HISTORY
Fernando Pérez (or Ferrando Petri) de Funes was a canon in the Calahorra Cathedral who became between 1192 and 1194 chancellor of the king of Navarra, Sancho the 6th, the Wise. Upon the monarch's death, its successor, Sancho the 7th, the Strong, commissioned him the execution of a bible that he finished in 1197. This bible, usually named Bible of King Sancho or First Bible of Pamplona, is at present in the Municipal Library of Amiens.
Upon its completion, the monarch commissioned a new copy of the bible as a present to a lady of high social status, who might have been his sister 
Doña Berenguela, on occasion of her wedding with Richard Lionheart, or for his mother, Doña Sancha de Castilla. This second bible of Pamplona, that we here comment, was not a mere copy of the former one, since Fernando Pérez modified more than 40% of the scenes, and added some 91 others that did not exist in the first one. Besides, a finer parchment, more gold and costlier pigments were employed, which show the importance of the commission.
The manuscript, that was created in a monastic scriptorium in Pamplona was kept in Spain until the beginnings of the 19th century and was highly valued to the extreme that a copy was made in that period's style in France at the beginnings of the 14th century and is now preserved in New York. Bought in Paris in 1814 for the collection of duke Oettinger-Wallerstein and acquired on its turn by the State of Bavaria in 1980 and passed to the Library of the University of Augsburg where it nowadays is preserved under strict protective measures due to the deterioration of the parchments suffered after eight centuries.
DESCRIPTION
The manuscripts of Ferrando Petri may be considered as exceptional works of art among all High Medieval European miniature. Different to the rest of authors who give more importance to the text rather than the images and that intersperse most of these within the text, the Pamplona Bibles
base their whole content in the miniatures that form half page of full page scenes, with the names of the characters that appear on the image, to which only later are added short explanatory texts under the vignette that have their origin in a version of the original Vulgata, all written in Gothic lower case type face.
In its 271 parchment sheets, that include 33 of the 46 books of the bible, we find up to 976 scenes presented in form of framed free hand vignettes after finishing the images and the text. They are fine pen drawn and water coloured in soft shades, mainly greenish, yellow and ochre, also using gold leaf in 61 of them. Specialists believe that in its execution three scribes and at least four painters have participated of which one of them must have been Ferrando de Petri himself, who was also responsible for selecting an adapting the texts and ordering the illustrations.
With an harmonic and expressive general composition and a vigorous draw, the miniatures, in which, according to the tradition, the artist has used people of his usual environment as models, offer scenes that are sometimes quite complex and very real and original. All of that within a clearly Romanesque style, although representing, like most of High Medieval Spanish miniature, multiple influences of several periods and origins besides a very unusual presentation form and handling of the drawing and colouring.
The codex contains the Old 
and New Testament with a wide description of Christ's genealogy and the representation of 203 saints chronologically ordered, some closely linked to the Reign of Navarra, like those of St. Miguel de Aralar, St. Saturnino, St. Nicholas, St. Martin, St. Zoilo and Saints Nunilona and Alodia, as well as an appendix with text of the apocryphal gospels that refer to the second coming of Christ. However, they do not include the Apocalypsis of St. John, which is very odd for a Spanish manuscript.
The second Bible of Pamplona, both, for its broad content -it is the manuscipt of its time with the largest quantity of miniatures that have been preserved- as well as for its special structure in big vignettes with very little text, fine-pen drawn and watercoloured in soft shades, a set of features that we shall only find again in other works by Ferrando Petri, is one of the most complete and interesting biblical manuscripts of the Spanish Middle Ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Historia de España de Menéndez Pidal: Tomos VI y VII*
SUMMA ARTIS: Tomos VIII y XXII
Arte y Arquitectura española 500/1250: Joaquín Yarza
La Biblia de Pamplona: varios autores, EIKON Editores
Sancho el Mayor y sus herederos: Isidro G. Bango Torviso
BIBLE of Pamplona
