Tábara

Tábara is one of the opaque toponyms of the Iberian northwest. The root tab- appears in a small family of toponyms (Tábara, Tabarca, Taboadela) without firm linguistic affiliation. But the village's importance in peninsular cultural history is enormous: it was the seat of the Scriptorium of San Salvador de Tábara, a 10th-century Mozarabic monastery where the Beatus of Liébana was copied in its most famous version, the Beatus of Tábara (970, today in the National Historical Archive of Madrid). The manuscript —⁠a commentary on the Apocalypse with miniatures of unequalled colour⁠— is one of the most important codices of the European Early Middle Ages, and its frontispiece includes a detailed representation of the scriptorium itself: two copyist monks, a tower, a figure climbing a ladder with a bell. It remains the sole known contemporary image of a medieval scriptorium. Magius and Emeterius, the illuminators, signed the work — a rare case in an age when artists were anonymous.