Anti Islam interpretation

The image seems out of place, given that the snake is typically a symbol of Satan in Christian iconography. It can, however, also represent wisdom,^{[Notes 5]} forcing the viewer to ask whether the mounted figure is a Mudejar, destroying the embodiment of Christian wisdom, or a Mozarab, destroying evil: which points to a rather complex and ambivalent view of Mozarabs at the time.^[7] To further complicate interpretation, the idea of the Christian as a "cunning serpent" was prominent in the Cordovan martyrs’ movement.^{[Notes 6][8]}

Political interpretation

The manuscript can be regarded as an incitement of Christian resistance to Muslim rule in the south; the Christian eschatology predicting the fall of the godless kingdoms and the restoration of captive Israel resounded strongly with the Asturians, who by the time of Beatus had only recently gained enough strength to take a stand against Al-Andalus and claim the old Visigothic kingdom as their heritage.^[9]

In the image of the rider and snake, the snake appears to be unharmed, indicating the rider to be unambiguously Islamic, and the image is an exhortation to Christians in Al-Andalus not to fear martyrdom.^{[Notes 7]}

In that context [of the Christian stand-off with Islam], his commentary on the apocalyptic visions of John the Divine took on the nature of a political book, since its contents... could be applied directly to the contemporary struggles against those who were perceived as the heathen. The richly illustrated codices... thus articulated an ideology which was at once nationalist and theological.^[10]

However, all of Beatus's sources were composed prior to the rise of Islam in Spain, and, while it may have been possible for a reader to interpret the events of the Apocalypse in reference to Islam, there is a marked absence of contemporaneous anti-Islamic rhetoric.^{[Notes 8]} Indeed, ... simple proximity to Islam by no means guaranteed Christian attention to it. In the case of Spain, the earliest attempts to comprehend Islam date from almost a century after the conquest,^[11] well after the manuscript's production.

Anti-adoptionism

Beatus is famous for his support of Asturian opposition to the doctrine of Adoptionism, proclaimed by the bishop of Toledo and declared by Asturias as heresy,^[12] and it has been suggested that the manuscript reflects his orthodox stance against the doctrine. To the Asturians, Adoptionism was a form of compromise with the Islamic invaders and Beatus, who later composed a tract attacking Adoptionism directly, may be believed to express some of the same thought in his Commentaries.^{[Notes 9]}

The first edition compilation was completed prior to the Adoptionist controversy, and it is therefore unlikely that Beatus intended the manuscript to stand as an indictment of the doctrine.^[13]

Millenniary fears

Beatus's own chronological computations placed the end of the sixth age of the world, and the start of the events of the Apocalypse, in the year 800. It seems likely that the possible approaching end of the world was the impetus behind the production of the manuscript.^{[Notes 10][14]} Klein quotes Maius, the artist of the Morgan Beatus, who had written in the colophon that he painted the pictures so the learned may fear the coming of the future judgement and of the world’s end.^[14] For Klein, this is a fairly strong proof of millennialist anxieties.