HISTORY
It is a codex that for its writing as well as for its images, has been considered of Spanish origin. We know, thanks to the news about it given by the Jesuit F. José Moret, that in the 17th century there was still in the Library of the Pamplona Cathedral, a Beatus that had disappeared in an unknown date. In 1897, a manuscript with the same features, after having passed around, was sold to the National Library of France in Paris. In a later study it was discovered that the Beatus had attached to one of its covers a document signed by the king Charles the Third 
of Navarra in 1389, clearing up any doubt about its coincidence with the Beatus in Pamplona. We do not have any informations as how did it reach the Pamplona Cathedral.
Its origin is unknown as some experts think it comes from some monastery in Navarra or the French Pyrenees, whereas others link it with the environment of Silos, although for the special treatment given in its world map to the city of Astorga, the only one signaled in a cogwheel, gives way to think it was commissioned, probably to a Leonese or Castillian scriptorium for a church of the diocese. However, bearing in mind it corresponds to the first pictorial version, like the Beatus of San Millán and El Escorial, both created in the Emilianense monastery in times when it belonged to the kingdom of Navarra, it seems reasonable to consider its origin from Navarra or La Rioja as a more probable one, in both cases in the environment of San Millán de la Cogolla and the monarchy of Navarra.
DESCRIPTION
It is a copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypsis by Beato de Liébana, dated on the 12th century, in which the text as well as the excellent
illustrations make it the last Beatus that corresponds to the most ancient pictorial version of the original codex and also the last one of the second word-for-word version; the one considered from 784. Its letter type -Caroline, transition to Gothic- of great quality and its multiple miniatures, which style corresponds to full Romanesque, and all that integrated in a structure that, with a completely different technique and aesthetic sense strongly respects the one of the book written fourhundred years earlier, in times of a millenium fear conception, much darker than the moment this copy was created, confer this manuscript a very special interest.
Both, for its letter type, where several stories are distinguished in brown ink, and for the commentaries in red ink, as for its illustrations in bright colours, some at full page, reflect a very well accomplished job. A special gum with silvery reflections is used in its paintings, usually replacing the blue colour by purple or violet. Green, ocher and vermillion are also frequently used for backgrounds next to violet.
The vigorous stroke of the drawings comes out; in some cases they fill different boxes in which the pages are divided into. In general, the architecture represented is clearly Romanesque with rounded or trefoil arches, although in some cases there are also horse shoe arches. However, for the movement of its images as well as for the foldings of the clothings or the careful drawing of hands and feet, frequently presented in postures that give the sensation of movement, it seems to indicate we are before a work that, though Romanesque, breaking apart its hieratic condition, it begins to show the naturalist trend that is so meaningful in the Gothic.
Along that line it is very interesting the opinion of Elisa Ruiz García and Soledad de Silva y Verástegui 
in the text that goes with the facsimile of Beato de Navarra edited by Millenium Liber, about the possibility it had been created in a Cistercian monastery, as it seems that the Commentaries on the Apocalypsis was a book of particular interest to that order, since out of the eight or ten late Beatus dated at the end of the 12th and beginnings of the 13th centuries, five of them are related to Cistercian monasteries.
On the other hand, this surprising interest from the dominant order of those times in the work of Beatus may justify the existence of these new copies of the "Commentaries", in times where millenium trauma was not any longer present and that also the Mozarabic lithurgy had been eliminated a hundred years ago by the Gregorian reform and the support of the kings of Leon and Navarra to the Cluniac order; therefore, the norm of the IV Council of Toledo, that ordered the continuous reading of the Apocalypsis of St. John between Easter and Pentecost.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Historia de España de Menéndez Pidal: Volumess VI y VII*
SUMMA ARTIS: Volumes VIII y XXII
L'Art Préroman Hispanique: ZODIAQUE
Arte y Arquitectura española 500/1250: Joaquín Yarza
Beato de Navarra: Elisa Ruiz García y Soledad de Silva y Verástegui
Los Beatos tardíos
The Navarra Beatus
