attribution: Abbot Frowin (Swiss)
• Culture: Switzerland, Monastery of Engelberg, 12th century
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.3 x 19 cm (10 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.); Framed: 52.4 x 39.7 cm (20 5/8 x 15 5/8 in.); Matted: 48.9 x 36.2 cm (19 1/4 x 14 1/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1955.74

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• e-codices - Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland by swissuniversities Logo (Accessed 4/2023).
• Milliken, William. "An Illumination from the 'Moralia of Gregorius.'" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 42, no. 8 (October 1955): 183-186.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.