Image Details

Bridgeman/Art Resource, NY

An elaborate letter “F,” shown in this illumination from a 12th-century Bible now in the Lambeth Palace Library, London, depicts the battle that raged around Saul as he “grasped his sword and fell upon it” (1 Samuel 31:3–4). At Saul’s feet lie his sons, slain by the sword-wielding Philistine soldiers. The “F” opens the Second Book of Samuel, which begins “Factum est autem postquam mortuus est Saul” in Latin, or “After the death of Saul.”